It’s fair to say that many British people love to recorrect anyone who ever dares to say the word soccer in front of them. Other codes of football are of course prevalent in countries such as Australia, Canada, Ireland and America. What us Brits call American Football is simply just known as football in the USA.

It’s a sport I’ve never really had too much interest in. I know I had some Miami Dolphins playing cards as a kid, and maybe saw the odd bit of action when it was on Channel 4 TV in the UK in the 1980s but I have still never seen a single Super Bowl!

What actually brought this match to my attention was when I posted about having seen the T. League and top Japanese futsal expert Steve Harris replied saying there were a few more single letter named leagues in Japan including the X. League; the name for the American Football League.

Whilst there is a lot of information for the likes of soccer (I mean football!) and baseball, the more minor sports sometimes need to be searched in Japanese and whilst doing that I eventually came across a wonderfully named team called Asahi Beer Silver Star who were based in Kawasaki. By sheer luck, they had a game coming up. Not only that but it was also free as it was a pre-season friendly, or an exhibition match if you prefer!

Asahi Beer Silver Star were to face Hosei Orange Football (a university team) which lent itself to some good marketing with the whole Silver/Orange thing. 500 scarves were given out for free on a first-come-first-served basis so I crossed the border into Kanagawa Prefecture on a wet morning at the end of April and got myself to Fujitsu Stadium Kawasaki ready for when the gates opened at 10am ahead of kick off half an hour later.

What was most noticable to me, as a man with very limited knowledge of this form of football, were how many players there were on each team. Of course they weren’t all playing but were split into two which I can only guess were the defence and offence. The photo below shows one of them but I’m not sure which!

Perhaps the highlight of the game came in the opening seconds. Hosei kicked off and the receiving Silver Star player instantly collected the ball and went on a long and mazy run for about 40 metres or so. It was like something from high school and I thought this might be a very one sided affair but thankfully that never happened and it was fairly even after that with the Silver Stars shading it as expected.

I was expecting the four quarters to last much, much longer than their alloted 15 minutes as I thought the clock stopped every single time play was stopped but that wasn’t always the case here.

With the constant changing of players it was hard to really keep up with it all at times but in a way I did enjoy such tactical play as it’s so different from what I call football!

Half time was something of an experience as I went down to the ground floor to see a few American Football exhibits and to use the toilets or should I say the bathroom?! Whilst at the urinals I was most surprised to see one of the players on one side. Not only that but then the referee appeared on my other side! You certainly wouldn’t expect this to happen too often when going to watch live sport!

The second half saw a couple more converted touchdowns for the Silver side and I was glad that their Orange counterparts managed to get on the scoresheet via a field goal.

The match finished within two hours and I left promptly at the final whistle, and walked away from the stadium amongst the actual players who were heading across the car park to the changing rooms.

This match certainly didn’t make me a fan of this code of football but free entry and a free scarf is not something to turn your nose up at. Also, it did open my eyes to a sport I’ve always been fairly ignorant of. I would be happy to one day see an actual X. League fixture to see what a proper match is like.

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