UNITED States President Donald Trump was met with defiance across the Atlantic yesterday as NFL players knelt for the American anthem prior to the Jacksonville Jaguars’ emphatic Wembley victory.
Two days after Trump insisted team owners should sack those who opt to protest during the Star-Spangled Banner, more than a dozen players from the Jags and Baltimore Ravens took a knee as the anthem played in London.
Jaguars and Fulham owner Shad Khan, who donated $1 million to Trump’s presidential inauguration, was among the others who stood and linked arms on the sidelines before a contest which Jacksonville won 44-7.
It was their third successive victory at a venue they have been playing in annually for five straight years, and a surprising one given Baltimore, for whom Londoner Jermaine Eluemunor made his debut, had arrived in the capital as favourites.
The Jaguars have now won as many games in London as they have in Jacksonville since October 2015.
However, events on the field felt largely inconsequential compared to the strong message that was delivered to the watching world before proceedings got under way.
President Trump had delivered a stinging attack on those in the NFL, like Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett, who have chosen to kneel in response to perceived racial injustice and police brutality.
The president had told a rally in Alabama: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b**ch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired’.”
Yesterday’s game at Wembley was the first NFL match staged since those comments and rather than dissuading players from taking a stance, it only prompted more to do so.
High-profile players like Terrell Suggs, Malik Jackson and Calais Campbell were all on one knee as the American anthem played while Khan locked arms with Marcedes Lewis and Telvin Smith.
Khan later issued a statement through the Jaguars’ social media feed in which he called Trump’s remarks “divisive and contentious”.
Earlier in the morning the president had continued his tirade against the NFL on Twitter commenting on attendances and ratings being “WAY DOWN”, but 84,592 were at Wembley, a new record since games were first hosted in England a decade ago.
They were then treated to the second most one-sided affair in that 18-game history.
Tight end Lewis hauled in three of Jags quarterback Blake Bortles’ four touchdowns – the other being tossed to Allen Hurns, while rookie running back Leonard Fournette provided another score on the ground.
The Ravens did not get on the board until the final four minutes of the contest, by which point starting QB Joe Flacco had been replaced by back-up Ryan Mallett on a nightmare day.
It left a sour taste for Eluemunor on his return back home. The 22-year-old was born less than 10 miles away from Wembley in Chalk Farm and had been inspired to take up the game after watching the first International Series game on television in 2007.
Instead it was Jags head coach Doug Marrone who experienced a happy homecoming of sorts. He used to play in this venue for the now-defunct World League of American Football’s London Monarchs.
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