Photo: Florian l. Schellhorn

TheSwarco Raiders wonCEFl Bowl XII, – the title game of the Central European Football League – by overwhelming theKragujevac Wild Boars fromSerbia 55-20 inInnsbruck, Austria in front of 3,500 fans atTivoli Stadium.

With this resounding win, and the way they also handled both thePolish andDanish champions leading up to this game, theRaiders definitely let the rest ofEurope know that they are a force to be reckoned with.

The was the second year in a row anAustrian team has taken home the trophy. In 2016, theGraz Giants were victors beating Serbia’s SBB Vukovi Belgrade.

Swarco quarterbackSean Shelton was magnificent and was named game MVP after throwing five touchdown passes and running two more in himself. Running back Tobias Bonatti caught one touchdown pass and rushed for another whileFabian Abfalter, Alexander Nitzlnder, Kyle Callahan andDaniel Saurer caught one each.

ForKragujevac, quarterbackDalton Oliver, in only his fourth start with the team, moved the ball well and threw a touchdown pass to receiver Strahinja Stepovic while also scoring himself on a one yard plunge. Running back Laurent Tshimanga also scored on a 63 yard run.

TheRaiders opened up smartly withShelton marching his team down the field, picking apart theKragujevac secondary, finally ending the drive himself from two yards out. TheWild Boars responded though asOliver engineered his own drive capping it by carrying the ball in himself to even the score at 7-7.

Then the floodgates opened forSwarco as they scored three straight second quarter touchdowns with Shelton findingAbfalter and Nitzlnder for scores whileBonatti scored on an eight yard rushing touchdown to give theRaiders a 27-7 halftime lead.

The third quarter offered more of the same withShelton driving the Raiders down the field and this time throwing a 14 yard touchdown pass to Bonatti to extend the lead to 34-7. Tshimanga reduced the lead to 34-14 on his 63 yard scamper butShelton connected withCallahan and then scored his second touchdown of the game before the end of the quarter to widen it to 48-14.

With the mercy rule in place in the fourth quarter, the clock did not stop moving.Oliver threw a seven yard touchdown pass to Stepovic to reduce the gap to 48-20. ButShelton answered by keeping the ball on the ground, handing off toBonatti and then findingSaurer from three yards out to make the final score 55-20.