Birmingham Lions

This is it, the business end of the season where its win or go home. The Birmingham Lions had earned home-field advantage against Bristol Barracuda by going 8-0 in the regular season, but Bristol came out firing and proved tough opposition for the full 60 minutes. Bristol started off by stopping the Lions’ first drive before completing one long pass over the top to open the scoring for the day. It was obvious on the back of the first few plays that they came to play.

Birmingham did eventually find their feet though, with a familiar pattern of Varney to Ben Brown in the endzone. Chika Kalu then broke a nice run to the outside to add another score in the first quarter. When the second quarter started up, Birmingham started to make it difficult for themselves, with a string of penalties backing them right up near their own endzone. Cue Varney who stepped up into a great pocket to deliver a pinpoint ball over the Barracuda Defense to Ben Brown who took it 92 yards for the score. Birmingham then scored again before the half, with a nice deep ball to John Zinkus for a 36 yard TD. The Birmingham Defense meanwhile were having a poor day at the office by their own impeccable standards. Not only was there the one big play but Bristol were managing to drive the ball, something which had not really happened all season. Credit to the coaching staff and players though, as second half Birmingham came out and stepped up to the level we are all used to – with Kit Lawson and BB (team captains) giving particularly great individual performances. For the Lions Offense, the second half saw much more of the same, with Andy Watson running in a screen pass, Chika Kalu breaking another one for a 65 yard score, a second for John Zinkus and even one TD for Tristan Varney on the ground – rumbling into the endzone with half the defense hanging off him.

So not a pretty win, but still a convincing 52-6 win to the Birmingham Lions all the same The Lions will host the UWE bullets on Sunday 28th March in essentially the quarterfinal. This matchup is always a fiery encounter, with extra spice added given the occasion. Can the UWE bullets pull off an upset… I’ll leave it up to you to decide!