It may have been a new season, a new city and a new stadium, but Saturday night’s Kraft Family IFL regular-season opener certainly provided a familiar result. The Real Housing Haifa Underdogs, riding a wave of consistency that began midway through last year, rumbled into Modi’in and took care of business in Game 1, dispatching the home-town Dancing Camel Modi’in Pioneers 24-14 to kick off 2008/09.

 

Getting an all-around team effort and riding a pair of two-yard touchdown runs from half-back Lior Subotnik, the Underdogs did nothing fancy but everything necessary to win the feisty contest in typical lunch-bucket, workmen-like style, as is fast becoming their hallmark.  Haifa’s rookie quarterback, Itai Ashkenazi, continued his seamless transition into the offensive flow, the running game picked up over 100 yards on the ground and last year’s top-ranked defense was back and buzzing from the opening whistle, forcing and recovering four Modi’in fumbles en route to the W.

 

For the Pioneers, the game was somewhat encouraging, even in a losing cause. The team-formerly-known-as-Hasharon underwent tremendous change during the off-season, overhauling much of its roster in addition to its new city-base. In just their second fully-equipped game together, the players seem to be gelling as a unit, the defense is developing a tough, smashmouth identity and you can just feel that it’ll be any drive now that the offense breaks out for good. The team can console itself after this opening loss with the fact that, but for two Haifa scores that were directly results of ill-times Modi’in fumbles, the game would have gone right down to the wire. It is only a matter of time before the on-field results start to match squad’s effort.

 

Almost 100 fans, including IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Modi’in Deputy Mayor Alex Weinreb, were in attendance at the new Sportek Modi’in to see the upstart league kick off its second season. After punting away on their first set of downs, the Underdogs got on the board to take the early 6-0 lead on the Pioneers’ first play from scrimmage when their QB fumbled the ball on his goal line due to intense pressure from the Underdog pass-rush. Haifa’s all-IFL linebacker Idan Maor recovered in the end zone for the first points of the new season.

 

Haifa would extend its lead to 12 on a short Subotnik touchdown plunge, before the Pioneers’ star back Shmuel O’Neil burst through the hole on a perfectly-executed handoff by quarterback Uri Schiff and scampered 22 yards to the house to make it a one-possession game heading into the half. One of the only negatives on the day for the Underdogs was their penchant for taking silly penalties, going into the break with 75 yards in infractions and being whistled for a total 125 yards for the contest. For an otherwise-disciplined Haifa squad, this nasty little penalty habit must be fixed, although it didn’t come back to bite them in this one.

 

The start of the third quarter saw another Modi’in drive snuffed out by a fumble and the Underdogs took full advantage on the ensuing possession, with Ashkenzi finding Omer Kedmi in the corner of the endzone for a 14-yard TD strike to make the score 18-6 going to the final frame.

 

The Pioneers’ were almost helpless to stop the Underdogs from grinding out tough yards on the ground and chewing up valuable ticks on the clock by steadily feeding their hungry backs Subotnik and his backfield tandem Igal Schneider. The pair pounded out three first downs before Subotnik put the game out of reach with another score. The highlight of the fourth quarter was undoubtedly when, midway through, Haifa’s 170 kg lineman, Gabi Azraelov, got in between a Pioneer handoff attempt and snatched the ball before taking off downfield. It appeared as if the friendly giant might rumble, bumble and stumble his way into the end zone before running out of steam and being taken down by an army of Pioneers.

 

Modi’in did manage one more TD of its own and was good on the two-point conversion as well to bring it within 10. The Pioneers also recovering the subsequent onside kick, allowing the real football dreamers to keep the comeback spark lit, even though there was under a minute left.  However, Haifa allowed none of the late-game hijinks that almost cost them last week’s encounter and calmly bled out the clock on defense to walk away with a well-earned victory.

 

The IFL is on next this Friday, November 28 at the Baptist Village in Petah Tikva with a meeting between the Mike’s Place Tel Aviv Sabres and the defending-champion Big Blue Jerusalem Lions in the first regular season match for both teams. All fans are invited. Please check out the new and improved Kraft Family IFL Web site at www.ifl.co.il for the latest league information, schedule and updates.

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