Dave’s Football Blog

So I spent most of yesterday morning and afternoon watching the AFL Elimination Finals. Collingwood held off a determined Adelaide side to advance to the semifinals, while Barry Hall used Josh Gibson as his personal bidet for three hours as the Sydney Swans tied down the Kangaroos and have a date with the Western Bulldogs. The Swans and Bulldogs split two close matches this year, so that should be a barnburner next week. Meanwhile, the Magpies get the St. Kilda Saints who predictably got blasted by Geelong late last night.

I didn’t see that game, though. After watching the first half of East Carolina’s drubbing of West Virginia yesterday, I went to the pregame tailgate for the Carolina Railhawks v. Charleston Battery game. Our Railhawks actually won it, 3-1, taking advantage of a Battery side still drained from losing the U.S. Open Cup Final. It was the perfect result, too, because now we only need a draw in Charleston in two weeks to keep the Southern Derby Cup for a second straight year. Sure, it’s worth less than the Emirates Cup, but this club has only been around for two years, and we’ll take any hardware we can get — especially since we probably won’t make the USL playoffs this year.

Then I cleaned myself off at a nearby convenience store, changed my shirt and went to a friend’s 30th birthday party. She was drunk and bubbly and wearing a tiara, and she didn’t give a shit about football, or much of anything aside from the next martini, really. Her Swedish boyfriend was a little freaked out by this. We all ended up at a meat market bar where a decent cover band with a hot chick singing lead got everyone partying. We ended up at Waffle House after last call, where I talked soccer and poker with someone’s new boyfriend.

By the time I finally got home, it was 3:30 AM. I woke up at 11:00 AM, dragged my ass out of bed and turned on the TV. Sunday NFL Countdown was already on, and Week 1 was about to begin in earnest. This is the football I grew up with, the football America grew up with. Suddenly, all those other football codes didn’t matter too much. That’s when I knew what I had to do…

Bleary-eyed and hungry, I’m packing up this laptop and heading down to a nearby watering hole, where I will be parking my ass for the next 7 hours or so. There’s a Cover It Live liveblog after the jump. It goes live at 12:15 or so. Stop by and say hey.

UPDATE (12:45 PM): Cover It Live is choking on the Wi-Fi in this pub. I am not pleased with this development…

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