Mud, sweat & touchdowns - UK's grassroots gridiron

Lukasz Smolen [left] and Lachlan Cotter play for the Wembley Stallions

On any given Sunday, a growing crowd of UK gridiron fans are glued to their TVs watching the superstars of American football go toe to toe on the long road to the Super Bowl.

But away from the glitz and the glamour of the NFL, and just round the corner from its long-time London home of Wembley Stadium, a different version of the game is being played.

With 140 players across three teams, Wembley Stallions are one of many clubs taking the sport from the screen and putting it into the grassroots, unearthing players from around the capital.

"When I was younger, if you told someone you played American football, they'd say, 'oh it's rugby with a helmet and armour'," 24-year-old Lukasz Smolen tells BBC Sport.

"Now when you tell people, they've often seen it on TV. So it's definitely reaching a broader audience."

'When you're out here and they're all playing it's brilliant'

Warren Smart [left] helped launch Wembley Stallions in 2013

Based in Sudbury Hill, Wembley Stallions were founded in 2013 by American football fan and coach Warren Smart and his wife Jackie.

Smart began playing the sport in the 1980s after he was medically discharged from the Royal Air Force [RAF] and within two years he was coaching.

After ending his playing days in 2007, he became head coach at Sussex Thunder before soon moving to London Olympians, in Croydon.

The journey from north to south London and back each weekend was long, so the couple decided to launch their own club closer to home, with Warren taking charge of the playing side and Jackie overseeing administrative duties.

"When you're out here on a Saturday and they're all playing, it's brilliant - it's just awash with people," Warren says.

The couple quickly decided they wanted to own their own equipment and make the sport as accessible as possible to interested players.

Helmets can cost anywhere from £200 for the cheapest products up to more than £1,000 for the top of the range.

The club now owns approximately 100 helmets and 120 pairs of shoulder pads, funded by grants from bodies such as Wembley National Stadium Trust, which is open to sports clubs in the London Borough of Brent.

"Asking parents to pay £450 for equipment [shoulder pads as well as helmets] when their son or daughter might only want to go for a few sessions is a bit of a barrier," Jackie says. "So we said 'no, we'll take that barrier away'."

'Fascinating to watch cultural impact of game'

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium hosted two NFL regular-season games this season, with a third at Wembley

Scott Pioli spent 27 years as an NFL executive, most notably with the New England Patriots as they claimed their first three Super Bowl wins.

He now does consulting work for NFL International and NFL Academy.

But he also spent five weeks in 1986 playing with the Newcastle Senators - a similar time to when Warren first began playing the sport.

This season there have been five international games as the NFL continues to push its brand around the globe, with matches in Sao Paulo, Munich and three in London.

And Pioli believes reaching further afield to attract new audiences outside of the US is vital to continue to grow the NFL brand and the sport itself.

"It's been fascinating to watch the cultural impact the game has had," he says.

"Some of those people playing at a younger age now, those grassroots clubs like the Newcastle Senators, it draws people in to learn the game.

"It's absolutely amazing to see what the difference is and the love for the game."

'Growing the game is about going out to grassroots'

Jason Bell played as a cornerback in the NFL for Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans and New York Giants

It is a view shared by former NFL cornerback-turned-broadcaster Jason Bell when considering the growth of the sport in general since Wembley hosted its first match in 2007.

"It's about going out there in the grassroots and meeting people where they are, that shows you that there's an investment in the local community," he told BBC Sport at an NFL Academy game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

"And that's what it's all about. You've got to be here and show them the respect because the fanbase respects that and they will grow with you because of that."

With a record 86,651 tickets sold for Jacksonville Jaguars' 32-16 victory over New England Patriots and more schools including flag football in their PE curriculums, the sport's growing influence in the UK is more evident than ever.

The British American Football Association currently lists 160 active clubs in the UK, with 12 based in Greater London.

The Stallions have three teams - under-16s, under-19s and seniors - with between 20 and 25 coaches at Sudbury Hill playing fields.

There had previously been a women's team but this was folded due to a lack of coaches, Warren says.

'She's not a girl, she's my team-mate'

Daniella Da Goia Hamelberg was the only female on the Brunel Burners roster

Daniella Da Goia Hamelberg had been a running back with the Stallions before moving to London Warriors, in Selhurst, where she plays now.

Determined to play the sport she loved at university, she was the only female on the entire roster of the Brunel Burners.

"They wouldn't exclude me from anything," the 26-year-old, of Feltham, says.

"As soon as we got outside it was all bonding together again.

"They could see 'she's not shying away, she's here. She's not a girl, she's a team-mate'."

British Universities and Colleges Sport [BUCS] have no gender-based eligibility requirements to their competitions, which resulted in Hamelberg predominantly coming up against male players on the field.

She made the call to move from her traditional running back role in the offence, to cornerback in defence.

"It was safer for me to do the hitting rather than be hit," she adds.

Scott Pioli [right] worked with the New England Patriots from 2000 to 2008

The women's game is currently going through a transitional period where a nine-a-side format has been introduced alongside the seven-a-side game, Hamelberg says.

This has brought the introduction of special teams into the game, adding the likes of punting, kicking, field goals and kick returns and players with different skillsets.

"As teams are moving up to nine-a-side it means they need to have more players on the roster to be eligible to play these games," Daniella says, having played her first nine-a-side season.

"With that, as people are moving to different areas to go up so they can play at a higher level, it's then leaving the other teams in the sevens with fewer people."

Interest in the NFL in the UK continues to grow, evidenced by the large crowds at all three London games at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Wembley.

But Hamelberg believes the best way to grow the women's game in this country is by appealing directly to potential female players.

'If you know football, you can play anywhere'

The Stallions have three teams - under-16s, under-19s and seniors

Hamelberg now coaches the Stallions' under-19s team and the Burners at Brunel University, alongside Stallions defensive lineman Lachlan Cotter.

Cotter, 26, took up the sport while studying at the University of East Anglia, before spending a year playing in Lisbon.

"You can go pretty much anywhere in Europe now and there's a place for it. There's formal ELF [European League of Football] stuff – they've got their own league now – while Germany has got GFL [German Football League]," he says.

"But Poland, Portugal, Spain – they've all got something going on. If you know football, you can play anywhere."

Cotter began playing in 2017 and now works as a full-time YouTube streamer.

"It was a smaller community that was growing [back then] but didn't quite know the direction," he adds.

"But now there's a very direct lineage between local teams, larger structures like the NFL Academy, leagues and how it all intertwines."

'We're a family - they joke I'm team mum'

Jackie Smart [right] is in charge of all administrative duties at Wembley Stallions

Kicker/punter Smolen was introduced to the sport aged 15 when Warren was invited to speak to pupils at his school, Ark Academy, in Wembley Park.

Up to that point, he had mainly played football but decided to try his hand at flag football before moving on to full contact.

"It was just a great way to go and play some sport, have fun, create a community, make some friends and relieve some stress from a whole week of studying for exams and everything else," Smolen says.

After playing in various different positions, he decided to focus on kicking and punting and, through training with specialist coach Bradley Charalambous at United Kicking, has got a scholarship to play in the US at Johnson C Smith University, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

"Seeing someone like Lukasz, who started off at a really young age and now he's been offered a scholarship in a Division Two college in America, you're making a difference," says Jackie.

"We like to feel we're more of a family. They always joke I'm team mum."

Wembley has hosted 26 matches since the NFL began its London Games in 2007