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Porvoon Butchers history
Butchers was founded in 1986 in town of Porvoo, which is
located on the Gulf of Finland coastline some 50km east from Helsinki.
Nobody really knows where the idea of the name came from but it sounded
good and scary plus nobody knew another football team called Butchers (also
names Shot guns, Wild cats and Bisons got votes for the team name).
Butchers played fist time in the Maple League in 1989 for one season (Maple
name comes from Canadian ambassador who gave the Trophy for the Finnish
American Football Association when they started to play American
football in Finland. First maple league season was played in 1980).
After 1991 Butchers has missed Maple League only twice in 2000 due to
financial problems and 2001 when Butchers started new era at I-divison.
After long seasons with not much success Butchers finally got the first
medal, bronze, in 1995. Team was led by coach Tom Kean, a legend from
Cal Berkeley. In 1997 Butchers was the last team to make it to the
playoffs and created a big surprise by dropping the 11-0 Turku Trojans
from the Maple Bowl. At the time Helsinki Roosters was a too tough to
defeat and Butchers got silver medals for a season -97.
After couple of hard season 2003 Butchers won bronze against dear rival
Seinäjoki Crocodiles. 2004 was again very tight bronze game versus
Crocodiles. This time Crocodiles were better by a inch and Butchers came
to 4th place. 2005 Butchers got up a very strong team and the goal was
to win the first championship with a pass-happy offense and a tight
defense. This happened over, surprise, surprise the Crocodiles and since
the championship party was a success the team decided to do the same
again in 2006, this time versus the Helsinki Wolverines.
Needless to say goal for 2007 is to make it three in a row in Finland
and take as much fun out of participating first time in any Euroleague.
However, this is not the first international game for the team since
Butchers was representing Finland in world championships in Italy 1998.
Nowadays Butchers is one of the biggest American football clubs in
Finland. There are ladies american football team and 6 different junior
teams (U-21, U-19, U-17, U-15, U-13 & flag football team). Butchers is
nowadays a team with over 100 active american football players.
Butchers has been very active in teaching local kids the basics of the
game. Porvoo has no big hockey or soccer teams in town and also that has
helped american football to come very popular. Successful season or not
Butchers has become part of many citizens Saturday afternoons and for
years homefield “Keskuskenttä” (=Porvoo central field) has been the best
place to play Maple League game with an unique atmosphere.
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