Pitch-side on a typically grey, frostbitten Saturday afternoon, a huddled mass gather to watch a set of twenty-somethings chase, tackle and hurl an egg-shaped ball around.
Struggling to breathe in the face of icy winds, they nonetheless scream for every yard gained, every pass completed, every stop made.
No, this isn’t the NFL, where heads collide and bones crunch, but blood in the air as the Manchester Titans Ladies batter their opponents into submission. While they smile for the cameras, they snarl at other teams.
At home on Saturday November 8 the Titans played the second round of the Opal series, a five-a-side American football tournament between the country’s best teams.
Despite having only formed in August, the Titans outclassed outfits far more experienced than themselves and put on quite a show, to boot.
But outside of those in the thick of the action, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Manchester who even knew this was going on in their back yard.
In the fledgling sport of women’s American football everything feels very low key. The Titans play not at the AJ Bell Stadium, but on the neighbouring 3G pitches. Between plays they’re forced to look at the home of Sale Sharks and wonder what might be someday.
Yet the vociferous support they attract is anything but amateurish. By all accounts the Titans’ contingent is the loudest of any team, wherever they play. At one point during the weekend a rival complained about the continuous wall of noise coming from their side-line.
“If you want to be quiet, go play golf!” came the unflinching response.
For now these women play the scaled-down version of the sport known as flag football. There’s no tackling – plays are stopped when a player’s tag is removed by a defender – and there isn’t a helmet in sight.
But don’t let that fool you. Below the eyeliner players’ faces are smeared with warpaint.
With so many new teams emerging at the same time this format is just a trial run, with the introduction of full contact coming in the New Year. It won’t come a moment too soon for the Titans.
“I just want to hit people,” Sian Perry, now the star quarterback, told MM at one of the team’s very first training sessions.
BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID: Titans quarterback Sian Perry (image courtesy of Manchester Titans via Twitter)
“If anyone thinks the women’s game won’t be as physical as the men’s, I invite them to line up against any of these girls. They won’t walk away with the same impression.”
The Opal tournament culminates in a playoff for the national championship on December 6 in Nottingham, to which only the country’s four best sides are invited.
With two series down and one to play – this weekend in Teesside – the Titans sit in third place, a remarkable achievement for a group of players who had largely never picked up a football before the summer.
Masterminding the whole operation is Jonathan Homer, a former tight end with the men’s team and current defensive coach. For the women he acts as head coach, general manager, kit man, travel supervisor, treasurer and number one fan. It’s fair to say the Titans Ladies starts and ends with him.
But he’s no soft touch with them. On the training field he barks orders at them just as he would the men. The slightest whiff of a lapse in concentration prompts a roar of ‘LADIES! Let’s be ready to play! Focus!’
And the women respond to that. They like having a coach who doesn’t treat their team like a sideshow to the men.
Part of the reason they’ve caught up and surpassed more established teams is because off the field the Titans work twice as hard as anyone else. Early on Homer introduced a playbook just as complicated as the men’s and the women duly put in the hours to master it.
Now they’re one of the most versatile, tactically advanced teams around.
“It’s a testament to the girls that we’ve been able to install the playbook in such a short period,” Homer said.
“It’s phenomenal and as a coach it’s been tremendously rewarding. Only through their hard graft have we been able to implement it and because of that we’re able to outfox other teams.
“It’s not as if we’ve got more talented players than everyone else, but our tactical nous means that every single member of this side can come up with big plays when we need it most. And that’s a huge, huge advantage.”
After reaching heady heights in his playing days – the highlight of which was being part of the men’s 2010 side which went a whole regular season undefeated – you could forgive him for not showing the women’s game the same level of intensity.
But he said from the very start he wasn’t interested in doing anything half-baked, like “a bunch of cowboys in a field somewhere dicking about”. Oh no. Homer’s side trains at a top-of-the-range facility at the AJ Bell complex and that air of professionalism permeates everything they do.
Under the watchful eye of Homer, who prowls the side-line like a young Bill Belichick, the Titans have so far put a huge dent in this year’s competition, out-muscling and out-hustling all and sundry.
Quarterback Perry has an arm like a howitzer, and the defence has picked up the uncanny ability to swarm all over wayward passes. They pick off balls for fun.
The Titans have come unstuck twice – in the final of each Opal tournament they’ve played – but in both instances their losses were due to a shortfall in experience. ‘Situational football’, as some in the game brand it: the ability to recognise and capitalise on key turning points in the match.
But with each week they become savvier, and they expect to challenge for the title this weekend, and possibly at the national finals day, too. They’re just too good and too confident not to.
In short, the Titans look like pros playing with amateurs. Just wait ‘til they start hitting people.
Main image courtesy of Manchester Titans via Twitter, with thanks.
