Streets Shine in First Game

By Scott Mulis

​Arena Football is Back at the Arena in Jacksonville here in the River City. It is reminiscent to a party and a football game rolled into one. The New York Streets came into Jacksonville, FL to battle the Jacksonville Sharks. When the Game started it looked like the Sharks were going to roll as Jacksonville's New QB John Bane hit WR Jarmon Fortson for a 12 yard Touchdown pass to start the scoring to give the Sharks and early seven to nothing lead. QB John Bane played well most of the night with his trio of receivers all catching Touchdowns including Receivers Fortson, Gilchrist and Devin Wilson. I believe Bane has good magic or chemistry with WR Devin Wilson. A nice crowd saw the opener in Jacksonville. However, the other side of the story was the New York Streets offense which proved to be more consistent with scoring, making the most of their opportunities. The New York Streets also scored a couple of deuces on safeties if you will on Kickoffs by tackling Shark kickoff returners in the End Zone as the Streets kicker was working the Nets. The Biggest key to the Game in my mind even though, there was some good tackling by Sharks Linebacker Cody Saul at times, but the Sharks could not hold up on all 4 downs on 2 different goal line stands where the Sharks could not hold up Defensively. The bottomline is The New York Streets were more consistent offensively than the Sharks as New York outscored the Jacksonville Sharks 52 to 41 in a hard hitting National Arena League game. This was a big win for the very competitive first year New York Streets. The Sharks will attempt to rebound in game number two in Columbus, Georgia against the Lions next week. The Streets will go for two in a row against Orlando next week in the Streets home opener. Despite their Generic looking uniforms, New York played pretty well for an inaugural Game.