Doyel: Colts try to make the bizarre boring in London
LONDON – A man could have died inside that tunnel. Maybe a man did die inside that tunnel. Lots of men. It could have been an underground bloodbath, just a few feet from where the Indianapolis Colts are preparing for their game Sunday here in England against Jacksonville.
We’ll never know exactly what’s down there, because the World War II air raid shelter next to the Colts’ practice field has been closed off. There’s no getting inside those tunnels the British army carved 75 years ago into the English countryside during “The Blitz,” when Germany bombed London for 57 consecutive nights during World War II.
After the war, those tunnels, part of a top-secret English operation known as Project X, were barricaded behind a locked iron gate. Now the only life inside that tunnel of concrete and rusted rebar are spiders on the ceilings, snails on the walls, and bats. Thousands of bats.
Oh, that’s a true story.
The Colts are making their final preparations for Sunday on a field located within a football’s throw from one of Europe’s biggest bat colonies. Pipistrelle bats, to be precise. Furry little brown things that eat upwards of 3,000 insects each night.
“The facility here is phenomenal,” Colts coach Chuck Pagano was saying Friday of The Grove, a first-class resort with a first-rate soccer pitch, and it’s doubtful he was talking about the bomb shelter or the bat colony or the civilizations that lived here millennia before this luxury spa was a luxury spa.
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Man roamed these grounds at least as far back as 3,000 B.C., based on the ancient pottery discovered here, and perhaps longer. According to the resort’s website, it was 7,000 B.C when “early man settled on the site of The Grove, gathering together, mating and eating; little has changed since then …”
What does any of this have to do with the Colts’ first-ever game in Europe? Not much. Would you rather read about the 0-3 Jaguars vs. the 1-2 Colts?
Thank you.
But speaking of the Colts …
Left tackle Anthony Castonzo was among the players who spoke to the media Friday. The Grove’s interview room is a converted greenhouse in the Walled Garden, so named because it’s surrounded by a brick wall, with a 14-foot giraffe-shaped shrub peeking over it.
Inside that old greenhouse, the 6-7, 311-pound Castonzo appeared suddenly from behind the official Colts TV backdrop. With enormous arms dangling from his sleeveless shirt and sweaty-wet hair falling around his shoulders, the gigantic left tackle looked like an extra from "Game of Thrones" – which is filmed on location here in England.
“Hello there,” is what Castonzo said after emerging from behind the royal blue backdrop.
This was not such a serious place Friday, even for a place that has such a serious background. A beaming TV reporter from Germany interrupted Andrew Luck’s media session by walking up the aisle and presenting the Colts quarterback with a welcome-to-Europe plate of schnitzel and fries.
Responded Luck: “The guy called me a schnitzel?”
Some dude from ESPN asked Luck about adjusting his sleep schedule – London is five hours ahead of Indianapolis – and another reporter followed by asking Luck for his specific bedtime in London. OK, that reporter was me. And the time Luck gave is 9:30 p.m.
Sounds early? Sounds exhausting, actually. After the Colts took a red-eye from Indianapolis and arrived Friday at sunrise, Pagano said he would use various activities to keep his players awake until mid-evening. Perhaps he was going to invite the Colts to the “Afternoon Tea” offered by The Grove at 37.50 pounds per person ($48 U.S.), but perhaps not to the “Champagne Afternoon Tea” – with a glass of Taittinger Brut – for 45 pounds ($58). This place is fancy schmancy, boasting a golf course that costs 185 pounds per round ($240) and hosts the British Masters in three weeks.
The Colts’ big activity Friday was practice, on a field worthy of an English national treasure: the men’s national soccer team. Before playing a match 15 miles to the south at Wembley Stadium, the English side comes to The Grove to train, then sleep.
Preparing to play in the same stadium on Sunday, the Colts are following an Americanized version of that formula. The soccer goals have been stowed in the woods surrounding the field, which for one week has football lines and goalposts. Off to the side is a neon yellow ambulance, just in case. Overhead are three scissor lifts from which Colts officials tape practice. American music – “Bad to the Bone” – blares from portable speakers as the media arrive behind one end zone, watching a few minutes of practice.
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The scene here looks, sounds and even feels like a fall day at the Colts’ facility on 56th Street. Unless you do some research, you’d never know the Colts are practicing next to a World War II bomb shelter. It’s overgrown now by brush and kudzu, camouflaging a hooded entrance that rises from the ground like a concrete cobra.
It’s a bat cave now, that bomb shelter. Before they play a football game in a soccer stadium on Sunday, the Colts are practicing next to a bat cave. But Pagano is doing what he can to make this bizarre week as boring as possible, calling this game a “business trip” and asking his players to forget about sightseeing and focus instead on the Jaguars.
“They certainly have taken the distractions away,” Luck said of the coaches.
Sounds like the Colts don’t know they’re sharing a resort with a gigantic bat colony.
Probably for the best.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atfacebook.com/gregg.doyel.