Dave Clark Five, Big Ben, Spam And Eggs, Pip Pip, Cheerio

December 01, 2008 at 03:55pm by Scott   •  4 Comments »

The Buccaneers are going to have to break out their Real English to King’s English dictionaries next season as they will be playing the Patriots in London in 2009.

The Bucs will give up a home game in 2009 in order to fly a few thousand miles and eat shit food and play on the… what do they call it? The “pitch”? In Wembley Stadium. I’ll go ahead and remind you now that the Bucs are undefeated at home this season, so this is not an insignificant sacrifice for the cause of expanding football into countries that don’t really want it.

The NFL believes the matchup between these two successful teams will represent the league well, following a pair of important contests held at Wembley Stadium in the past two years. In 2007, the New York Giants upended the Miami Dolphins, 13-10, en route to their victory in Super Bowl XLII. This season, the New Orleans Saints defeated the San Diego Chargers, 37-32, in front of a crowd of 83,226.

The 2007 game was a sloppy, shitty game in cold and rainy conditions between the eventual Super Bowl champions and the team that went 1-15. There may have been no worse game last year. This year’s game was better, ending with a Phillip Rivers hail mary, which is kind of nice for people who don’t see much football. Still, Drew Brees taking an intentional safety has “wanker” written all over it.

With Malcolm Glazer‘s ties to England via the Manchester United, this was bound to happen eventually. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it. It would be a little easier to swallow if it was someone else’s home game, but still the travel and the disruption in the schedule are going to be a pain in the ass. The only positive I can see in this is that Paul Stewart will be able to see the Buccaneers play on his home turf, which should be exciting for him. Hopefully the Bucs will make him a kind of official ambassador for the occasion. He deserves it. Although is wife will have to contend with him running around with a full parliamentary session in his pants for a year.