Seahawks Fend Off the Chiefs

On a very sharp, cold and breezy Seattle winter's night was host of the National Football League's fixture between the Seattle Seahawks and the Kansas City Chiefs at CenturyLink Field. This stadium is an incredible stadium for its sheer size. The stadium is for 70,000 spectators and 69,500 odd turned up to scream at the top of their lungs and make one heck of a noise to maintain the reputation of Seattle being one of the noisiest stadiums in the league. So noisy in fact are the fans at CenturyLink, is that they trigger the second highest amount of false starts in the league, second behind Minnesota. However, for a casual fan like myself, it was intense the noise and rather painful. Then again I had 6 fans in my seats scream at their fullest capacities in the back of my head to induce said migraine.

Tickets to these games do not come cheap, and unfortunately the cheapest I could afford were towards the very back. While not a bad view, the bitter cold blowing into the semi-open stadium did make it rather chilly. I do recommend to take your gloves for a game and a warm jacket, in which I did. But apart from the noisy fans behind me, the atmosphere is what I was expecting in an NFL game. These fans wear their emotions on their sleeves and are not afraid to show it. They do not take too kindly humour of the wry, witty or even dry varieties. So I suggest that you don't engage like that. 

The game however was a very even contest with Seattle coming out of the blocks early and hard. But failing to capitalise on the dominance. This is where Kansas City Chiefs had began to turn it around and cause trouble for the Seattle defensive team. Yes, that is right, there are effectively two teams within the team. One is an offensive team, then when they are on the defensive, well, you got it there is a team for that as they switch. So It is rather difficult to follow if you are not a fan of the game like I am. When I start to get into understanding the basics of the game however, it stops and then there is a considerable pause in the play. So it is hard to understand why they stopped and what was it for.

Kansas during the second quarter edged in front over the hosts and the crowd were wavering in their loud support for the Seahawks. But with mistakes from the Chiefs, Seattle had turned it around and with some touchdowns and conversions had hit the lead and secured the match as 38 to 31 point winners.

Beers were the usual fare at the game, I had a bottle of Budweiser for 12 dollars and chips and M&Ms for 12 dollars in total. There were plenty of other foods, but I wasn't going to fight through the crowds to fight for the food and fight all the way back up to the back of the stands with the food.
Despite the cold, and the bitterness of the winter's night in Seattle, it was a wonder evening to watch my first American football game. If you are in the states and you want to tick it off your list, I recommend it.

 

Utah Upbeat As Portland Slow On The Trail

Headed to my second NBA game at the Moda Centre on a rather chilly, crisp, cold and clear night in downtown Portland, Oregon to watch the Portland Trailblazers play host to the Utah Jazz. I caught the Max to the Rose Centre and was a little long as per usual when you cross through cities on a system that should be heavy rail, but that's the US for you. I got into the venue but I had to hand over my selfie stick to the cloak room. While this is a standard policy for virtually every stadium around the world, I thought id just have it in my pocket until post game for some after match selfies.

I found my seat with no difficulties, but there was a couple who had placed their coats on my seat and I didn't want to be squashed up next to them so I sat behind them where there were a couple of empty seats. I sat there for the first half and a couple of minutes into the third quarter until a family decided to finally arrive after eating and drinking on the concourse level. I don't understand why would you spend this money on basketball tickets, come all this way, (Portland is very sparsely populated) and not watch the game live and not on some screen in a concourse food outlet?

I happily moved, but went to the opposite side of my seat to get myself a better, or different perspective. I had no problems finding a seat as people were starting to leave half way through the third quarter as Utah were dominating Portland. The home side were competitive in the first half only trailing by 6 at half time. However, Portland's poor shooting and woeful rebounding, steals and foul count had given the Jazz easy opportunities to sink for threes and take free throws to blow out the lead beyond single digits and ended up running home with a 30 point win, 120 to 90.

The food was the same but this time I had the chicken spicy burger. It was 12 dollars also and I had a collectors cup on top of that for another 12. The total was 24 dollars and I have to say that the chips were once again a bit average. They were garlic fries, but I had to add some more salt and have ranch and barbecue sauce to add flavour. The burger was dray and utterly tasteless with little to no spice what so ever. I found this disappointing as in the United States if something is spicy, you know that there will be a bit of a tickle, unlike in Australia where it is a land devoid of anything remotely spicy.

The bread was dry and felt stale, but I could be wrong as bread in the US is usually a bit dry and not overly soft like back home. The lettuce wasn't bad, but the tomato was not pleasant. The chicken patty was bone dry and without any flavour. It only just had that crumbed taste and it did break apart easily like regular chicken. However, all in all it was not very nice.

A shame that the food on this occasion was even worse and that the Trailblazers played even worse still. But It is a neat little basketball stadium in a small Pacific North-West town that I am sure that I will be returning to at some stage in the future.

Portland Overcome Memphis

It was a crisp and cool early December winter in Portland, Oregon which was the host to my first National Basketball Association match, between the Portland Trailblazers and the Memphis Grizzlies. It was also my first trip to the Moda Centre in Portland as my previous outing here was a Timbers game last July.
The venue is very much like the Perth Arena, and most basketball venues I would imagine, with signage that was straight forward and well signed. The staff were helpful also and there were no major issues getting to my seats.

Portland started off very slowly with Memphis sprinting out of the blocks in the first quarter and dominating the frustrated home fans. Where I was sitting was rather boisterous and I loved the support as it was very much like my time at Providence Park, only with more music from the sound system. Portland were slowly warming up to the contest and in the second quarter they were starting to find their feet. However, some sloppy shooting, poor rebounds and giving away some fouls were keeping the Grizzlies with the noses in front of the contest.

By the third quarter Portland found new energy, they began to hit their strides with the crowd pushing them along. In this quarter their passes seemed to stick and they were blocking almost everything Memphis threw at them. The rapid turnovers, and the turnarounds had ensured that the Trailblazers had hit the lead by three quarter time. In the final quarter Memphis were a shadow of their former selves from the first quarter and were trying all they could to try and stem the flow of the home side. However, in the last 5 minutes of the quarter Memphis did manage to break open the Portland defence, but it was too late and Portland were too resilient holding out the visitors 99 to 92.

Food was not bad as I had the chicken strips with chips and barbecue sauce. I had a collectors cup with coke and a cider during the game. The cider was an apple cider which was not sweet, so if that is your thing for apple ciders then you may not enjoy it. The cider was 11 dollars, the meal was also 12.50 and the collectors cup was 12. This seems to be standard for sporting venues as I recall this for the Timbers and at the Dodgers and Galaxy last year.
All in all a fantastic first game for me and would highly recommend anyone in the US during the winter months to go and see a basketball match.