Giants did it again, but what a bizarre winning touchdown from Ahmad Bradshaw to beat the Patriots

Ahmad Bradshaw scores his bizarre winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLVI.
Pic: Sports Illustrated

Massive sense of deja vu today after the New York Giants one their second Super Bowl in five years by beating New England Patriots in pretty much a carbon copy of their 2008 win in Arizona.
While the game was gripping, it was hardly a scoring spectacular, more a battle of mind games between the two head coaches and the two star quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning.
Mario Manningham's late game catch down the sidelines was the David Tyree moment of the game, but what about that winning score? The mind games battle peaked in the last couple of minutes with the Giants trying to run down the clock in a bid not to give Brady's Patriots back the ball but the plan looked like it had backfired.
When Ahmad Bradshaw picked up the ball and ran towards the endzone, the Patriots defense stopped and allowed him through, with the intention of stopping on the one yard line.
I'd love to know what Bradshaw was thinking at that point - what would you do? Score potentially the winning Super Bowl touchdown or take one for the team, run down the clock and set up a possible winning field goal.
Bradshaw somehow decided to do a bit of both. He stopped, went to sit down and then, perhaps accidentally scored. The reaction of his fellow players was a "What have you done?" kind of bizarre.
On the sideline, Bradshaw shrugged his shoulders, not knowing that he'd actually decided the game.
It made a not-that-memorable game memorable for the winning touchdown that nobody wanted to score.

Deion Branch nearly broke my foot!

Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans out there - I had a great night tonight celebrating the big day with my wife at home.

I made a pecan pie and then settled down at 5.30pm to watch the Patriots take on the Lions sitting in a freezing Bury St Edmunds with the fire and my Pats 1985 Irving Fryar throwback jersey on.

There's something about seeing the Pats wearing that red outfit that makes me go all warm inside - I guess it simply takes me back to being ten and getting into the NFL for the first time.

It was bad enough watching the Pats struggle in the first half of the game but worse still I had to watch the second half while eating the lovely meal my wife had made, turkey and all the trimmings, but with New England 14-3 down, it didn't taste great.
The Pats got back into it and then came the moment of the game, a massive bomb hurled by Tom Brady into the arms of Deion Branch for a 79-yard touchdown.

Watching Branch twist the blood of poor Lion Alphonso Smith was awesome. So much so that I got up, punched the air several times and then kicked my armchair.

The wife was not impressed.

The Pats won, the food was lovely and the chair survived - but with the Jets at home next week, I'm not so convinced for it's long term future.

Super Brian still playing at 51

American football is a tough sport known for its big hits and frequent injuries. Nick Richards meets Suffolk’s own Brian Jelley who tells how and why he’s still playing the game at the age of 51.

FOR the third summer in a row the big sports story in America was whether veteran quarterback Brett Favre would continue playing.
Favre, probably America’s third most famous man in his forties behind Barack Obama and Tom Cruise, retired from American football’s National Football League in 2008, but has now reversed that decision three times to keep on playing.
The 41-year-old attracts plenty of attention from the NFL media circus, mostly due to his age and incredible record of starting every game since September 1992. Once again his detractors believe his delayed decision to play another year was all an act.
“I think he enjoys the publicity that he gets,” says Brian Jelley, who is a decade older than Favre and still playing the game at 51. “It’s almost becoming an American institution, the will-he, won’t-he play at the start of the next season.”
Brian, who lives in Elmswell, has played for five sides in Britain since taking up the sport as he turned 30 and, like the amazing Favre, just keeps going despite enduring similar questions about just when he’s going to pack up the physically demanding sport.
“I’d love to retire,” he says with a smile.
“I’ve said next season will be my last, but my wife Emma is taking that with a pinch of salt because I’ll get to the end of the season and I’ll think I can still perform. The yardstick I’ve always given myself is if I’m standing on the sideline for most of the game and not participating as a player then I will call it a day.”
Brian plays in the centre of the offensive line for the Cambridgeshire Cats. His job is essentially to protect the quarterback and during the game he can expect to come face to face with the beefiest defenders on the opposing team.
Standing at 6ft 2ins and topping the scales at 20 stone makes Brian the ideal figure to take part in the rough and tumble sport but, despite his imposing frame, he’s used to taking a battering during and after games of gridiron.
“At my age it does take longer to heal when you get injuries and that’s something I’m aware of too. It’s usually the Tuesday when I get up and find my legs aren’t working after a game on the Sunday. “During a game there are points when you feel pain, like in any physical sport, the game has the ethos of hurting and being injured. If you’re injured you come off, if you’re hurting a bit, you carry on and play.”
Recent studies in America have equated the ‘hits’ or collisions in the sport to be around 100gs, the equivalent of driving a car into a wall at 25mph without a seatbelt on, but for anyone who plays American football, that adds to the appeal.
“I expect it to be painful. You’re trying to inflict as much pain on somebody else really as they’re trying to inflict on you. You expect that you’re going to get some problems.
“I’ve not really had any bad injuries although I did break both bones in my forearm in 1993 during a game for Cambridge. I tackled the running back and held him up and didn’t drag him to the ground. My colleagues came into the pile to hit us down and somebody’s helmet went straight in the side of my left arm. The outside bone was shattered in three parts. I had both sides plated.”
Serious injuries in the sport are thankfully rare and kept to a minimum due to a ruling that makes on-site medical care mandatory. Brian, who works for Hewlett Packard as a business developer, says this is an essential if costly aspect of the sport.
“There is a requirement that you have to have proper medical cover which the home team pays for. Without it the officials won’t start the game. It costs £250 per game to have an ambulance at the ground which is the biggest expense to putting a game on.
“At our standard I think that’s enough cover. If you look at senior rugby games they’ll have a doctor there as well but then that’s really for the blood injuries. In American football it’s more bone breaks and knee injuries. But all sports have an element of risk – you can break your leg playing football or break your nose trying to catch a cricket ball.”
Avoiding serious injury is one key reason that has enabled Brian to keep playing into his fifties, the other is a tough regime leading up to a match.
“From Thursday night onwards I won’t drink any alcohol,” says Brian in serious tone.
“That can be tough if you’ve got something on. I might occasionally have a glass of wine if we’re at a party or I’m going for a meal, but I never drink to excess. In American football, when you’re getting blows to the head, you cannot do it.
“Because we play in the summer it’s hot and when you’ve got a 40lb kit on, it’s heavy and hot and you sweat a lot.
“I start hydrating on the Friday, drinking five to six pints of water a day which again isn’t easy. By lunchtime I should have had another couple of pints, and then again in the afternoon and again at night.
“You feel fresher and you’re able to last longer if you do that. I’ll have an energy drink before the game and one at half-time and on a Saturday night I’ll have some pasta, followed by porridge or scrambled egg on the Sunday morning. They’re all slow release foods. I’ll have a couple of bananas before a game too.”
Brian’s Cambridgeshire Cats play ten games on Sunday afternoons in the regular season which runs from April to August in a division with the Ipswich Cardinals and teams from Peterborough, Colchester and two from Kent which makes for plenty of local rivalry.
“Peterborough are the main rivals but we always enjoy the games against Ipswich. I wouldn’t say Cambridge and Ipswich are big rivals, but the Cardinals are a very nice club. They’re run well, have an excellent head coach and they’re a hard team, the hardest we played this year in the regular season.
“They’re fair and clean and it’s a very good set-up there at Northgate and they’ve got a good future. They ran us very close this year even though we beat them twice. Both times they could have gone either way. They give you more bruises than any other team – but in a fair way.”
The Ipswich Cardinals and Cambridge Cats do share one key factor with other teams in East Anglia – they both tap into the plentiful supply of talent from the USAF airbases at Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Alconbury.
“The big difference with us and the Americans in the team is their skills. Typically they’ve played at a higher level and because they’re in the military they have a level of fitness – they’re not allowed to get fat!
“In the UK you can only play five American nationals in your squad so the emphasis is very much on UK players. Some of them have to travel far from their bases to get games with some teams. Typically a team will have around ten Americans on their books, but only five can be named in each game.
“The one problem is they don’t stay for long. Our best running back for example is being transferred to Spain for two years, so losing him is a massive blow.”
It was on a Saturday in Suffolk in the late 1980s that lead Brian to get into playing the game after he mistakenly thought he saw US servicemen training in Newmarket.
“I first started playing for Newmarket Hornets, who played at Newmarket Town football ground. I loved watching the game and got to understand a few of the rules. I moved to Newmarket for work in the late 1980s from Rushden in Northamptonshire
“I was travelling to Newmarket one Saturday afternoon in 1989 and saw a number of guys on The Severals doing some training in full kit. I thought they must be from one of the airbases and later a neighbour who fell out with the rugby club in Newmarket was advised to try out for the team and we got talking about the team and he asked me if I fancied going.
“So I went along, got given some old pads and helmet, got told to stand still while someone hit me and that was it!”Brian played on for Newmarket for a couple of seasons before they followed the path of many teams of that era and folded. Some of the players went on to form the Cambridgeshire Cats.
Brian left the Cats in 2005 and played for teams in Peterborough and Bedfordshire and bizarrely, had a season with the Newquay-based Cornish Sharks in 2007.
“The team from Cornwall wanted some help and experience so myself and a couple of other players went down to help! We had five home games and five away games – the nearest of which was in Reading so I spent the whole summer travelling to Cornwall, Bristol and Wales!
“The irony was that after the season was over we played Norwich Devils in the play-offs in Norwich.
All the players had to come up here and realised how far we had to travel. We ended up putting up about ten players in the house, in tents in the garden and on the living room floor.”
Brian shares his detached Elmswell home with wife Emma, 41, who also helps out with marketing and fundraising for the Cats and their children Laura 18, William 16, and Megan 14.
“My daughter Laura has grown up with me playing American football and comes to watch. They’re interested in it as they’ve got no choice really. William played for the youth team but he’s moved on to Welbeck Military College in Leicestershire so he’ll be playing more rugby than anything else in the future.
“Emma’s role at the club is to generate money and look after the publicity. The club is run on a tight budget and we’re always looking for sponsorship.”
The support of his family has been key in a 20-year career in the game that has peaked on a couple of occasions when he played games in Las Vegas in 2006 and in Miami this year at semi-pro level for a select minor league all stars side.
Brian will take part in his third game in the US in Dallas early next year – and he’ll have turned 52 by then.

* Article appeared in November 2010 edition of EADT Suffolk magazine

Why I'm worried the Jets could ruin my season

Great to have the NFL back this week and I can’t wait to catch my beloved Patriots in action next Sunday on TV when they take on the New York Jets – but I am worried the Jets could ruin my autumn.
Let me explain.
In January 2008, a fortnight before the Super Bowl, I found myself in the US, the last stop on a three-month round the world trip.
What a way to finish – three weeks in the States, driving around LA, Vegas and Arizona. As well as eating some amazing food, travelling around the best country in the world and catching up with some family, I decided to write a book about American football.
Maybe it was the excitement of planning a new book but I started to fall in love with the history of the sport
I’d just visited my uncle, another Nick, in Tucson who told me he’d recently met Joe Namath and had managed to pick up his autograph.
I’d recently picked up some biographies of some of the NFL legends myself – Namath, Walter Payton and Jonny Unitas which formed my reading material on my trip. I came back to England and paid big bucks for a beautiful trade card with swatches of shirts worn by Unitas, Namath and Bart Starr and then paid a fairly large sum for a massive black and white photo of Namath just after the famous Super Bowl III win in 1969.
The stunning photo of Namath, certainly the most famous player to wear the white and green on the New York Jets, arrived in March 2008, just a few weeks after Tom Brady and co had capitulated in Super Bowl XLII and blown their hopes of going 19 and 0.
The Namath photo remained in the large brown envelope over the summer of 2008. I had planned to get it framed, but it ended up under my bed.
Then, as the NFL season started that September, it started to act like some kind of curse. First the Jets signed Brett Favre, while in New England’s first game against Kansas City, Tom Brady ended his season with a knee injury. The Patriots didn’t even win their division that season!
The Namath picture spent was still under my bed last season as the Patriots won the division but bowed out against Baltimore in the Wild Card play-offs as Brady had a nightmare.
The Jets, meanwhile, found their form under rookie Mark Sanchez, winning in Cincinnati and San Diego and making it to the AFC Championship game.
So what does this all mean?
Well since buying that Namath picture, the Jets have suddenly become a big rival to New England’s divisional hopes.
This summer, the Jets, who lets remember are technically the second best team in the AFC, have added experienced campaigners Jason Taylor, LaDanian Tomlinson and Antonio Cromartie to an impressive Sanchez and a powerful offense including Jerricho Cotchery, Braylon Edwards and from October, Santonio Holmes.
For a Patriots fan who has seen his side stall since the glorious winter of 2007, it doesn’t look that good. Sure Brady, Randy Moss and Wes Welker are still around, but I’m worried that the Jets and even the Dolphins could scupper the Pats’ chances of even getting out of the AFC East this season.
You’ve heard of the Curse of the Bambino – the often cited reason the Boston Red Sox failed to win the World Series due to trading Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920 right?
I wonder if my Patriots are suffering from the Curse of the Nambino. Ever since that Namath picture showed up, the Pats have sucked while the Jets have cruised to a new level.
As a Patriots fan, I do question why I ever wanted to actually own a signed photo of a New York Jet anyway but more immediately, eight days until the two teams meet next Sunday, I just wonder if that picture should pay a trip to the shredder.
Or at least end up back on eBay.

No, I'm not a Wembley ticket tout!

Wembley today for the third NFL International Series game between my beloved New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
But, with a book out and copies to sell I got there really early with Lorraine to dish out thousands of cards plugging Touchdown UK.
After casing the area I plumped for a spot outside the steps of the station next to the touts and T-shirt sellers and proceeded to dish out cards.
Two hours later we’d shifted hundreds of the damn things and thankfully didn’t find a huge mound of them a few metres behind us! Wembley, it seems, took those cards home.
Next time I see someone handing out leaflets at a sports match I think I’ll vow to take one.

OK, so I was trying to plug a book, but the sense of rejection you get when people don’t even look at you isn't good. Why do they think I am so dodgy?!
While dishing out the cards I bumped into Adam Goldstein, who has blogged about tailgating around the US at NFL games. You can’t miss Adam in his distinctive Bears get-up and that crazy hat.
Adam’s got a book out of his own next year and had to rush to an interview with Sky TV.
After much card handing out we made our way down Wembley way and saw NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell being interviewed.
Inside the stadium it was a good atmosphere. As it was the Pats I lavished £75 each on tickets high up on the sidelines – If I had realised how high it was I’d never have chosen them. Talk about being high up!
Lorraine said she felt a little giddy at the top – we were actually on the back row which made the whole thing a bit surreal – it felt like watching the old arcade game Sensible Soccer.
I actually watched most of the game on the big TV screens at each end of the ground, you can see far more there anyway.So the Pats won comfortably as expected but so comfortable was their margin of victory that I was pretty bored in the final quarter and we left five minutes early to head home.
Next time though, I think I’ll sit a little closer to the action.

All hail the USAFE guys

I'm back from a week in Vegas plugging my book and
what a great trip. Hat's off to a couple of legends in Scott Thomas and Rob Causey for inviting us over, both guys played USAFE football back in the 80s not too far from my home in Bury.

Rob's wife Deb is from Essex so would be great to meet up again when they come over to our side of the pond.

I was co-speaker at this third reunion with Bucky Fox, former sports reporter with Stars and Stripes newspaper, a genuine character with a brilliant catchphrase whenever we had a picture taken of "Live on CBS!". Hilarious.

Bucky's speech was excellent and made my shambolic rambling sound a little pants, but the message I was trying to get across was that these USAFE guys should not be forgotten.

That was drummed home when I met Dick Edwards, a man who played at Wembley back in the mid 1950s for London Rockets.

Dick had his beautiful original yellow shirt which was in excellent condition, clearly a treasured item for Dick.

His wife is a former Miss UK and still looked stunning and it was great to meet his proud son who laughed when Dick held up his original face mask and I told him he looked like Hannibal Lector!

The convention at Hooters involved around 35 ex-USAFE players, and I managed to get a Stars and Stripes flag signed by the guys at the end, a real treasured memento.

We had six days in Planet Hollywood and as well as bagging a whole haul of NFL items, checked out Peep Show staring Playboy Bunny Holly Madison.

My book is finally out!

Great news: my book, Touchdown UK is released today!

It's taken about a year to complete from start to finish so please go and buy a copy!

It's available for £14.99 from www.authorhouse.co.uk

Giants pull of the ultimate upset

THIS column comes to you from New York City - and what a time to be in the Big Apple. Last Sunday the New York Giants pulled of the mother of all shocks beating New England in Phoenix and ruining their hopes of a perfect season.
I was in Arizona for the big game and it was certainly something else to be in that state with such a huge event going on down the road. I drove past the stadium a couple of days before the match and the atmosphere was already starting to gather pace - they had an NFL exhibition there for a couple of weeks before it - kind of like a massive fairground devoted to various NFL activities.
I drove on from Phoenix to Tucson, Arizona and stayed there with my uncle, also named Nick for a few days. I hadn't seen him in 20 years so it was great to catch up and watch the match with him.
He is 51 and also a Sports Junkie as he has devoted a separate room in his house to signed baseballs, photos and newspaper clippings from Phoenix and Arizona's many professional sports teams.
Of course we got on like a house on fire and spent a few days working out what to do for Superbowl Sunday while eating at some of Tucson's finest eateries.Uncle Nick was in the US Air Force for around 25 years and he had the idea of watching the game on the Davis-Monthan Air Force base that he used to work at.
On the morning of the game it was certainly a strange atmosphere as we drove to the huge air force base. Jets were patrolling the sky from an area covering Mexico to Nevada to keep the skies free of trouble - if the World Trade Center was a prime target for a terrorist attack seven years ago, you can just imagine what a prized asset an attack on the stadium holding the Superbowl would be.
Thankfully there was nothing to worry about and inside the air force base it was time to get into party mode.
Around 50 of us - serving air force men and women and their families watched on a big screen with food and drink provided and a game of Superbowl bingo to play - essentially you cross off what takes place in the match on your bingo card.
I cleaned up in the third quarter with a Giants punt and scored myself a cap and T-shirt, and also won the prize for being closest to the half-time score.
Watching the Superbowl at 4pm was strange - normally its a solitary 11pm start for me and I struggle to stay awake, but this time it was one big party.
Any American will tell you that the Superbowl is not only about the action taking place on the field but also about the adverts - most of America's biggest companies pay big bucks to broadcast new adverts during the game - and the next day the New York Post ran a Top 25 countdown of the best. Indeed, some of the watching crowd were more interested in the commercials than the outcome of the match!But the audience that did watch a sensational game was almost part of history - almost 100 million viewers tuned in - and it was revealed on Monday that only the viewing audience for the final episode of MASH in 1983 was bigger for a single event.
And as for the game - well it was no classic but it turned on one piece of genius from Eli Manning in the final two minutes to give the Giants an incredible win. As a Patriots fan I was a tad gutted, but I was just pleased that I wasn't sitting by myself in Suffolk and could enjoy the game with fellow NFL nuts.

Patriots all set to go 19-0

THREE months ago I was sat at a soaking wet Wembley watching the New York Giants defeat the Miami Dolphins in the first regular season game outside North America - and little did I think they'd make it all the way to Superbowl XLII.

It wasn't just me.

Of eight home games this season, they lost five.

No other team with such a bad record has made it to the biggest single sporting event in North America.

The reason for their incredible run is easy - their away form has been historically good. Ten straight wins on the road has secured their place in Sunday's end of season Arizona spectacular - and that's no mean feat.

New York Giants are the NFL's equivalent of Tottenham - a well liked club who've had glory spells in the past but more often than not fail just when it seems they're destined for greatness. Imagine Spurs getting to the FA Cup Final by winning at Arsenal and Chelsea and then defeating Liverpool in the semi with a last minute winner. That's essentially what the Giants have done - won at Tampa Bay, won at Dallas which was a big shock, and then won in ice cold Green Bay when all of America was expecting Brett Favre to lead his team to Arizona.

Since arriving in the US two weeks ago, Superbowl fever has been growing and growing. I'm right in the heart of Arizona and as I munch on a warm piece of pecan pie with cream, the TV's are blurting out non-stop coverage of the build up to the game.

The New England Patriots, who face the Giants on Sunday are on their way to an historic season. They won all 16 regular season games (a feat only matched by Miami in 1972) and are on course to go 19-0 - an unbeaten season which is unheard of. The key to their success has been the leadership of quarterback Tom Brady and the success of running backs Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth and Laurence Maroney, coupled with a strong defense.

Only Tiger Woods ranks higher than Brady in American sport superstar status these days - his ankle injury that he picked up in the AFC Championship game against San Diego kept even the death of actor Heath Ledger off the news pages last week.

Brady appeared in New York with his foot in a brace - and all the talk has been about whether he will be fit for Sunday's game. Just like the hype in the UK in recent years over Becks and Rooney's metatarsals, Brady's ankle has been the hot topic going into this game.Brady has seen and done it all before - leading the Patriots to Superbowl wins in 2002, 2003 and 2005 and rightly his team will start favourites on Sunday.But the Giants have plenty of reason for optimism. The Patriots had won 15 games and faced the Giants in the last match of the regular season at the Giants and the New York side almost handed them their first defeat. The game ended 38-35 and the Giants, known as The G-Men will take the fact they came so close to beating Bill Bellichick's team as great encouragement.Eli Manning, brother of Peyton Manning who won the Superbowl with Indianapolis last year, is their star man and will look to the likes of Plaxico Burress to score points. But it's the Giants defence, marshalled by Michael Strahan that will need to be at their best to cope with the ammunition coming from Tom Brady's arm and that really will be the key to the game.

I wont get inside the University of Arizona stadium in Glendale, Phoenix for the game unless some miracle happens but it's great to think its all happening just around the corner from me.

PLAYERS TO WATCH:

NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: Wes Welker. Welker was so ineffective that the dreadful Miami Dolphins released him last season due to his slender frame and lack of height (5ft 9ins). But at New England Welker has flourised and his size, once his weakness has become his great asset. Expect him to be the option if Tom Brady cant get the ball to Randy Moss

NEW YORK GIANTS: Michael Strahan. Veteran Strahan is key if the Giants are to win the Superbowl. He offers great strength in the G-Mens defence and if Tom Brady is sacked (caught in possession of the ball) it's odds on that Strahan will be the one responsible. NICK'S

PREDICTION: New England Patriots 31 New York Giants 17