Cal in Australia: Marshawn Lynch dons blue and gold; equipment team shipped goal posts to Sydney

Connor Letourneau of the San Francisco Chronicle went into further detail as to the logistics the incredible Cal Athletics equipment team had to go through to get everything up and ready to move to Australia.

Cal Equipment (give them a follow on Twitter!) and Cal football equipment (them too) doesn’t really get enough credit for their role in keeping the football team going and rolling. These sturdy Golden Bears are often trucking tons of equipment up and down the West Coast (last year they had to probably travel ten thousand miles or so to get tons of football gear and equipment from Berkeley to Austin to Berkeley to Seattle back to Berkeley in the span of two weeks), and they make the road gameday experience as smooth as possible for our team. The case was no different here.

The hero of this whole story appears to be new head equipment manager Dan Matthiesen, who got on the job a few weeks after the Cal-Hawaii game in Sydney went through. Kudos also go to assistant athletic director of football administration Andrew McGraw, who handled much of the operations on the football side.

Some of the details.

• Over 2,300 pounds of radio and video equipment was shipped on the trip. Clock operators, groundskeepers, chain crews, stat keepers have all also apparently been provided by Cal.

• Billionaire Richard Branson offered Cal a special deal on one of his largest twin Virgin jet airlines to charter across the Pacific, in hopes that he can get football fever stoked in Australia.
• 75 passports were procured for Cal football players who didn’t have them already (for many Golden Bears, this is their first trip outside of the United States).
• Cal football’s practice facility in Australia doesn’t have goalposts. The Cal equipment team assembled goalposts and shipped them down earlier in the summer and they arrived at The University of New South Wales.
  
• We’ve gone a little bit over the preparation for Cal’s flight to Australia, but more details here.

Nothing was more meticulously planned than Cal’s marathon flight to Sydney. To tire out their players, coaches pushed them through two practices Saturday. Support staffers handed each athlete specialized compression pants, the same worn by Navy SEALs recovering from missions, to stimulate blood flow on the plane.

• Cal is expected to make at least a million from this game. We’ll see if this encourages future international travel for the football team.

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Marshawn Lynch isn’t just visiting Cal down under. He’s strapping on the pads too and teaching the young’ins. Here he is with Vic Enwere.

Sonny talks about Marshawn in his post-presser.

Caption contest: What are Marshawn and Vic talking about in this photo?

Here are some video interviews with Tre Watson, Darius Allensworth and Demetris Robertson.

A look at the official Sydney Cup press conference.

Some more photos from our Cal football players.

Traveon Beck

Darius Allensworth introduces cornerbacks coach John Lovett to the man they call Drake.

Ross Bowers has his accuracy on point.

Only a few more days to wait until Cal football is here.

The stadium is ready.