In the Beginning

The University of Hertfordshire American Football Club began in November 1992. Matt Coppinger, a first-year student who had just won the BYAFA national youth championship with the Southend Sabres at Saffron Lane, Leicester, asked the Students’ Union about starting a team, and sabbatical officer Lester Bunn told him to collect signatures. Within three weeks 150 students had come to a meeting in the Communal Building, later the Music Centre.

Three of the people at that meeting stepped forward to help. Jez Brown, Andrew Daniel and Daniel Barry joined him on the first committee in December 1992, and the club counts all four as its founders. Brown, a former Lincoln Saints player, became club secretary and went on to coach the defence. Barry was elected treasurer at the first AGM, and Daniel also played at running back. The club started with little more than a couple of plastic footballs and a year of non-kitted flag football, but by March 1993 more than 30 players were training on Sundays and Wednesday afternoons.

At the first AGM the members chose the name Hurricanes, and on the strength of the committee’s presentation the student league voted the club in as an associate member. Most of the next year went on finding the money for kit. By November 1993 the club had 22 sets, enough to qualify for league membership, and by February 1994 the players had scraped together 30.

Then came the first game. With Jez Brown as head coach, the Hurricanes took 40 players to a friendly away to Crawley Raiders, a BNGL Division 1 senior side. On their first drive quarterback Dan Bartram completed a pass to running back Mark Houlder for a first down, but the Raiders won 59–0. At the second AGM Jez Brown continued as secretary and linebacker Steve Reid became treasurer, and the league then accepted the club as a full member, which put the Hurricanes in the 1994–95 BCAFL schedule. Surrey Stingers were admitted at the same time and, in the words of the club history, “a rivalry was born”.

The two newcomers met in a friendly in May 1994 on a muddy pitch on the Hatfield campus. Slotback Ian Parker scored three times, Bartram found James “The Bomb” McBeath for a 58-yard touchdown, Reid and defensive tackle Stuart Peskett led a dominant defence, and Matt Whitehead added a two-point conversion. The Hurricanes won 30–0. Getting into the league had taken two years and “a lot of hard work by all those involved”.