Around the Continent: Roger’s Corner – 7/11/14
Championship season in Europe!
We apologize for the delay. We had some technical problems this week.
[su_dropcap]T[/su_dropcap]Two championships were played on the weekend, the Tulip Bowl in Holland and the Italian championship, they call the Super Bowl. Read the recaps of both games in American Football International Review (www.americanfootballinternational.com).
There are a number of inter-country club tournaments coming to a close. We’d like to explain briefly the structure of these tournaments. The EFAF Big6 tournament is actually arranged by the teams themselves and involved six of the top teams in Europe. The IFAF Europe Champions League tournament is arranged by IFAF Europe, and is not affiliated with the Big6 or EFAF who oversaw the EFL (Eurobowl) tournament. We hope this made some sense. There were also a number of other EFAF tournaments held including the Atlantic Cup, and the Challenge Cup. This entire system will change for next year. Read more about it next week in an interview with the president of the International Federation of American football, Tommy Wiking.
The Big6 championship game will be played July 19th between the Braunschweig New Yorker Lions (Europe # 1) and the Berlin Adler (Europe # 2).
In the IFAF Europe Champions League, the semi-finals produced two, exciting upsets. First, SBB Vukovi Belgrade engineered the biggest surprise upending French champion and Europe #6 the Thonon Black Panthers 19-7. This will put football in Serbia on the map more than their EFAF Cup final appearance three years ago. In the other semi-final, perhaps not as dramatic, Finland’s Helsinki Roosters survived a scare in beating the d’Elancourt Templiers 44-37. The Templiers second half surge was exciting to watch as they came from being down 44-21, scoring 16 unanswered points in the fourth quarter. This has set up Sunday’s championship final between Helsinki and Vukovi. An unlikely and yet fully worthy pair.
Austria
This weekend, the Austrian semi-finals take place. On Saturday July 12, the Swarco Raiders (Europe #9) will play the Danube Dragons (Europe #5) in one of the Austrian semi-finals. On Sunday July 13, the Vienna Vikings (Europe #3) will play the Prague Black Panthers (Europe #4). During the regular season, Swarco played Danube twice beating them both times handily, 44-20 and 43-14. Vienna defeated Prague both times they met as well, but with slightly different scores. In the first game they prevailed 27-7, but in the second Prague pushed them, still losing 34-31.
Belgium
Belgian Bowl XXVII saw a new champion crowned three weeks ago as the Ghent Gators made no mistake handing the defending champion the Brussels Tigers a 38-0 pummeling. This was the first ever title win for the Gators and they did it on their first try. Read the game recap here: www.americanfootballinternational.com.
CEFL (Central European Football League)
On July 20, the two top teams in the CEFL, the Ljubjana Silverhawks and the Vukovi Belgrade (Europe #19) face each other for the CEFL championship on July 20.. The two teams met twice this year and split the series. But in the first game the Silverhawks won 15-6, while in the second meeting, Vukovi whipped them 48-20.
Czech Republic
The Czech championship final is set for July 15. The Prague Black Panthers, undefeated in the regular season and the playoffs will face the second-place Bobcats. The final game of the season between the Prague Black Panthers and the Bobcats saw Prague win 34-27.
Denmark
In the only game played in Denmark the Herlev Rebels (#3 in Group 2) beat up on the Aab 89ers (#4 in Group 2) 58-7. The Copenhagen Towers who were idle still lead Group 1. Towers have scored 268 points in six games and allowed only 26 against. Phenomenal numbers. They are first in Group 1 and have defeated the Triangle Razorbacks and the Gold Diggers (two and three in Denmark) by a combined total of 58-6.
Finland
There were three games in the Finnish Maple League. The second place Senaijoki Crocodiles overwhelmed the Kuovola Indians 42-10. Then TAFT came out in the second half of their game against the Butchers after being tied at 15-15, to pull away and cruise to a 32-22 win. Finally, on Monday night football in Finland, the Helsinki 69ers made it two wins in a row smacking the once-proud Helsinki Wolverines 55-0. The Roosters lead the Finnish league at 3-0 with the Crocodiles following in second at 2-0, the 69ers in third, also at 2-0 and the Turku Trojans in fourth, they also at 2-0.
