The last time the Patriots met the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, I watched the spectacle in a quiet corner of the clubhouse at Victoria GC, surrounded by a dozen septuagenarian bridge women — and Ben, my buddy’s Aussie brother-in-law. None of these folks knew the first thing about “American football” and it wasn’t so quiet when Pats cornerback Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson on the goal line to preserve the New England victory. By then, I had successfully won the locals over to the peculiar joys of both the NFL and the Belichick/Brady Patriots in their heyday.
I was reminded of that curious Super Bowl Monday Down Under when the Seahawks nipped the Rams in the NFC Championship Game on 25 January, setting up a rematch of the 2015 affair. What’s more, I realized that I’ve gathered a rich history of watching NFL title games abroad under curiously golf-adjacent circumstances:
• In 1985, during a semester abroad, I watched the San Francisco 49ers eviscerate the Miami Dolphins in a block of expat-student housing in Baker Street. Earlier that same Sunday evening, I had met up with my future teammates on the University of London golf team — inside a nearby pub on Marylebone High Street called The Prince. Most convenient, but poorly timed, for I was not yet attuned to the dangers of taking in U.S. sporting events from Europe. My American friends in Baker Street and I indulged as any Yanks would during a Super Bowl, but complications ensued: When kickoff doesn’t arrive until 11 p.m. (or 23:00), one must show strict drinking discipline — something college students generally do not possess. Yes, the second half got ugly.
Patriots Super Bowl 1997
• Twelve years later (and presumably wiser), I traveled to England again — this time for the British & International Golf Greenkeepers Association conference in the West Yorkshire town of Harrogate. Sunday morning, after a muddy round at The Shropshire in Telford, I boarded the train for London because, that night, the Patriots were set to face the Packers in Super Bowl XXXI. By now you may have gathered that I’m a Masshole (a legit designation now enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary; how do you like them apples?). I couldn’t miss this game! I didn’t arrive at my lodgings — The Carnegie Club’s swank urban outpost in Sloan Square — until 21:00, and I wasn’t at all prepared for what I found: Maybe the most beautiful suite of rooms in which I’d ever set foot. Still, I dumped my stuff and immediately humped it north, around Green Park to a Leicester Square sports bar. Thoroughly plowed and heartbroken by the Green Bay victory, I stumbled outside at 02:30. The Tube shuts down at midnight, so I hailed a cab: “Sloan Square please,” I slurred. That’s quite a long ride, Guv. “I have 20 quid.” Off we went. When I came to the next morning — my mouth tasting, as the English say, like the inside of a dog’s arse — Heathrow beckoned. Total waking hours spent in these magnificent digs? Maybe three…
Which leads us halfway round the world, back to 2015 in Australia, where I had arranged a morning round at the magnificent Victoria GC — in the heart of Melbourne’s fabled Sand Belt (Royal Melbourne is directly next door) — to enable proper, collegial consumption of Super Bowl XLIX. Ben had warned me ahead of time: The game might not be available inside the clubhouse that Monday lunchtime. Props to the GM, who set me up in front of a lovely flat screen, flipped to the right channel, showed me the bar, and asked only that I not disturb the bridge games.
Please believe me: I did not foist this occasion on any of my new friends, but Aussies fancy themselves to be quite “sporty” and eventually their curiosity got the better of them. By the second half, two pints to the good, I was peppered with questions about why this had happened, and what sort of infraction had necessitated that. The ladies especially were truly engaged, perhaps engrossed, by the time Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson’s Super Bowl-winning pass on the goal line. When the Pats cornerback collapsed in an emotional heap during the immediate post-game celebration, this beautiful moment required no cultural translation.
Back in Harrogate
Sport allows for this sort of exchange, of course, in ways few things can. Back in Harrogate, that same Super Bowl weekend in 1997, I had spent Saturday night catching up with an old university mate inside the Hotel Majestic. The English national cricket team was in New Zealand, playing a test match into the wee hours, so we holed up in the hotel bar to watch and “have a natter.”
To truly appreciate cricket (and rugby, for that matter), an American requires tutelage. In between reminiscences, I would pose a question as to what we had just witnessed, and Trevor would explain. For example, a proper test match takes five days to complete. If the side with more runs doesn’t get the opponent all out, twice, before the five days are up, the match ends in a draw. As the wee hours and empty pint glasses spread out before us, I asked whether the two sides might agree to skip afternoon tea on the fifth day — you know, in order to get the match finished and decided.
Trevor dismissed this absurd notion with mock indignation: “You can’t skip tea!”