Blitzing Cancer Competition

Flag Football

In November 2019 the UK Dukes, duo Phoebe and Kenny, brought a fun flag football competition to Shirley in the West Midlands to raise awareness of breast cancer. The event was to support  Coppafeel a breast cancer awareness charity.

Blitzing Cancer flag football competition organised by the UK Dukes

What is flag football

Flag football is a version of flag football suited to all age groups as there is not the full contact tackling of the kitted game. In the UK it is usually 5 a side. The method of tackling is for you to pull the flag from your opponent’s belt. More can be found on the Wikipedia page.

For this competition teams were comprised of men and women. The initial round consisted of 2 groups playing 2 games each followed by playoffs and final.
After the weeks of rain conditions underfoot on the grass pitches soon became “interesting”

Despite this minor inconvenience and running into low light at the end of the day. Everyone had a great time. The overall winner was the UK Dukes team

Certainly, for me, it was the first time that I had shot flag football being more used to shooting the full-contact game. This is so much quicker but is ideal as an alternative for schools who wish to make use the option of a non-contact sport to get students running around.

I hope this selection gives you an idea of how the game is played, in this case of course by some amazingly crazy people including some of my friends from the Birmingham Lions Women’s American Football Team and the Sandwell Steelers.

The UK Dukes can be found on the internet at  theukdukes.com/

I look forward to seeing more of this version of the sport and, hopefully, more competitions like this around the Country.

Kev