Immortals emerge victorious from trip to Canterbury and dodge relegation

Canterbury Chargers 14 - 18 Imperial Immortals

The Immortals just played their last match of the season, and what a thriller it was! We travelled to the Chargers’ home grounds in Canterbury to battle it out. The maths was simple: win and stay on in Div 1 or lose and potentially face relegation. This meant that Canterbury was now backed up against a wall and we were expecting a tough game, unlike last week.

The Chargers won the coin toss and decided to defer, so they kicked off the ball to set up our offence to start the game. We got a few first downs but ultimately had to punt the ball away to Canterbury. As in our last game our defence, led by Thomas “Cheerleader” Smith, completely stifled their offence and forced a three-and-out that saw them net negative yards. The punt was quite short as well, leaving us at their 45 yard line.

Unfortunately we couldn’t muster anything, but the special teams excelled on the punt, pinning them on their 1 yard line.

All the defensive players were licking their chops at this point and sure enough the QB got sacked for safety on an outside lead. The score was now 0-2 in favour of the Immortals and the Chargers had to punt us the ball. We immediately capitalised with a touchdown of our own with Killian “Omelette” Gmyrek catching the two-point conversion, leaving us with a sizeable lead at 0-10.

However, a broken play on defence lead to a Chargers touchdown with a pass netting 65 yards on 3rd and 10, due to a couple of missed tackles.

Yet Canterbury failed to get the ensuing two-point conversion, putting them 6-10 back.

The score remained unchanged at the half, despite the Chargers’ admirable red zone defence culminating in an interception in the end zone, just as the clock was winding down on the last play of the half.

The story was quite different in the second half.

Initially, both teams traded punts, until Ben “Bootleg God” O’Brien threw an unfortunate pick six, that gave the Chargers their first lead of the afternoon at 14-10.

Twice after that the Immortals managed to reach the foot of the end zone, but failed to capitalise against a unyielding Canterbury defensive unit.

However, the second of those attempts left the Chargers at their 2 yard line and of course, our rookie Marcin “Sad Boie” Olesinski managed to tackle the running back in the end zone to get us a safety with only three-and-a-half minutes left on the clock.

The score was now 14-12 in favour of the Chargers.

We now had one last shot at getting a touchdown and winning the game. Slowly but surely we gained ground on the Chargers thanks to powerful running by Jonas “He Won’t Go Down” Eschenfelder, earning us a first down inside the Chargers 10 yard line.

Unfortunately we couldn’t get anything going on the first two downs. Then a quick out route left us just inside the 3 yard line with one final attempt to reach the end zone.

In fitting fashion we returned to our famous QB sneak, which we had not used all game, and Ben redeemed himself by bringing it to the house.

With the score now 14-18 in our favour we had just under a minute left to play.

This left the Chargers with only four attempts to complete a deep ball for a touchdown to win the game. Thankfully our coverage was on point and the game ended on that score line.

The last match of the season also means additional traditions for the Immortals, such as the leavers tunnel where we celebrate our soon-to-be graduates who are now becoming Mortals with a final ovation.

The season might be over, but we need to keep building for next season.

If you are interested in playing American Football, we will be having various flag football events throughout the rest of the year. This is a perfect opportunity to ease into the sport ahead of next year, so if you would like to join please get in touch on Facebook.

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