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Part-Time Gladiators - Page 8
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 Traveling means playing on a field you are not familiar with. Some fields are pro quality, and a traveling team used to playing on a poor home field gets a real treat. On the flip side teams used to playing on well-groomed fields in college-like stadiums can get a rude shock when they arrive at their opponent’s field. Many of the fields in the North Atlantic Conference of the NEFL are practice fields that have little more then yard lines and goal posts. Even the mighty Shamrocks play on fairly conventional high school field that is more than adequate for playing football, yet seems somewhat lacking for a team with Shamrocks aura. Perhaps the most unusual field is that of the Clinton Irish Blizzard in Clinton, Massachusetts. Clinton plays on a former high school field that is lit on only one side. The removable lights that were taken down for baseball and put back up for football were removed permanently when the high school got a new field. Perhaps the most impressive field is that of the EFL’s Charleston Townies. Huge bleachers, artificial turf and bright lights are only outdone by the incredible night view of the Boston skyline. If there is any drawback it might be that noisy Logan Airport borders the field.
 Coming in just as many flavors as the playing fields are the fans. In football starved Vermont most of the Ice Storm players were blown away by the attendance at their home games. None of the colleges in the Burlington area have football. The University of Vermont cut their program decades prior, since then high school ball has literally been the only game in town. Once the word started getting around that there was a new team in the area, fans started filling the large bleachers at their home field in Colchester, located just outside of Burlington. Players estimate that there were 800 fans at some the games, an unimaginable number for most semi-pro teams. The Ice Storm are so popular that they get invitations from area Pop Warner teams for their players to come and speak to them.
The Shamrocks are another team blessed with a strong fan base, and players claim that’s just one more element that makes Marlboro a choice place to play. Shamrocks’ tight end Bob Ferreri says that the fans are the best part of playing there. " They’ve got some good fans, meaning quality, class act fans. At just about every game we go to we have at least a handful of fans that support and follow the team." Frank Bianchini also stressed how important the fans are to the experience of playing there and likes that fact that his team has a following. "I like playing in Marlborough because you get a nice crowd there. People actually care about what we’re doing there" Some of that fan following goes beyond supporting the team at home, traveling to the Shamrocks’ away games in numbers equaling or surpassing the home field’s fans. For most teams though, the fan base consists of wives and children and girlfriends that socialize while watching their husbands, fathers or boyfriends pulverize one another.
 Around the time Bruce Cutler was graduating from high school he thought that the only way he could continue to play football was to go to college. Had he known about the semi-pro leagues he thinks that he probably would have gone that route. This kind of scenario is a major problem for semi-pro football, at least in New England. Players not knowing about a league that needs more players and a league that has teams that can’t find enough players is a problem that Bruce Cutler sees as an opportunity. Making others aware that there is a semi-pro league is one method that Culter plans to use to get more players for the Tomcats. "There’s a lot of players that could be playing semi-pro that don’t even really know about it. They hear about semi-pro ball but they don’t see it and they don’t go to the games." Cutler plans upon recruiting at local schools and colleges for the next season and feels reasonably sure that if more teams got out to schools and spread the word out about semi-pro ball there would be stronger teams with larger rosters, which would create more parity in the leagues.
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