The San Francisco 49ers expected to have some fun on the flight home from Melbourne after beating the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia. Instead, the team spent most of the journey asleep.
The players had discussed using the return flight for a makeshift version of Kyle Shanahan’s annual players party. Kyle Shanahan normally hosts the team at his house after the final roster cuts, but the trip to Australia meant there was no time for the usual gathering. The players figured they could make up for it on the way back.
The plan was straightforward. Everyone would get some sleep after the game, then wake up for the second half of the flight and celebrate together. Kyle Juszczyk said that was how the players were thinking about it when they left the stadium.
However, almost everyone including Shanahan fell asleep
By the time Juszczyk woke up, however, there was only about an hour left in the flight and the rest of the team was still sleeping. The party never really happened. Christian McCaffrey later described a similar experience, saying he had expected to celebrate before falling asleep for 13 hours.
49ers beat LA Rams 27-7 in Melbourne
There was a good reason the players were worn out. San Francisco had spent a week in Melbourne preparing for the opening game while adjusting to a 17-hour time difference from California.
The long stay paid off. The 49ers beat the Rams 27-7 on Sept. 11 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, opening the season with a convincing division victory. Brock Purdy threw three touchdown passes, including scores to Demarcus Robinson and Mike Evans, while San Francisco’s defense held Los Angeles to seven points.
Evans ended his 49ers debut with six catches for 49 yards and a touchdown. Christian McCaffrey and rookie Kaelon Black also shared the workload in the backfield, with San Francisco able to keep the offense moving after taking a 10-7 lead into halftime.
The game was the first NFL regular-season contest played in Australia and attracted a crowd of 100,021 to the MCG. It also highlighted the difference between the two teams’ travel plans. The 49ers had arrived well ahead of the game, while the Rams reached Melbourne much later in the week.
San Francisco’s extended stay meant the players had already spent several days adjusting to the local schedule before kickoff. That made the flight home another part of a trip that had pushed the team’s normal routine well outside its usual limits.
LA Rams coach hopes to never play in Australia after losing to 49ers
Sean McVay was much less interested in making another trip Down Under.
After the loss, the Rams coach said he hoped he would never have to play in Australia again. His frustration was directed at the circumstances around the trip rather than the Melbourne Cricket Ground itself. McVay praised the atmosphere while expressing his frustration with the experience of preparing for a regular-season game on the other side of the world.
The Rams’ approach to the trip had been very different from San Francisco’s. Los Angeles arrived only about a day before kickoff after spending the vast majority of its preparation time in California. The organization had spent years studying the logistics and players’ sleep patterns before settling on that strategy, but the 27-7 loss left McVay unhappy with how the experiment turned out.
The NFL plans to continue playing games in Australia, so other teams will eventually face the same travel question. San Francisco can point to its result as evidence that an early arrival worked for its players.
The 49ers then headed home with a 1-0 record. They had intended to celebrate the victory somewhere over the Pacific but it appears post-game fatigue had other plans.
49ers and Kyle Shanahan Plan Party On Flight Back From Australia Fall Asleep Instead