Germany: Hildesheim Invaders notch big win over Potsdam Royals in opening game

The Hildesheim Invaders earned their first win of the season in the opening weekend of the German Football League when they downed the Potsdam Royals 50-28 on the road in Potsdam.

After a tentative opening quarter, Hildesheim slowly pulled away from a short handed Royals team who were missing their starting quarterback.

Four-time title winning quarterback Casey Therriault, in his first game back in the GFL in two years, shook the rust off early, throwing five touchdown passes and rushing for another. Wide receivers Jaleel Awini and Nathaniel Morris caught a pair of touchdown passes each while Anthony Dablé-Wolf caught one. Linebacker Phil Gamble added a touchdown on a fumble recovery.

After Potsdam opened the scoring, Therriault went to work marching his team down the field and capping the drive with a touchdown pass to Awini.

On the very next series, the Invaders defense made their presence known, picking off a pass from Potsdam backup quarterback Paul Zimmermann. Therriault capitalized, connecting with Dablé to take a 14-7 lead, still in the first quarter. However, the Royals, playing in front of an enthusiastic home crowd, equalized with Zimmermann finding the end zone.

With the score tied at 14-14, defenses took over in the second quarter. Therriault finally scored for Hildesheim, finishing a drive by carrying the ball in himself to take a 21-14 lead. Patrick Kotterba kicked a field and the Invaders took a 24-14 lead into the halftime break.

Hildesheim grabbed a 31-14 lead right out of the gate in the third quarter as Therriault threw a 70 yard scoring pass to Awini for his second touchdown of the game.

Potsdam inserted Jacob Tucker in at quarterback and he immediately had an impact engineering a touchdown to close the gap to 31-21. However, the Invaders offense now kicked into a higher gear as Therriault connected with Morris to extend the lead to 38-21. Again, Potsdam answered to narrow the lead to 38-28 but Therriault found Morris for his second touchdown of the game to put the game out of reach, 44-28.

Gamble recovered a Tucker fumble in the end zone to seal the win.

Next up for Hildesheim are the Dusseldorf Panther on May 11 while the Royals will take on the Berlin Rebels.