Ok Selassie, you asked for it (ling rambling post alert!)
From my view it was a great weekend rounded off by the result. No matter the result it would still have been a fun weekend but getting the W was the icing on the cake. Despite being the 4th time the Rams had played over here it was only my 2nd time – the pounding the Pats gave us in 2012 being the first but then I’d missed the last two game as I’d been travelling in the US when they were played. However I’ve been to 9 of the other International Series games here. What makes the weekend so enjoyable is not the games (it’s rare we have a good one) but catching up with the fans who travel to London for them – each time there is a game the pub we had for the weekend is turned over to one of the teams and they do similar events to what we had, and whilst it’s probably 90% fans of that team you will get fans of other teams there too just to catch up and talk football. Similarly various fan groups will have catch-ups to tie in with the weekend such as the Saints one my wife went to on the Saturday night before everyone goes to the game on the Saturday.
As for the beers on Saturday it was great to meet a couple of people from here but also have the Rams recognise they’ve a fanbase over here and support the event at the pub. From the trivial things to Rampage coming along to more meaningful stuff such as Sam Lagana, Sarina Morales and JB Long interviewing Kevin Demoff, Eric Dickerson and Torry Holt who were then all happy to wander round and chat, sign autographs and have selfies taken (I felt for Kevin Demoff being forced to down a couple of shots of Tequila and the discomfort it looked like he was going through means that video will stay secure on my phone!). It’d have been good to stay in the pub longer but I wanted to dash across London for a meet & greet with Robert Woods. This was probably the one low point of the weekend for me as whilst it was advertised for a set time in effect they’d cut it off at the first 100 people in the queue and even though there was some time left after the first 100 Woods signalled he just wanted to leave and signed some photos for security to hand out rather than meet them and have a pic opportunity. In reality I don’t blame him as I’d be fed up having to do this stuff but frustrating for the 20 or so people (including myself) who waited to see if there was a chance to say hi etc – so close yet so far!
Sunday I wanted to head over to Wembley early to get into the ‘tailgate’ and avoid the inevitable queue go to the NFL store to see if they’d got the Ramsey jerseys made up – they had so I could get one – and then see the delicious irony of the store selling both Rams and Jaguars jerseys with Ramsey 20 on them! The tailgate here is just a huge overpriced store, overpriced food trucks, overpriced beer and a few performances by the cheerleaders of the ‘Home’ team and a signing session with Holt and Dickerson. It’s not like a tailgate you get in the US and it’s one thing that could be improved to make the overall experience better. However it was a good chance to catch up with people we’d met from all over the place at the International Series games from previous years before going in to the stadium.
Again we went into the stadium itself relatively early as I wanted to watch the warm ups and we’d got great seats. I’ve got season tickets for the Wembley games so if it’s a game we want to go to we can and if not sell them on when the fixtures are released. With the games over here you get fans of every team so hard to make it a strong home crowd although most neutrals generally tend to side with the ‘home’ team if it’s not their team playing. As the game went on more and more were joining in with Whose House/Rams House and it was reasonably loud on defence….but occasionally the neutral crowd will also become loud when it was a Rams 3rd down if the Bengals players motivated them. What I will say is I’ve been to some games here where it’s been much less of a Home favouring crowd than it was Sunday.
As for the game itself – meh. Brilliant trick play, they couldn’t convert on 3rd down we couldn’t stop them on 4th down until the very end, Goff looked like he could connect with everything 1st half but then we either eased up so as not to embarrass Taylor or it just didn’t click. Henderson surprised me twice: first in that he always seemed to be strong enough to not go down on first contact, second in that when Goff did dump it off and he was one-on-one with open space before the defender he didn’t make as much as the situation as I was expecting – I still think he’ll come good. Whilst we only gave up 10 points, you can only beat who you’re playing, and it’s 2 wins in 2….I’m still concerned that we’re not firing on anywhere near all cylinders and against a better run game we will struggle.
As much as I loved the weekend and it’s good to catch up with old friends I do feel the International Series in its current guise is becoming tired. Plenty of dirt cheap tickets for our game (put down to a poor match-up) but already tickets less than face value for Jags v Texans this Sunday. Neither team with a losing record, a chance to see Deshaun Watson, and the Jags being the most frequent visitors over here should in theory make this a much easier sell but they’ll still be empty seats in the stadium even though it sold out when they went on sale. It’s a totally different conversation but what the NFL do with the UK in the next few years is going to be interesting.