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Laurice Whack
Blackburn caught short and deep passes all over the field and was able to find running room and the end zone all night. His two touchdowns in the first half put the Knights up 13-7 at the break, and he kept Fairview at pace with Cherokee Trail in a second-half shootout with three more touchdowns of 16, 21 and 35 yards.
His performance almost looked like it would not be enough, however, as Cherokee Trail scored with 6:44 remaining and then recovered an onside kick and drove down the field in 11 plays, killing more than five minutes of time before Julian Williams scored his fourth rushing touchdown for the Cougars.
The dramatic win is one that Fairview will enjoy for a brief period before turning its focus to Cherry Creek, the No. 1 seed in the Class 5A state tournament who defeated ThunderRidge 31-14 Friday night.
If you're a football fan - young, old or anywhere in-between - go take a trip to the National Football Museum in Manchester. There you have it: my New Year's recommendation. You can thank me later! Trust me, the Football Museum is a great day [...]
Happy New Year everyone and thanks for all your support - we couldn't have done it without you! 2018 was the best year yet for the Ultimate Football Heroes series. It kicked off with Kane and ended with Mbapp, oh and football nearly came home [...]
I get asked that question a lot - in schools, at football clubs, and on social media too. It's a really important question, and it's so great to hear more and more girls asking it. I just wish that I had a better answer for [...]
When it comes to our football heroes, we're looking for players with talent but also, I believe, style and personality. In sport, we often talk about courage, determination and leadership, but 'personality' is also about kindness, generosity and intelligence. That's why I've made a list [...]
No, football didn't quite come home this summer, but England's achievements at the 2018 World Cup will live long in our memories. And in our books too because at Ultimate Football Heroes HQ, we've been working on 2 exciting updates and 3 totally new titles. [...]
We're SO excited about the 2018 World Cup! As I write this, we're only 33 more sleeps away from kick-off in Russia. Don't worry, we've got plenty of great new reading material to help you through these waiting days. What better way to gear up [...]
Apologies for the months of silence - it's been all systems go at Ultimate Football Heroes HQ! As well as writing lots of exciting new books for the series, I've been travelling all over the UK, spreading the word about football, reading and writing. In [...]
Brinsworth Manor Junior School, Rotherham When I arrange school visits, I always send through the outlines for a range of different workshops. Most of the time, one is deemed to be suitable and that's that, but it's always nice to get some valuable teacher input. [...]
During a great visit at Rosslyn Park Primary School, Nottingham this week, the kids asked me for my Dream Team. It was a good question but naturally, I panicked. After all, you can't rush something like that. Creating a Fantasy XI requires time and thought. [...]
Happy New Year everyone! Harry Kane had a record-breaking 2017, and 2018 is going to be another massive year for the super-striker. First, he'll look to win the FA Cup and the Champions League with Tottenham. Then, there's the World Cup in June! Can Kane [...]
All over the world, people are playing football for fun. The child on their own kicking a ball against the wall. The playground matches packed into a few minutes of school break time. Youth teams. The local leagues. Jumpers for goalposts. Grassroots football IS football.
At Matchday, the superstar players are an obvious draw. We have thousands of professional players, officially licensed and ready to become part of your collection. But we imagine too. What if YOU had a card in Matchday, one you could use in game? What if your whole local league team was digitised and preserved within the Matchday universe? How awesome would that be?
Matchday is also a proud sponsor of the professional US NWSL team Washington Spirit, home of the electric Trinity Rodman. It is worth taking a moment to realise that football has struggled to get a professional foothold in the US. After a couple of short lived attempts in the early 2000s, it was only just over a decade ago that the NWSL was established. Without grassroots football cultivating talent and knowledge of the game, this would surely still be a fantasy today.
The aim of grassroots is much more than incubating professional players. But it is a legitimate route towards the top leagues. Local clubs like Senrab FC in London and AS Bondy in Paris count many well known football names amongst their former players, including a certain Kylian Mbapp.
In honor of the new National Football League season, I've dug into the archives for an interview that is, at least ostensibly, about football. One thing I have learned about interviewing people is that an interview often turns out to be about something other than, or greater than, what the producer and I thought it would be about.
This particular interview promised to be about football and heroism but turned out to be about fathers and daughters. As a father of two daughters, both of whom possess talents far beyond my own, I am still delighted to hear Y.A. Tittle, the great New York Giants quarterback of my youth, and his daughter Dianne Tittle de Laet. She is a charming aesthete and classicist, a harpist and poet who saw in her father heroics worthy of the ancient epics. The two of them reminded me that (a) children assimilate the gifts of their parents in unusual ways and (b) some people play football for money so that their kids can play the harp for personal fulfillment.
Robert Siegel: As we approach this season of bowl games and pro football playoffs, some thoughts now about football, the way it used to be played, before sophisticated coaching staffs with wireless telephones moved players around the field like chess pieces. The quarterback used to call the plays. In the 1940s, Y.A. Tittle, a young star quarterback at Louisiana State University, made a seemingly brilliant call against Texas A&M.
Y.A. Tittle: In those days, you could not get any kind of coaching from the sideline. If you received any information, a hand signal or any of that nature, you would get a 15-yard penalty. If a receiver came into the game and brought in a play and told you what to do, it was a 15-yard penalty. The referee would actually stick his head in the huddle to make sure he wouldn't talk to you. But we sort of cheated a little bit. The water boy would come in with the jugs of water. Inside of my jug, which would be a different color, it might be fourth down and one, so I'd open up the jug and it would say, as an example, "punt." Then I would go in the huddle and call a punt. When we were playing Texas A&M, the score is 6 to nothing and about a minute to go and we're behind. So I call time- out and here came Lang, the water boy. I opened up my little top and it said "punt." I said why would we punt with less than a minute to go and we're behind? Well, [the water boy] had forgot to take the top off from the time before. But still, I was going to follow orders like I'm supposed to do. So I got in the huddle and called a quick kick and, of course, we had a revolution in the huddle with 10 other ball players saying I had to be the stupidest guy in the world. With 50 seconds left in the game and behind, we're gonna kick the ball away. But I did it and the ball went dead on the one-yard line. And then the first down: Texas A&M ran off tackle, fumbled, we covered it and then I threw a winning touchdown pass with about 20 seconds to go to Jim Cason and we won 7 to 6. The papers came out the next day and said it was the most brilliant call that any 18-year-old quarterback had ever made in the history of the game. Coach Moore said Y.A. knew we could never win without a break and he took the chance and did it. The only reason we did it because I got our illegal signals mixed up.
Tittle: I was just thinking, Mr. Siegel, don't you think that maybe the doctors got mixed up and we got the wrong baby in the hospital, 40-some-odd years ago? My daughter is a harpist and a poet, and talking about Sappho. The only Sappho I ever heard of was a linebacker for the Packers, or something like that.
Siegel: You quote Seneca in the book, saying in the morning they throw a man to the lions and bears, at noon they throw them to the spectators. While writing about a game, which, even for me, as a 16-year-old New York Giants fan at the time, was a heartbreaking day to watch the championship game -- there was no Super bowl yet -- the championship game of the National Football League, between the New York Giants, with Y.A. Tittle at the helm, and the Chicago Bears. And I wonder, Y.A. Tittle, when you think back on that game, what are your memories?
Tittle: I was disappointed because for so many years I'd chased the whale, had never really won the championship game. We'd won our district championship when I was in high school, we went and lost in a crucial game later. We didn't go as far as we could have gone. Going to college, we played in the Cotton Bowl, tied with Arkansas, [we were] a much better football team than Arkansas that year but we caught a snowstorm there. The same thing seemed to follow me all my life, never ever really winning the big game. Dianne's book has been built around this: the quest of really winning, that I never did win. But I did win, really, in the long run because I have four wonderful children and grandchildren, and Dianne has written this book, and she's written it with good taste. She has praised her father while, I think, telling a lot of truth about the people in sports that I played with. And Mr. Siegel, I've loved football ever since the day I played [wearing a Lindbergh-style leather cap stuffed with rags] back in east Texas to the very last day at 38 years old I threw a ball in my last practice with the Giants. I wish I could do it all over again because it was a wonderful experience and a wonderful ride.
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