For the second straight year, in only their second full season in the UK National Flag Football League, Border City Centurions have once again qualified for the national final in Manchester.
Having beaten off the best in the league, including Manchester, Liverpool, Lancashire, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen – the Carlisle-based squad will again contend for the UK’s top spot this Sunday.
Nick Weston, the Centurions head coach, said: “It’s great to be able to build on last year’s success and continue to solidify our presence at the top of the league.
“A lot of people thought we’d never be able to sustain our form from last year, especially against the biggest teams in the north of England and Scotland, but we flat refuse to entertain that mentality. As we’ve always said ‘its not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog’.”
It’s been almost four decades since American Football first landed in the region, but despite that the teams of the past always struggled to get their roots down and build successful teams here.
That was until March of last year when the all-new Centurions burst onto the Britbowl scene with an emphatic debutant season that took them all the way to the top of the league.
This year they’ve gone from underdogs to top dogs averaging +40pts per game and knocking down Goliaths of the gridiron game up and down the country.
The 2024 journey has now brought them back to the finals and this Sunday they have a chance to go one step further than their previous trip.
With the green light now brightly shining for the inclusion of the sport at the LA Olympics, there is a steely focus from the games establishment who are seeking athletes to draft into the Team GB too – so the Cents have literally everything to play for.
Flag Football is a rapidly growing, high-skill based format of non-contact American Football.
Embraced by both the NFL and now the International Olympic Committee who have cleared it for immediate inclusion for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Flag has been taking the sports world by storm over the past decade.
The mercurial growth of the game is chiefly a result of the world seeking alternatives pathways for the future of contact sports, due to increasing awareness of the links between the impacts of repetitive concussions and the long-term head traumas in traditional sport formats.
Consequently, today Flag is one of the fastest growing sports in both Europe and the Americas.
Founded in 2022, Centurions Border City Centurions are a Carlisle-based Flag American Football Team, with club members and players from across Cumbria and South Scotland.
Sponsored by Walkabout and Denton Tyres, part of Team Protyre, the Centurions are affiliated to the British American Football Association and play in the UK’s National Flag Football League’s Division 1.
With a senior adult team established now in the league, a junior team rapidly developing and a women’s side starting up the future of the sport looks exciting in the Borderlands.
