Sweden 2004

After winning the national championship in Finland in 2003, I was contacted by many teams throughout Europe about returning to play.  I think some people heard about the season without an interception and some of the records in Finland and so the emails and calls came in quickly.  I had 17 teams interested in having me, but in the end I decided to go and live and play in Stockholm, Sweden.  I played for the Tyreso Royal Crowns which is a club located in a suburb of Stockholm.

I chose to go there for a couple of reasons. The offensive coordinator from team we beat in Finland the previous year (the Helsinki Roosters) was coaching in Sweden the following and wanted me to come play with them.  He'd obviously seen me play before and felt that I would be a good fit.  In retrospect, this guy, Kim Wikstrom has turned into a good friend and I'm glad that I got the chance to meet him.  Also, it just so happened to be that Paul Tucker was marrying a girl from where else other than Stockholm Sweden and his wedding was to be held 2 weeks after our season.  So I negotiated with the team for my contract to run out after Paul's wedding and this way I was able to see a bunch of Pageland people at the end of my trip.  It was pretty unique.  My roommate Mario Donato was even able to travel abroad and spend some time in Stockholm.  Other than not winning another championship, it turned out to be a good summer and one that I will not forget.

The links under the Sweden tab were my journals during this period of time.  I made the Finland page by hard coding HTML and I had made the Sweden page in Microsoft FrontPage.  Trying to step it up both on and off the field as you can see...