American Football
The Scottish Claymores' fondness for the Waldstadion evaporated in Frankfurt last night as they completed their NFL Europe League travels with a 21-10 defeat against Frankfurt Galaxy.
At a stadium where they had never lost and where they had memorably booked their World Bowl berth two years ago, the Claymores were trumped by a Frankfurt team which took a giant step towards a World Bowl meeting with
German rivals Rhein Fire.
Only Amsterdam Admirals can prevent it becoming a German Bowl, but they need to beat the Claymores at Murrayfield on Sunday and hope that Rhein can also beat Frankfurt in the final week of the regular season. The Claymores have now gone through a season without a win on the road and their 2-7 win-loss record, even given their injury situation, makes grim reading.
It was not a bad performance last night, just one where they ran out of options and steam.
A Gary Parker field goal from 24 yards gave them a 10-7 lead going into the final quarter. However, noisily backed by more than 35,000 fans, Frankfurt stepped up a notch in the final quarter with touchdowns from running-back
Jermaine Chaney and quarter-back Damon Huard. There was little response from the Claymores.
In an angry ending, Claymores' guard Joe Andruzzi and Frankfurt's Sylvester Wright were disqualified for fighting with just two minutes left.
The match started brightly enough for the Claymores but they ran out of energy as the match wore on and could only muster that field goal in the second-half.
The Scots dominated possession in the first quarter to such an extent that they had the ball for 12 minutes but, although Ballard varied the offence well, they could not break into the end zone.
So it was that Frankfurt made the breakthrough with just 12 seconds of the quarter remaining. Receiver Mitchell Galloway galloped away from Cedric Samuel to score with a 63-yard touchdown catch in a 75-yard three-play drive.
Ralf Kleinmann kicked the extra point to take his career total to 128 points - an NFL Europe League record. However, the Claymores came back in the second quarter with Ballard hooking up with Willy Tate for a touchdown. Parker was accurate with his point after kick to take it to 7-7.
The Claymores then had a double let-off when Ballard's pass was almost picked off by Frankfurt's Kenny McEntyre and then Kleinmann missed a 36-yard field goal attempt in the final second of the first-half. Kory Blackwell then intercepted Huard early in the third quarter but the Claymores' drive was halted.
Parker then kicked his 24-yard field goal with seven minutes of the quarter remaining to give the Claymores a 10-7 lead. That advantage always looked slender and Frankfurt were the hungrier for victory in the final quarter.
They wiped out the lead when Huard connected with Chaney for a touchdown which Kleinmann converted.
Haurd then dived over from a yard for another touchdown which Kleinmann successfully kicked.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article