PLAY CALLED: Two Vietnam Flag Football League teams square off. Photo courtesy of VFFL By Peter Cowan At about 6.30am Việt Nam time on Monday February 8, the Super Bowl will kick-off in Tampa, Florida, pitting Patrick Mahomes’ defending champion Kansas City Chiefs against six-time winner Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While the NFL season’s climax is taking place more than 15,500km away from HCM City and all the glitz, otherworldly athleticism and violence of American football barely makes a blip on the Vietnamese sporting radar, a safer version of the game is slowly gaining a foothold in HCM City. Flag football does away with the bone-jarring hits that full-contact football has become infamous for and ball carriers are instead tackled by removing a flag hung on their belt. Two flag leagues have popped up in the southern metropolis over the last year, keen to spread the love of the game and show that Vietnamese athletes can do anything Tom Brady can. Love for the game The Dang is commissioner of the Vietnam Flag Football League (VFFL), which started in early February last year with just six or seven people in a park and has grown to six teams with a total of roughly 90 players, male and female. Dang, who was born in Việt Nam but raised in the US, grew up playing flag and tackle football in Washington State and was keen to bring the American sport to Việt Nam. “We just kind of built a community together,” he said of the VFFL’s early days, adding that “we saw that there was just a lot of interest” in playing the sport in HCM City. Dang said after playing pick-up games for a while the league’s early players decided to formally establish a league with a board, which eventually led to completing a full competitive season with playoffs, stat-keeping and a championship. “I just got the love for the game,” he said, adding, “because we miss the …
