East Coast v West Coast Representative Game
Cal State Long Beach University, C.A.
June 21, 2003

Leaving the rainy north east behind, the New York Magpies players representing the East Coast team revelled in the clear sunny conditions at Cal State Long Beach University against the West Coast. The East Coast side contained many familiar faces from New York's recent encounters in Boston, Baltimore, Lehigh, and Chicago, amongst other East Coast teams (Cincinatti, St.Louis, Atlanta, Nashville). The Americans amongst the East Coast team were particularly keen to perform, given it was a try-out for the Revolution game against Canada later this year.

With the New York Magpies comprising most of the the East Coast's centerline and onball division (Crighton, Paterson, Smith and rover Luminato), coupled with a recognizable face from Boston (Nugent), this familiarity was evident in the opening quarter, with the East teaming well out of the middle and creating scoreboard pressure on the West Coasters early.

The East Coast backline was also miserly, despite having to compete with high profile an talented talls such as Cameron O'Brien, Mark Seccull and Matt Dianauski. While players of this caliber got their fair share of the footy, the East Coast defenders worked hard to spoil, mid fielders and half backs won plenty of contests to restrict the flow of the football to the West Coast's key play makers, and also pushed deep into the backline to help crowd the space and run the ball out.

This hard running style from the back half carrying the football in to the East Coast's forwardline was epitomized by Shane Smith (3 goals) and best on ground Guy Luminato (4 goals), who were damaging all day. Crighton and Smith, gathering plenty of touches across the midfield, obviously enjoyed being "back" on a western coast with grassy fields well suited for running, "centimetre perfect", football.

After playing on ball all day and impressing in the East Coast 2nd team for a victory earlier in the day, New York's American representative, Chris McIntyre, fronted up again in the 2nd half of the main game, and played typically close and was hard at the contest, impressing the Revolution selectors.

The West Coast players continued to play hard footy throughout the game, but with some players fronting up for their second game following the CAFL grand final, the East Coasters had more running, which continued until the final siren, with the travelling East Coast finishing up victorious by about 80 points.

The Magpie reps also worked hard into the evening, through the mercilously short CAFL presentation and well into the night, surveying the Long Beach nightlife, and thanks to the wonders of BIONx, were able to front up again the next day to check out the Laguna Beach scene, much to the jealously of those back in the rain in the East.

Overall it was a terrific effort by the East Coast (and Magpie) reps and a testiment to the hard work put in by the East coaching staff of Rob Oliver (New York), Denis Ryan (Balt./Wash.) and Alan Nugent (Boston) to working out the correct match ups and getting us motivated to take on the West. Well done to New York's Brian Green, who umpired the game so well as to almost go unnoticed. Congratulations also to Denis Ryan and Scott Nicolas, the co-ordinators of each coast, who progressed this game from an informal discussion earlier in the year to hopefully a permenant fixture on the USAFL calendar.

New York Representatives: Jarrad Crighton, Guy Luminato, Chris McIntyre, James Paterson, Shane Smith, Robert Oliver (Coach), Brian Green (Umpire).