Twelve o’clock on Sunday afternoon and I was alone in a large field somewhere beyond Mill Road waiting for the Phantoms, Anglia Ruskin’s not-quite-lean, fairly mean American Football Team who were currently living up to their moniker. As a rugby player I was in a strange new world, but what to expect? Would the derisive scoffing and accusations of wimpishness frequently levelled at American Footballers by the rugby community be justified? Or would my American High School dreams of cheerleaders, melodrama and eternal sporting glory come true?

Sadly my hopes were dashed when a few lonely figures approached across the grass. Without cheerleaders. But they did have helmets, shoulder pads and quite snazzy shirts. All was not lost.

Ambivalence beckoned during the pre-training cig-break but then someone pulled out some talcum powder and quite a lot of lycra and things started to look up. Soon enough I found myself buried under a few kilograms of plastic armour, peering out at my team-mates for the day through a small white cage. The up-down, run around, slap your helmet, hit the ground warm up drills quickly put any doubts about the grit of the assembled players to bed.

A particularly enjoyable aspect of American Football is the opportunity to focus on a very small skill set. Run fast, turn round, catch ball that is travelling quite quickly towards your face (if the quarterback has done his job right). Alternative job descriptions include being so big then no one can run around you or doing everything in your power to cripple said quarterback.

Does the armour soften the blow? No. Are the hits just as big? Maybe bigger. The game does stop after every play but as a consequence every single movement is made at nothing but one hundred percent intensity and the potential for attack from any angle makes defence against impending linebackers futile. This became only too apparent after several of the head-to-head collisions that seem to constitute the game.

It’s tempting to be very British about flame emblazoned shirts and bleeding-heart enthusiasm but when faced by such rooting-tooting, adrenalin boosting and genuinely exciting stuff, I found it difficult to remain stoic...