“Obviously there are question marks when you hear you are playing in Australia,” 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey told a press conference this week.
“But it has been so cool… the food’s incredible, the coffee’s great.”
That caffeine reference was perhaps as much to the time zone, as nod to the city’s famous café culture.
Melbourne is a mind-warping 17 hours ahead of California where both teams are based, and much of the pre-match attention has been on the two teams and their contrasting approaches to trying to “beat” the jet lag.
For the 49ers, who arrived late last week, their players have had time to get over the long journey, adjust to the time zone, acclimatise and practice at a nearby stadium.
Controversially, the LA Rams are taking things to the other extreme, planning to arrive on Thursday morning local time on a charted Qantas A380 superjumbo, play on Friday, and get back to the US west coast shortly afterwards, in theory to prepare for their next match with minimum disruption to the player’s body clocks.
“Definitely it’s a gamble,” says McMillan. “If they don’t quite get things right after the 16-hour flight, you still might have that jet lag, even though you’re trying to avoid it.”
“And not everyone can sleep on planes,” says his co-host Danny Webb. “Whether you’re in first class, business class, whatever it is, you’re still on a plane.”
“And”, adds McMillan: “And they’re six foot six most of them, so it’s going to be even tighter seats”.
Despite it technically being a “home” game for the Rams, who bid for NFL marketing rights in Australia under the leagues Global Markets programme, this all means it is the San Francisco 49ers that have more of a presence around Melbourne this week.
