The best NFL players want to play there and the most productive duo in Quebec university football sings its praises. In the province, Antony Auclair and Matthew Bergeron have both started their own leagues. Four years after its arrival at the Olympic Games, no one looks down on flag football anymore.
The flag offers all the aspects I still loved about football, but without the risk of injury that comes with it [le fait de] get hit, says Antony Auclair near the PEPS field at Laval University.
Retired from the NFL for less than a year, the tight end quickly pivoted to a coaching career. The one who is guiding the Rouge et Or center-backs this fall, however, has not really hung up his boots.
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Antony Auclair and the rest of the division 1 star team of the Beauce-Québec Flag Football League, including Rouge et Or players Olivier Cool, Édouard Arsenault, Arnaud Desjardins and Jérémy Ouellette
Photo: Courtesy
At 31, the 1.97m tall athlete spent last summer serving as commissioner of his own flag football league, in Quebec and Beauce, while being one of the star players on the 40-team circuit.
The Olympics are four years away, so it’s still a long way off for me, but I would definitely like to be part of the Canadian team this summer.
The new Olympic dream
First played by American soldiers for entertainment during the Second World War, flag football has been present in Quebec for several decades, generally in a 5 versus 5 or 7 versus 7 format. But the practice of this non-contact derivative of football remained , until a few years ago, rather marginal outside the Montreal region.
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Antony Auclair when he wore the Buccaneers colors
Photo: The Canadian Press / Chris O’Meara
We are a little behind the United States. They have been emphasizing this for a long time to develop young football players, but also to offer another sport to those who like to run lines and catch balls, but perhaps less the contact aspect, describes the former Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end.
A sign of the popularity of flag football in the United States, the organizing committee of the Los Angeles Summer Games made it, last year, one of its discretionary choices as a new sport added to the Olympic program in 2028.
Since then, a flag football game between the best players in the NFL has replaced the traditional all-star game at the Pro Bowl. Several of the best quarterbacks and receivers on the circuit, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Tyreek Hill and Ja’Marr Chase, openly display their intentions to wear the colors of their country.
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Seattle Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf during the Pro Bowl flag football game last February.
The Olympic dream, the football players could not live that. It is certain that there will be NFL athletes, active and retired, who will want to join their national team, assures Antony Auclair.
An explosive duo with or without shoulder pads
Revelation of the fall with the Rouge et Or, Olivier Cool became, in his second season at Laval University, the favorite target of quarterback Arnaud Desjardins. Taking advantage of his ex-teammate Kevin Mital’s departure to the pros, the 1.75 m wide receiver has already caught nine touchdown passes in seven games, a record in Quebec, this season.
I think we were also the best duo in flag football this summer, reveals Desjardins about his complicity with Cool.
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Receiver Olivier Cool and quarterback Arnaud Desjardins
Photo : Radio-Canada / Guillaume Piedboeuf
Seeing how serious Antony Auclair’s league was taking last summer, the Rouge et Or quarterback and several of his teammates decided to form a team. It must be said that Arnaud Desjardins’ counterpart in the 2022 Vanier Cup final, former Saskatchewan Huskies quarterback Mason Nyhus, is today the starting quarterback of the Canadian national flag football team .
We had a team at my high school and I’ve loved it ever since. As a quarterback, in the off season, we don’t have many opportunities to have defenses and movement in front of us, explains the Rouge et Or pivot.
We were able to rework the flag passing patterns that we have in the game book. And as the field is smaller and the passing windows too, it develops different skills, describes Olivier Cool.
Could flag football be the secret recipe of the most productive duo in Quebec university football?
I speak for the whole team when I say that we loved our experience and it’s something we want to do again. I consider that the flag has really, really helped us for the season we are having at the moment.
A quote from Arnaud Desjardins, quarterback of the Rouge et Or
A national structure is emerging
Whether it is to refine his skills, extend his career with the oval ball or simply learn the basics of football, Antony Auclair is convinced that flag football has a great future in Quebec.
The league that he started for fun with friends from Beauce in 2012 now has 40 teams divided into five divisions, including one for women. Given the fact that flag football is the sport whose practice is growing the most in the province’s secondary schools, particularly among girls, the native of Notre-Dame-des-Pins thinks even bigger.
We want it to grow. Our goal is to become the flag reference in Quebec. We are going to do development camps, describes Auclair about the league he runs with his brother Adam.
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Matthew Bergeron is playing his second season in the NFL as the starting guard for the Atlanta Falcons.
Photo : Shanna Lockwood/Falcons d’Atlanta
However, they are not the only high-level footballers with this project. Matthew Bergeron, of the Atlanta Falcons, was also involved in the creation of an NFL-sanctioned flag football circuit in his hometown of Victoriaville last summer.
There are things developing in the shadows at the moment. Soon, I think it’s going to be a really nice structure in Canada, comments Antony Auclair on this subject.
There is a professional Ultimate Frisbee league. I think we are capable of having a professional flag league.
