Football: Glen Toonga overruns Rhein Fire – four times

With four touchdowns, the Sea Devils running back almost single-handedly ensured the 42:15 victory in the European American Football League ELF.

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Hamburg. It was a brilliant performance by the entire team, but they still knew on Sunday afternoon at the Hamburg Sea Devils everyone with whom they are interested in the 42:15 (16:6, 7:3, 14:6, 5:0) home win in the American-Football-Europaliga ELF against Düsseldorf Rhein Fire. “Even if everyone had a great day today: Glen Toonga was fantastic,” said defender Kasim Edebali (32), with eight tackles and one and a half quarterback sacks again aggressive leader of his team, about the man who won the fourth win in the fifth game of the season with four allowed touchdowns. The 27-year-old running back, who rushed for 175 yards, said, “I’ve never had a day like this, it means a lot to me. But I’m too tired to party, I’ll go home and sleep.”

4128 fans in the Hoheluft stadium liked the defensively highly concentrated and offensively very effective performance, as long as they kept their fingers crossed for Hamburg. The historical background of the duel contributed to the special atmosphere. In 2007, the last season of the European branch of the US elite league NFL, the two teams last faced each other. The Hamburgers, who won the last title in NFL Europe, won both games, on May 6th in the Volksparkstadion in front of 22,980 spectators with 34:9, on June 16th in Düsseldorf with 17:13.

Football: Sea Devils victorious despite team failures

Sea Devils head coach Charles Jones had to cope with the failures of cornerbacks Louis Müller (29/shoulder) and Jeremy Sarfo (28/required in his main job as a police officer). However, this did little to detract from the strength of the best defense in the league, even if the game started with a setback. Düsseldorf’s receiver Nathaniel Robitaille caught an “emergency pass” from quarterback Matt Adam over 56 yards despite being closely guarded by Giovanni Nanguy (32) and carried the ball backwards into the end zone.

But the next game scene was already symbolic of the error festival that the fans got to see throughout the first half. Robitaille’s extra point attempt was blocked by the Sea Devils special team, cornerback Barry Maruschke (28) carried the game device for two points into the Düsseldorf end zone.

Düsseldorf Rhein Fire in error fever

The confusion seemed great among the guests, but what Jannik Seibel performed only two minutes later could only be described with the word blackout. After a punt from the Sea Devils, the cornerback failed to pick up the ball, re-energizing the play and putting Hamburg back in possession, which Toonga converted to the first lead with an easy one-yard touchdown run.

Even if the recently much scolded Sea Devils playmaker Salieu Ceesay (24) tried to rely more on the passing game, which was only partially successful: The accents were only set in the first round by the beefy ball carrier from Britain. Glen Toonga marched into the end zone with a nice run over the outside just before the first quarter break, in the second quarter he added his eighth touchdown of the current season with a slalom run over 56 yards. Düsseldorf may have fire in its name, but Hamburg was on fire.