New York Jets @ San Francisco 49ers

Late on Sunday evening, I managed to get a club level ticket for section 220 for a more reasonable price than I had found previously - "only" £258.  This was about half the price that I found for reasonable seats earlier on in the week, so I took it.

I've been to the stadium in Santa Clara before, back in 2016, but that time, I was staying in San José, which made the travelling logistics very much simpler, since Santa Clara is right next to it.  This time, I was starting from San Francisco, with the game kicking off at 5.15pm.  I left the hotel at 1.30pm, caught the bus to the Caltrain station and just caught the 2.12pm train - remembering to tag in before boarding.  Fortunately, there was another man on the bus who was clearly looking to catch the same train and knew which way was quickest so I followed him!  This takes about an hour to trundle down to Mountain View where you switch to the Light Rail service, which half an hour later, drops you off at the stadium.

When I went in, it was very busy!  I went around the concourse and up to the club section, which wasn't as busy.  It also comes with a huge bonus: all the food and non-alcoholic drinks are free of charge!  Going by the amount usually charged for stuff, that's quite a discount to take into account from the ticket price.

There were  a few Jets fans in there too, who stood out with their green jackets.  This being the US version of football, this is not an issue at all, although the raffle ticket vendors were also wearing green, and by the end were probably fed up with being told they should ask for a different colour outfit!

The big late-breaking news as we arrived at the stadium is that our star player, Christian McCaffrey was inactive for the game, with the team not wanting to risk his calf injury.  This was disappointing for us to not get to see him, so we had Jordan Mason instead.  He did a pretty good impression of CMC, all told.

There was only one problematic issue: the club section is on the northern side of the stadium and it was a hot and sunny day.

I hadn't taken my hat with me either, but I had taken my Roku hoodie and my jacket in anticipation of the coldness to come in the evening.  I needn't have bothered with the coat.  Fortunately, the hood of the hoodie is oversized and I was able to use it to shield my eyes and face a lot of the time.

At half time, I stayed in my seat to watch Frank Gore, a former 49ers running back, being inducted into the 49ers hall of fame.

Fortunately, by the end of half time, the sun had dropped below the roof of the southern side of the stadium, so we were in the shade for the rest of the game.

The late touchdown for New York was disappointing to concede, but the game was long over by then.  The 32-19 scoreline probably flatters the Jets a little.  Cleaning up a few mistakes (and if the refs hadn't missed a blatant PI on Deebo Samuel) would have put the 49ers up well over the 40 point mark.

The new-style "dynamic" kickoffs are weird - they seem to be anything but "dynamic" to me, where the kicker is the only player moving as he kicks it off and then nobody else is allowed to move until the ball is caught or touches the ground.

It's so nice not to be blasted by unpleasantly loud "music" between each play - or indeed at all.  And by the time dusk had fallen, the crowd isn't illuminated directly at all - so you're not staring into bright lights.

Inside the club section, pre-game

It was great to see Aaron Rodgers back healthy playing for the Jets and lasting the whole game after being lost of the season just 4 plays into their season opener last year.

The other good news for me was that George Kittle didn't do much, and despite Brandon Aiyuk not doing much either as pre-warned by the head coach, the defence managed to score a few fantasy points to secure the win for my public team in week 1.  Meanwhile, the work league was sunk largely by the failure of Jalen Hurts' performance, although Mark Andrews and the Baltimore D/ST didn't perform either.

The trip home took longe than the game actually took to play.  It was the reverse journey, but it took 45 minutes of queueing to get on the Light Rail at the stadium.  Fortunately for those of us on the LR train we caught, we just made the connection at Mountain View for the Caltrain (it wouldn't have been a half hour wait otherwise)  The bus managed to be quick without all the passengers through Chinatown after 11pm, so I got back to my hotel just after 11.30pm.  Now I could have re-watched the game on TV if I had wanted, but I was actually quite tired.