American Football – American Bowls – Simon Hendy Photography

From 1987 to 1991, I went to the NFL American Bowls at Wembley Stadium. These were always the first pre-season games of the season, so while the superstars played, the usually only played the first series or maybe the first quarter.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to go to the first game in 1986, so missed out on seeing Walter Payton play, but looking back through the photos now there were a lot of serious top-end players on show – and several Hall of Famers.

I’ll be the first to admit that these aren’t the greatest of photos – I had only just got my first camera, the action was a long way away, I was using a manual focus 300mm (later 400mm) f5.6 lens, and even with (relatively) fast films (all of ISO 400 and 800!) it was pretty much impossible to take photos during the games as we headed into the evening. This is why a lot of the photos are from the pre-game warms ups – there was a lot more light.

1987 – LA Rams v Denver Broncos
Eric Dickerson, Jim Everett, John Elway (no good photos of him though)