St Mary’s Plays Host to NFL Stars

Twickenham is set to welcome back a number of American Football players this weekend who visited St Mary’s University, Twickenham in the Summer for a day of fitness testing for the launch of EA Sports’ popular American football video game Madden 2018.

As part of the NFL in London series, hosted at Twickenham Stadium, a number of American Football players are visiting to play league games as part of the regular season.

Two of the eight NFL players who visited St Mary’s in the summer, Minnesota Vikings’ Stefon Diggs and Cleveland Browns’ Joel Bitonio, could feature in Sunday’s match between the teams.

Bitonio, Offensive Guard for the Browns, is likely to face Diggs, Wide Receiver for the Vikings, at the national rugby stadium as his side look for their first win of the NFL season.

The athletes, along with a number of journalists, were put through their paces by students from the University’s MSc Applied Sport and Exercise Physiology programme, supervised by Paul Hough, Lead Sports Scientist.

Interim Head of School of Sport, Health and Applied Science Ann Kennedy, said, “It was fantastic to be able to welcome a number of professional athletes to use the world-class facilities here at the university and great for our students to learn from the players about the demands of playing in the NFL, particularly at a time when the sport is taking off here in the UK.”

The NFL players were joined at the University by Olympic bronze medallist Anthony Ogogo and fellow boxer Conor Benn, sprinter and gold medallist at the 2014 European Athletics Championships James Dasaolu, and Wycombe Wanderers footballer Adebayo Akinfenwa.

The tests formed part of the NFL Scouting Combine which is a televised event where college football players perform physical and mental tests in front of coaches, general managers and scouts to try and get selected by an NFL team.