Soggy excuse for a game in London

LONDON -- The NFL came to London and got rain.

Darn the luck.

Referees toweled off footballs before each play. Linemen removed chunks of gunk from facemasks. The fans saw Giants quarterback Eli Manning pass for just 59 yards but demonstrate a wide-ranging array of handoffs.

In the poster play of the first regular-season NFL game outside North America, Miami quarterback Cleo Lemon dropped back to pass 32 seconds before halftime, Michael Strahan turned up front and center, Lemon cocked his arm . . .

And the ball slipped out like a bar of soap in the shower for an unforced fumble that Strahan recovered, setting up a field goal that gave the New York Giants a 13-0 lead, on their way toward a 13-10 win, their sixth straight.

“I don’t think they saw what the NFL has to offer because of the rain,” Miami kicker Jay Feely said of the 81,176 fans who packed the spiffily redone Wembley Stadium.

“My whole body was wet,” Lemon said.

Everybody was wet. There’s a word for that in London; they call it life.

Even the inevitable streaker got wet -- well, after materializing just before the second-half kickoff and performing three push-ups, a minor feat given his regular-guy flab quotient.

Still, this midseason yawner between a lukewarm contender (Giants) and a winless straggler (Dolphins) took on occasional Super Bowl hints. The sidewalks of North London teemed with NFL gear like some harbinger of Halloween. Three guys boarded the District Line tube dressed as Captain America, Uncle Sam and a large hot dog, with the hot dog costume boasting a vertical streak of mustard.

Fans wore a wide array of NFL jerseys from Seahawks to Bengals to T.O. At least one grown man wore a wedge of cheese on his head. The NFL floated some giant white orb out onto the turf before the game. The teams ran onto the pitch -- sorry, field -- to a wide constellation of camera flashes.

“It made me feel a lot like I was a gladiator,” Miami cornerback Will Allen said.

“It exceeded my expectations,” Miami guard Rex Hadnot said. “That’s the only time I’ve ever seen a game with cameras flashing like that.”

“I smiled when we walked in the stadium as visitors and no one booed,” Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said. “Thought that was great.”

With the Dolphins designated the “home” team and the NFL compensating them their normal home-game share of receipts and concessions for the inconvenience, the crowd reiterated that European fans simply produce deeper, better roars than American fans. In particular the Dolphins, who normally play before dispassionate if not downright listless Miamians, received full din whenever they so much as hinted at prowess.

With Miami a favorite among the scattered British NFL fans since the Marino 1980s and the NFL’s brief British heyday, major decibels almost developed when receiver Derek Hagan nearly pulled in Lemons’ 11-yard pass in the end zone late in the third quarter.

When finally the Dolphins did score a touchdown 1 minute 54 seconds from the end on a 21-yard pass Lemon threaded through the middle to Ted Ginn Jr., those remaining among the drenched and empty red seats made a sound pretty considerable.

Intercultural weirdness did appear here and there.

It probably was the first NFL regular-season crowd to boo a Chelsea soccer star (John Terry) because this is North London, not West London, and it might’ve been the first real NFL game featuring an Everton banner over a wall. (Note: That’s a soccer club in Liverpool.)

Somebody in one end zone brought along a whistle and used it liberally, “which caught me a couple of times,” Miami defensive end Jason Taylor said, adding that he’d let up a little bit. (Note: That’s really annoying at American football.)

Booing reigned when Manning knelt on the last three plays to exhaust the clock. “The only thing they didn’t understand, quite frankly,” Coughlin said. (Note: They might’ve understood but disliked it anyway.)

But mostly, it rained, as the NFL’s dip of its toe in the globalization water turned literal.

“The grass was just real thin,” Manning said, but he managed to lumber across it to the left pylon for a 10-yard second-quarter touchdown scramble he described thusly: “Eventually, I got there.”

“Nasty,” Strahan said, later adding, “Rushing the passer, it’s horrible.”

“It was like ice out there so it just skipped,” Feely said, and that referred to the game’s last bid at lapsing into intrigue. With 1:54 left and Miami trailing, 13-10, and just yearning for a first win under new Coach Cam Cameron, Feely’s onside kick buzzed along the ground and hurried right off the field before anybody could touch it.

All told, it had to be the wettest and worst onside kick in the history of NFL games outside North America.