EARLIER THIS YEAR, the NFL celebrated a major milestone when the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50.
But this Sunday, Irish American football will reach a significant landmark of its own when Shamrock Bowl 30 takes place at Tallaght Stadium.
Fittingly, two of the most storied teams in Ireland will contest this year’s decider with the Belfast Trojans going for an unprecedented five titles in succession as they take on the Dublin Rebels.
However, in spite of their dominance since 2011, during which time they’ve lost just three games, they actually go into tomorrow’s game as slight underdogs as two of those defeats have come this season with the Rebels responsible for one.
The experience of reaching Shamrock Bowl after Shamrock Bowl is something that Trojans head coach Mark McGrath believes will put them in good stead.
“We stick with the same thing we’ve done for the last five years where we go to our sponsors for breakfast on the Sunday, get the whole team together, get on the bus and drive down,” McGrath told The42 this week.
“That way we can monitor what everyone’s eating and drinking, how they’re stretching, etc so everyone is prepared on the day. We’ll get down about 12.30pm which will give us an hour to get taped, etc, before the warm up with the game kicking off at 3pm.
“Being in the Shamrock Bowl the last five years definitely makes life a lot easier as we can just follow the blueprint and don’t have to make it up on the spot.”
McGrath is hoping that the Trojans won’t fall, Kilkenny like, at the final hurdle in the drive for five, an achievement that not even the Rebels managed in their 10 Shamrock Bowl appearances, coming away with seven wins.
“Every year it feels like we’re competing against the Rebels’ legacy as it were and, up until this point, there was nothing we’d done that hasn’t been done before by the Rebels. So there is a bit of extra pressure in the sense that this will be the first time that any team has won five titles in a row.
“But we try not to let it get to us either.
If you think back, over the first couple of years of this recent success we went on a big undefeated run (26 games) and that put an awful lot of pressure on the team not to lose so we stopped playing our brand of football and started becoming ultra defensive.
“When Trinity beat us and took that away, it was very hard to pick some of the guys back up so we tried very hard this year to not get sucked into putting too much pressure on the boys.
“Instead, we wanted to let them know that, if we just go out and play our game, then it’ll happen anyway.”
McGrath has been around the Trojans a long time and it’s not that long since the side posted two consectutive losing seasons when dreams of Shamrock Bowl success seemed a long way away.
However, the turnaround in fortunes has been such that even a defeat against a US college team who visited this year to play the Belfast outfit is seen as disappointing.
“We’ve lost — if you include the American college team — three times this year and complacency is probably our biggest opponent. We’ve guys here that are just used to having winning season after winning season and they expect to win every game and train to win every game and it’s our job to make sure that we keep them motivated to stay at the top.
“We’ve a few guys for whom this will be a fifth title but I’m not sure how many of them we’ll hang on to if we do win. There’s a few of them that have been with us for eight, nine, even ten years and there were a few years where we were absolutely pushed around before the start of the winning streak so it would be great for them guys especially if we get the win.”
As you would expect for a team that has dominated the league for so long, the Trojans can win with either their offence or defence. Tomorrow, they face one of the most expereinced quarterbacks in the league and McGrath knows the threat posed by Andy Dennehy who has contributed to all seven of the Rebels’ Shamrock Bowl wins.
“(Andy’s) always had a very good football brain and he’s a real student of the sport so he knows what’s going on. Technically he’s a very good pocket passer with a quick release so his offensive line don’t have to protect him for too long. If he gets three or four seconds he can get the ball out and punish teams.
“So it’s on us to reduce that time in the pocket and make him a little uncomfortable.
“The plus side is that we’ve played them twice already this season so both teams very much know what they’re going in to. I’m not too concerned about their speed on the outside if we go in and play our game.
“That being said, Wello Omo is a big threat and Andy, if we’re slipping up, will punish us through the air. But, if we play our game I’m confident we’ll come out with the win.”
And the Trojans main weapons?
“We’re spoilt for choice really, we’ve a lot of very good skill players and if I could get the ball into their hands every play I would.
“I guess part of coaching is juggling egos a wee bit but we’ve been very lucky with our recruitment and the athletes that have come into us and we’ve a lot of difficult decisions to take every game.”
Shamrock Bowl 30 kicks off in Tallaght Stadium at 3pm tomorrow.
