Fans point of view of Soul home opener
by Fran Stuchbury
February 9, 2004 - Arena Football League (1987-2008) (AFL I)
Philadelphia Soul
A sold out crowd of 17,484 fans showed up to see the Philadelphia Soul play their first ever arena football game Sunday afternoon. The Soul lost to the New Orleans VooDoo, 42-34.
Here are my game observations.
When I was getting into the arena, a lot of people kept on asking me if I had extra tickets for the game. If the arena was bigger they may have been able to seat an extra 3,000 people.
Before the game started, former Eagles quarterback and current Soul president Ron Jaworski made a speech to pump up the fans, and singer Sam Moore sang the song "I'm a Soul Man."
When OS Tyronne Jones caught a seven-yard touchdown pass from Nick Browder on the Soul's first possession, the crowd erupted.
During the game there were a lot of penalties, which should be of no surprise since two expansion teams were playing.
During break and timeouts the Soul kept the fans entertained by getting them involved with several events. One fan answered some music trivia questions, another some AFL trivia. Two fans attempted to catch balls off the net for a prize, a feat one fan was able to accomplish.
Whenever there was a break, there was something to keep the fans occupied.
Soul FB/LB Chris Ryan wore the nickname "SOUL TRAIN" on the back of his jersey. The only problem with that was it made some people think of the failed football league the XFL, with former player Rod Smart, aka "HE HATE ME". Ryan became the first player in AFL history to have a nickname on his jersey.
The one mistake some Philly fans made was leaving the game early when they were down by 15 points with a couple of minutes left. The Soul went on to score a touchdown to cut the score to 8, recovered the onside kick and threw a hail mary out of bounds as time expired.
The bottom line is anything can happen in arena football, if the Soul went on to tie the game and send it to overtime, people would surely never leave games early again.
When I was traveling home by train after the game I ran into a married couple, Joe and Linda Webb.
"It was great, we loved it. It was a fun time and unfortunately they didn't win but they will win some games," said Joe.
"It was the best time I ever had at a sports game. I had a ball, loved the people they were great. It didn't matter if we wome or lost, it was just really great" added Linda.
Despite the cold weather both Linda and Joe went to the game early to tailgate and meet up with other Soul fans.
Since I moved from New York to Pennsylvania five years ago I've been waiting patiently for arena football to come to Philadelphia. I'm thrilled to finally have a team to cover. I'm sure as the season progresses the Soul home games will be more entertaining to cover. With two expansion teams I was expecting a low-scoring affair.
The Soul will be traveling to Dallas next week to take on the Desperados, and then next Saturday night they host the Columbus Destroyers.
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
