Dave’s Football Blog

Deuce of Davenport finds all sorts of NFL-licensed products that he thinks shouldn't be NFL-licensed products. I, on the other hand, think a Steelers pool chlorinator would be AWESOME. If I had a pool, anyway...

Live in North Carolina? Want to know what it’s like to be an away supporter for your soccer club without actually going to an away game? Come cheer for the Carolina Railhawks when they play a friendly against any club from Mexico.

The Railhawks played Monterrey on Sunday, and that video doesn’t really do the scene justice. There were about 20 of us and 7,000 Mexicans. We had to get there an hour before kickoff to make sure we could set up our drums in our usual spot on the south stand, and even then it was half full of Los Rayodos and El Tri supporters. 10 minutes before kickoff, guys in Mexican wrestling masks showed up waving Monterrey flag and throwing boxes full of whistles at the crowd.

Somehow, we managed to stand our ground. When they chanted “Monterrey! Monterrey!”, we came right back at them with “Railhawks! Railhawks!” We flew our flags and beat our drums for everyone to see. We also have a guy who shows up to almost every game with giant laminated yellow and red cards, and during the game, whenever someone ran by with a Monterrey flag, he would chase after him holding up the red card.

Then there was my favorite chant of the afternoon. Whenever a Monterrey player missed a wide open shot, we pointed at him and sang, “That’s why you’re not in Superliga!” (That was almost as much fun as the “You lost to Hollywood!” Guantanamera chant we threw at Portland a few weeks ago.)

I only saw one ugly incident. At the end of the game, when it became clear that we were going to get away with a 0-0 draw, one of our supporters lit up an orange smoke bomb — the second or third one of the match — and Monterrey fans start throwing water bottles and Tecate cans at him. Another supporter told me later that he got hit with a half-empty Coke bottle during a flag run. All told, though, it was still much less ugly than your average Philadelphia Eagles game.

95-degree heat aside, it was a fun afternoon. Plus, after the game, some of the Monterrey fans who stood outside waiting for their own players applauded the Railhawks as emerged from the locker rooms. They were especially nice to Brian Levey, our backup goalkeeper, who managed to keep international players like Jared Borgetti and Humberto Suazo out of goal. I think some of those fans will be back — wearing orange and cheering for the home side. Works for me. We’ll be in section 204, amigos. Come sing with us.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with that Batman movie opening this week. Either way, Shawne Merriman as Bane is genius.

The NFL is reportedly looking into players throwing up gang signs during on-field celebrations. You know whom they should be investigating? The cheerleaders…

For the record, this won’t be the last time I use this video. It’s that awesome.

Those of you who read FanHouse might have noticed a few changes going on over there over the last week or two. AOL finally got their hands on FanHouse.com and is shifting things around, which has resulted in many little things breaking. However, they fixed the author RSS feeds today, so the feed of my FanHouse posts in the right-hand sidebar is working now.

So if you want to add my football-related ramblings to your RSS reader, here are the URLs:

http://www.fanhouse.com/bloggers/david-j-warner/rss.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/davesfootballblog

Thank you and good night.

A youth club in Sydney, Australia, is funneling players to Croatia. Somewhere, an Irishman is grinning at the karmic retribution of it all...

Crazy gridiron-loving Brit plans to hit all 31 NFL stadiums in one season. Has anyone told him yet that he's only going to see 17 games? Or have they finally mastered teleportation without telling us?

101 Great Goals sees Man U doing the same thing with Dimitar Berbatov that Real Madrid is doing with Cristiano Ronaldo. No, sir, they don't like it.

Australian Football and Gaelic Football can’t seem to get away from each other. AFL clubs keep sending scouts to Ireland to swipe young talent with dreams of playing professionally. The International Rules series keeps finding new life, despite being little more than an on-field brawl most years. (Collingwood boss Mick Malthouse is in as Australia’s coach this year, too.) Now AFL chief Andrew Demetriou has a brilliant plan to lure the Irish in even more — an all-Gaelic club in Sydney.

The AFL is considering a radical proposal to launch an Irish-dominated team in Sydney’s western suburbs which would perform before an international audience under the Celtic brand name.

Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick confirmed on Friday night the Irish option was being explored as a possible basis for the competition’s 18th team, to debut as early as 2012.

Hey, Glasgow Celtic and the Boston Celtics are all league champions this year. Why not slap the Celtic name on everything in sight? Hey, lets put a team in Tasmania and call them the Lakers… no, wait, they’re after the audience in Ireland and Great Britain. We’d have to call them the Rangers.

If nothing else, at least the GAA counties would be able to focus their disdain on one club for stealing all their young Gaelic footballers away from them. That should make everyone else in the AFL look better by comparison, right?

(Thanks, Simon!)

Because this has suddenly become "Rant Against Major League Soccer Week" for me, here's a take on their arcane and increasingly pointless single-entity structure.