Sport is huge in New Zealand, and Hawke’s Bay has always been up there participating in anything physical and competitive. It was only a matter of time that American Football would become popular down-under. Our own resident American, Michael Greenstein, took much delight in sharing his love of this particular sport and wrote about what is happening here.
The breadth of organised team ball sports around the world is absolutely immense, and seems to be everexpanding. I do my best to keep up with quite a few of the old-school team sports, like rugby and cricket, and basketball and football, on a national and even global level. Nowadays there are many fresh variations of these traditional team sports, using similar balls and strategy but slightly altered environments and rules, which can actually enhance the sport. Even better, many of these adaptations make the sport more accessible to get involved in, to learn new skills and participate as a member of a team.
One of these budding international organised team sports has now blossomed in Aotearoa and has especially taken hold in Hawke’s Bay … American Flag Football! As a matter of record, in March the local Hawke’s Bay Heat American Football Club team won the New Zealand American Football Federation (NZAFF) 2023 Flag Football National Championship!
For many who haven’t been exposed to American Flag Football, those three words may not have much meaning linked together. I spent my first 50+ years in America so NFL-type football is in my blood. I never played it as a youngster in any organised team manner, my parents felt it was too dangerous, so I stuck with baseball and basketball. Plus it took at least twenty players to field a game, so even playground ball took a heap of organising!
This newer ‘gridiron’-type football infiltrating the world actually began in the 1930s in the USA. The game was designed by the military to help soldiers stay fit without risking injuries during wartime. This ‘touch’ football didn’t involve viciously tackling opponents to the ground, so it was a bit less dangerous. I do remember playing some of this as a kid in the 1960s and ’70s, but there was still a lot of smashing bodies, and pain was part of the game.
Now with different team sizes, field dimensions and rules, this American Football variant has the defensive team removing one of the two flags on the belt of the ball carrier to end a down, instead of tackling them to the ground. And unlike traditional gridiron football, with eleven players from each team on the 100-yardlong field, the new variant of American Flag Football is played by two teams of five on small fields usually 40–50
yards long and 20–30 yards wide, with ten yards in the end zone at each end. The main objective is to score points by carrying or passing the ball into the opposing team’s end zone while avoiding getting your flag pulled off.
To learn more about this new Hawke’s Bay football excitement I met up with Jordan Cox, who several years ago was working in the USA as staff at a Summer Camp in Tennessee, where he got stung by this American Flag Football bug. He came home with huge enthusiasm and, after getting several friends hooked, began laying the foundation for what has become an amazingly popular sport in New Zealand.
From the early days of a bunch of like-minded folks showing up to learn to play this version of football, the gathering turned into a small group of local Bay teams organising their own Sunday afternoon park competition. This contagious amateur sports team phenomenon has spread like a good virus nationally, with club organisations throughout the North and South Islands – a total of seventeen teams now compete in seven regions.
Since their establishment in 2018, the Heat have won the NZAFF Wellington Invitational Flag Football Tournament in March 2019 and placed second in the Flag Football National Championships in 2020 and 2021. In 2023 the Hawke’s Bay Heat were crowned national champions with a spectacular last-minute win over the Canterbury Tamarins.
Jordan is also an outstanding player for the Heat and his passion for the sport, along with his amazing teammates, is a major force in propelling this American Flag Football club sport into the limelight.
Jordan has surrounded himself with other keen players, like Murray Orr. Murray’s son Cameron learnt about American Flag Football from Jordan and made a dad-bonding deal that he would play if Murray joined him. Five years later they are both Heat teammates and Murray has taken it even further and is now a certified NZAFF referee! He gets to travel around the country, and even sometimes the world, officiating AFF games.
Another feather in the Heat’s cap is a couple of team members, Adam Blake and Harvey Godwin, who were selected to the New Zealand men’s AFF national team, the Mako, to compete in the International Federation of American Flag Football Asia-Oceania Championship in Malaysia in 2023. That’s probably one of the biggest highlights as a club, having two players pull on the black jersey. Especially with Adam being the captain of that squad.
Here in New Zealand the NZAFF is the national sporting organisation for all forms of American Football, including Flag Football. As the flag version focuses on passing and catching skills, it is one of the best ways to develop young players before they begin playing the contact version of American Football. And the NZAFF is passionate about seeing the sport continue to grow in New Zealand.
Also exciting for Kiwis is that flag football is popular among women’s, youth and coed teams and has multiple national and international competitions throughout the year. In 2022 the Heat Bowl was established in Hawke’s Bay, and every November this tournament attracts four or five local teams to the competition. In 2023, flag football was accepted as a discretionary event for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, making it the first time the sport will be featured in the Olympic Games. So be on the lookout … some of our Hawke’s Bay Heat team members will most likely be participating to bring home a coveted Olympic medal!
