<i> Glasnost </i> Football Takes a Drubbing, to Say the Least

It started looking bad for the first Soviet football team to play on American soil when the players heard the Turkish national anthem played in their honor.

It went downhill from there.

The year-old Tacoma Express, a Minor League Football System team, whipped the Soviet national champion Moscow Bears 61-0 Monday night in an exhibition game before 1,303 spectators in the Tacoma Dome.

The game was billed by promoters as “Glasnost on the Gridiron.”

Bears Coach John Ralston, a former Denver Broncos head coach, didn’t talk game strategy or give his players a fiery pregame pep talk. He was busy explaining how to suit up in full pads.

“Don’t forget, you need your thigh pads, your knee pads and your elbow pads,” he said through an interpreter. “You don’t want to land on that AstroTurf without your elbow pads.”

For the past eight weeks, Ralston has been trying to mold a group of Soviet rugby players, shot-putters, javelin throwers and decathletes into a professional football team. He knows after Monday night he still has a long way to go.

“I’m disappointed in our fundamentals,” he said after the game. “I don’t think we do the fundamentals very well.”

The team is playing four American exhibition games arranged by the International Sports Connection, a sports promotion company based in Gadsen, Ala. Besides Tacoma, the team will play in Fresno, Oklahoma City and Macon, Ga., with a possible match in Charlotte, N.C.

The starting quarterback first touched a football seven months ago, and he’s the team’s veteran. Ralston’s biggest player tips the scales at 250 pounds.

Ralston had said he mainly wanted to ensure his players finished the game intact--especially his starting tight end, since both backups had been detained in the Soviet Union by the KGB the night before departure.