Britton passes over the generation gap

13 April 2012

There's a young man in New York state proving that a Britton can make it in American sport. Tom Britton, a 20-year-old from a family with an impeccable football pedigree, is the first English youngster to establish himself as a quarterback at college level in American Football. As America's eyes look to Sunday's Super Bowl here in New Orleans, Britton, having seen off a cluster of home-grown talent, is preparing to set about beating a new batch at their own game.

He has just moved upstate in New York from SUNY Morrisville College to Cornell University, an Ivy League college following an outstanding year-and-a-half as a player and student. Britton has made the grade both academically and on the playing field in a sport where England has produced kickers in the past but never young men at the specialist position of quarterback, the player who leads the team.

Mick Luckhurst, formerly of the Atlanta Falcons, went on to earn a living kicking in the National Football League, but as far as experts on both sides of the Atlantic can recall, Tom is a ground breaker.

He's also been a heartbreaker at Morrisville, helping to turn the Mustangs' season around. He wasn't the first-choice QB in games one and two, both defeats, but started game three which Morrisville lost narrowly. From then on he guided them to a 7-4 winning record by the season's end, which included a 34-14 away victory against Cornell's B team.

In the 11 games he started for Morrisville over his two seasons there, he won nine and this season scored five touchdowns and passed for 12 more. Cornell spotted his talent and after beating eight young American QBs for the starting job at Morrisville, he has just returned to the US to study at Cornell and in the spring and summer will be up against a similar number of American hopefuls trying to keep him out of the Cornell first team.

For inspiration, he can look at the achievements of his grandfather, Cliff Britton, who would probably have been proud but a little bemused at his grandson's prowess with an oval ball instead of a round one.

Cliff won an FA Cup winners' medal as a right-half with Everton in 1933 and played 25 times for England, winning nine caps before and during the war years. His playing career was followed by a highly successful managerial career and after taking over at Burnley in 1945 he took them to the 1947 FA Cup Final where they lost 1-0 to Charlton after extra-time.

He managed Everton and then moved on to Preston North End in

1956. In 1957 Preston finished third in the old First Division, level on points with Tottenham behind champions Manchester United . . . 'The Busby Babes', and Preston's Tom Finney was Footballer of the Year that season.

The Munich air crash the following season decimated Busby's United and Preston finished runners-up to Wolves that year with Finney, Tommy Docherty and Frank O'Farrell in the Preston lineup. Cliff then moved to Hull City before retiring in 1971, shortly after the arrival of former Arsenal star Terry Neill who took over as manager. Cliff died in 1975, aged 66.

Tom's dad, John, was a solid schoolboy sportsman but it has been left to Tom to put the family name back in the spotlight.

But if Tom, aiming for a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and then a career in journalism, is to win the starting QB job at Cornell over his remaining two-and-a-half years at university, he will have to hone his game even more.

"I'm quite mobile as a quarterback and I'm happy to improvise and scramble for yardage or a touchdown," said Britton. "But I know I'll have to do some work on throwing the ball long. I'm aware of the standards I have to match or better. Ricky Rahne has just graduated from Cornell third on the all-time passing record list in Ivy League football, overtaking Jay Fiedler now with the NFL's Miami Dolphins who reached this season's play-offs."

Tom began playing American Football at seven with the Brighton B52s juniors and moved on to the London Capitals before finding out about Morrisville on the internet and sending their head coach tapes of his games here in England. Morrisville is termed a Junior College and in moving to Cornell he has made quite a leap, missing out Divisions Three and Two and going into Division 1AA. That's one level below Division 1A, the "big league" where teams play in front of up to 90,000 fans and on national TV.

"The NFL is a real long shot but it would be good to play in the NFL Europe League and then go into journalism", said Tom.

"On the whole, everyone has been very good about me playing in the US. I did get a bit of trash talk from opponents while playing for Morrisville, once they heard my accent while calling plays out on the field but it was humourous more than offensive. They would try mimicking a British accent, coming out with things like 'Okay, you bloody bastard, you're not in jolly old England anymore'. And there were a few 'tea and crumpets' jibes."

One of Tom's early priorities on arrival at Cornell was to offer his services to the university newspaper, where no doubt he'll put the family name back in the sporting headlines.

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