CLUB NEWS | GWENT ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP WITH GHENT
- gwentgators
- Jun 14, 2021
- 3 min read
The Gwent Gators are delighted to announce a club Partnership with the Ghent Gators.
Yes, you read that right! The Ghent Gators, who are part of Belgium’s Top flight kitted Football league; The BFL.
We initially discovered the existence of the Ghent Gators via a mistyping of our own club name on Google. The irony that, the usual use of alliteration aside, there was only one letter difference between both clubs name was too much a coincidence to overlook so we reached out to Ghent with a view to partnering up in some form or another.
Whilst the Gwent Gators were established in 2018 with the intention of competing in the Flag Football National League under governing body British American Football Association, The Ghent side have a little more pedigree.
Established in 1999, they are part of the Flemish American Football League (FAFL) Conference in the Belgian Football League.
In 2014 they qualified for the playoffs for the first time in their history, winning the Flemish Championship along the way and also made it count, making the Belgian Bowl and taking down the Brussels Tigers in a 38-0 drubbing to win their only (so far!) Belgian Championship; Belgian Bowl XXVII.
Much like most of the teams in the BAFA leagues this season, Ghent are readying themselves for some form of games this autumn but without any Champions or Relegation due to the ongoing Pandemic but are hopeful they will be able to resume proper League games next February.
For now however, both Clubs will support one another on and off the field, albeit from afar for now, but it has already given Gators HC (Gwent that is!) Dale Davies some ideas for once the Covid Pandemic is firmly in the rear view mirror. The HC said:
“Gators, believe it or not, are quite sociable creatures and tend to hang out in groups and the Gwent variety are no different. When it was brought to my attention that there was a team called the Ghent Gators, I was all for reaching out, the coincidence was too great.
After speaking to Tom of the Ghent team, we decided to push forward with a partnership of sorts, starting off with some Social Media support and hopefully an end result that we are able to travel to Belgium to play them in a Flag game or Tournament; they do have flag players even though they are a Contact team primarily and hopefully they can make a trip over to us at some point in the future too It would be great if we could make it an Annual or Biennial event.”
The Ghent Gators had this statement on the partnering.
"We're so happy to form this partnership; I just think it's an incredible coincidence about our team names. I hope we can play a game somewhere down the line. It would be a great excuse for us to visit Wales.
Ghent is really is a nice place for Gwent to visit when they are able to come over. Who knows, it'll maybe even lead to us starting our own flag football team in the future. Then new players could learn the ropes without putting on the pads right away. Which is useful when trying to help rookies or interested parties learn the basics without throwing them into the fire from the off."
Earlier this week, the Gwent Gators announced the signing of defensive player Ryan Tandy.
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