The Gladiators were the team that won the right to be called the best team of 2008, but it will hardly matter from now on, as the new season, scheduled to start on the 21st of March, is just around the corner. Scheduled for three games, the opening week will right off feature one of the best games of the season — the rematch of last year’s final.

“I think it´s good that we play Vukovi first. This takes a lot of pressure of us, because we play in Belgrade and I bet everything that Belgrade is still [deleted] that we beat them in last year’s final”, says the Gladiators quarterback Bernhard Kamber.

“The Vukovi got a lot of new good players and a new coach, so the bottom line is that the Vukovi have to show us that last year’s championship game loss was just an accident, so all the pressure is on their side.”

At that time, the Vukovi will have had four months to think about the final they lost in Vienna, the final in which they turned the ball over twice in the fourth quarter including the game clinching interception returned for touchdown by the future Bowl MVP Peter De Gouw of the Gladiators. The new players and the new coach won’t have that on their mind, but they still return most of their team from last year.
Though Kamber says he doesn’t expect a great game, as both teams won’t have a lot of practice, one still can’t ask for a better way to start the year.

With a new championship contender in the Blue Devils, the number of competitive games among the stronger teams in the league will only increase, especially since the Vukovi, the Blue Devils, and the Wolves are in the same conference. The Wolves and the Blue Devils provide an additional strong matchup for the exciting opening weekend.

The tough schedule continues for the Vukovi, as they play the Wolves in Budapest three weeks later and the Dukes in Novi Sad two weeks after that. They may have the toughest schedule in the league, including six out of eight games against teams with postseason hopes, but there’s no maybe about this being their toughest year in the CEFL to date.

The Gladiators next big game comes in their fourth match, at home against the Blue Devils on May the 16th, and two weeks after that they’ll head off to Novi Sad to play their main conference rival the Dukes.

The Wolves’ and the Blue Devils’ schedules are not much easier than the Vukovi’s, but they play two inter-conference games against, on paper, weaker teams. The Blue Devils and the Wolves play their second game in late June, while the Blue Devils and the Vukovi will play once in the spring and once in the fall.

Who plays a stronger schedule in February won’t matter much by the time October comes around — indeed, the Silverhawks showed much promise last year, as did the Cowboys during one stretch in 2008, so both could get in on the fight for a playoff spot.

If they do, it would be the first year in the current playoff format with different teams in the postseason. That is likely to happen anyway with the Blue Devils in the league — seeing who will make it, who won’t forms the foundation for the most exciting CEFL season to date.