Wembley Stadium, 28 October 2007. The New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins in the first ever regular season NFL game to be played outside of North America. Little did they know that they were changing the future of a 12-year-old boy sat in his living room across the city catching his first glimpse of American football.

“I was flipping through the TV looking for an Arsenal game and I came upon the Dolphins and Giants game in Wembley Stadium,” says Jermaine Eluemunor, a 6’ 4’’, 23-stone offensive lineman who now plays for those same Giants on his first gridiron experience. 

“The game just had something about it that I couldn’t take my eyes off it and from that day on I’ve just been in love with the game I was first exposed to when I was 12. I hadn’t even heard of the sport before watching that.”

That game between Giants and Dolphins was the first ever NFL International Series game. A series that has continued to grow in the almost two decades since and will now see seven games played outside the US, three in London as well as games in Sao Paolo, Dublin, Berlin and Madrid. 

When Eluemunor was drafted into the league he joined the likes of Menelik Watson, Jack Crawford, and Jay Ajayi who had managed to make an impact in the league before him. 

Sky Sports’ Neil Reynolds believes the likes of Eluemenor and Ajayi will only inspire more Brits to take up the sport and follow him into the league. He said: “There’s going to be more of those. We might see players cross over from other sports. 

“But once you see a few do it, and it makes such a difference having Jay Ajayi, an actual Brit, carrying the ball, scoring touchdowns, rushing for 200 yards, I think it is going to encourage others to come over.”

The routes that players are taking to get into the league are starting to change as well. For many of those players they went to America when they were young and went the traditional route of taking the sport up as a kid, high school, college and then drafted into the league. We have just seen Welsh rugby union star Louis Rees-Zammit return back to these shores after trying to make it through the International Player Pathway Program. Although he signed with the Chiefs and Jaguars, he never saw the field outside of preseason. 

23-stone quarterbacks

Eluemunor’s story was different though. He was hooked on the game from the moment he set eyes on it but his first experiences of the sport were not exactly what he was expecting. For one thing, he dreamt of being a quarterback… but there aren’t 23-stone quarterbacks that make it to the NFL.

“I wanted to be like Sam Bradford (the former Rams, Eagles and Minnesota quarterback). I was too chubby and didn’t have the best arm in the world but my first dream was to be a quarterback.” 

His first experience of playing the game was not great either. He tried out flag football – a non-contact version of the game – at Finsbury Park in London.

He said: “The first time I played flag football wasn’t fun so I quit and went back to rugby because I wanted to hit people.”

Soon though, he and his father moved to America where they ended up in New Jersey. At 14, Eluemunor attended Morris Knolls High School where he took up wrestling and American football – the contact version this time. 

“It was hard early. I didn’t get on the field until my senior year. I had a lot to learn. I didn’t really pick a lot of it up until my senior year of high school.”

Things could have turned out very differently. Following his second year at high school, Eluemunor and his father had to move back to the UK. Eventually they agreed to return – after some begging – on the agreement that the budding football star would complete college and go as far as possible in the sport. He has certainly done that. 

From high school, he went to junior college at Lackawanna College in Pennsylvania to try and hone his skills. There he made a tape of his play and sent it out to the best colleges in America to try and win a place on their team and at their college.

 “I sent my highlight tape out to every single division one school (the best level of college sport in America) you can think of. I wanted the opportunity to play American football and wasn’t going to stop at anything until I made it happen.”

Despite being a relative newcomer to the game, some of the best colleges in the country attempted to recruit Eluemunor. He committed to playing for both UCLA and Arkansas, changing his mind on both occasions and finally settling for Texas A&M. A college that is perhaps best known in recent years for former quarterback Johnny Manziel but one that has produced a number of NFL calibre linemen. 

He finally won the starting role in his final season with the Aggies. What he lacks in football intelligence and experience, he more than makes up for in natural talent and work rate. 

He said: “I just train and work in everything and work harder than I have ever trained before.

“You have to train like it’s all on the line because it’s now or never and if you don’t work harder then you ever have before then you won’t achieve your goals. I work my ass off and don’t let anyone outwork me.”

He certainly did that when he got to Indianapolis for the pre-draft Combine – a series of physical and mental tests that lets teams see the young prospects. His 34 reps on the bench press was just one shy of the highest total set in 2017. 

He went on to be drafted in the fifth round by the Baltimore Ravens and has since had spells at the Patriots, Raiders and Giants, playing over 100 games in that time. 

A London-based franchise

One thing he could not have imagined when he first started out was that one day he would have the opportunity to represent his home city in the league. That could be the case though and Reynolds believes that it could happen sooner rather than later.

Speaking ahead of the 2016 games in London he said: “We will have a team here that we can call our own within five years.”

Obviously that has not panned out, but a franchise moving out of America has been mooted ever since that first International Series game was announced here. Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, has seen global expansion as part of his plans since getting the job shortly before the first London game. Reynolds believes that a London franchise is something he wants to be remembered for. 

“We’ve got government support. The powerful support of NFL owners and the commissioner. It feels like he wants to make it his legacy.”

Jeff Fisher, the now former LA Rams head coach was excited at the prospect of a British based team.

He said: “The enthusiasm and the support is clearly here. There’s no doubt about that. I think it will be great for the National Football League if it happens at some point.”

Victor Cruz, a former New York Giants receiver also backed the idea, saying the travelling, one of the main arguments against a team in London is not as bad as some make out. 

“I don’t think it is that bad. I think that the flight in itself is similar to flying to Los Angeles from the New York, New Jersey area, six hours.” 

“The only difference is your body clock, adjusting to that time frame and adjusting to that difference in time, but I think it is doable and I think it is just a matter of schematically how the NFL decides to do it.”

Not everyone is as supportive of a UK-based team though. Andrew Luck, once the highest paid player in the history of the game, came over with his Indianapolis Colts and had this to say regarding the extra travelling these games take. 

Luck said: “You try to prepare as best as you can. It’s not ideal.”

Anthony Castonzo, Luck’s teammate was less diplomatic with things. When asked how he was feeling after arriving in London he said: “I feel like death.” 

The International Series is continuing to expand, and with it more people are being exposed to the game that could hardly be more American. With it, more people are playing and that is only going to mean more people following in the footsteps of Eluemunor.

Whether we will one day have a team to call our own as Reynolds once said remains to be seen but the future development of American football and the NFL on these shores and around the world is an exciting prospect.