By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE, Sept 7 (Reuters) – San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan is not entirely sure what day it is after the long-haul trip to Australia but says his team is fired up for their NFL season-opener against the Los Angeles Rams.
The 49ers and Rams will play the first NFL regular-season game in Australia on Friday at the 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground as part of a record nine-game schedule of international matches.
The 49ers arrived a week before kick-off to acclimatise but the time zone difference was still proving a challenge for Shanahan in his first press conference in Australia on Monday.
“We’re a little confused with when I look at my clock and it says the time, and then I try to see my family’s time, and it says the time, but it says yesterday,” Shanahan said at the team’s training base at Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.
“I don’t get how that’s possible. So I feel like I’m in the future.
“Then also when we play on our Friday, which I think is a Thursday in the U.S., we’re such creatures of habit.
“So I call today Tuesday. No, wait, sorry, I call today Wednesday, which is the first day we put in the game plan,” he added.
“But I think it’s Monday. However, though it’s Sunday in the present, so like I’m going to mess that up all week if you guys ask me.”
The 49ers saw their 2025 season end with a stinging 41-6 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in the divisional playoff.
Shanahan said it was initially hard to adjust to the idea of a season-opener in Australia but the team were now excited after being on the ground.
“We love being the only game on, as opposed to being on a Sunday where there’s a lot of games playing, and it’s really cool to be out here. And I think our guys are pretty jacked now,” he said.
SLEEP ROUTINES
The 49ers have trained in the Australian morning as part of their preparations for the 10:35 a.m. (0035 GMT) kick-off on Friday and gave their players a detailed file on how to acclimatise after consulting multiple experts on sleep and nutrition.
The Rams, who are nominally the home team, are doing things differently.
They will not arrive until the day before the game and are sticking to sleep and training routines as if preparing for a regular game at 5:35 p.m. in California.
The 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey shrugged off the strangeness of a morning kickoff and praised staff for the level of detail in preparing the players.
“There were big packets on the plane, different supplements to take at different hours, different sleep suggestions, when to stay up during the day, when to go to bed,” he said.
“So any questions you think you would have had, they answered it in these packets.”
A number of 49ers players had a taste of what a big MCG crowd is like when they were among 96,680 spectators who watched the Australian Football League playoff between the Geelong Cats and Carlton Blues on Friday.
McCaffrey said there were some things the players could not prepare for, though, at a stadium with a sprawling, oval-shaped surface.
“I’ll probably know better after the game,” he said.
“It’s always weird when you go into a new stadium that’s not a football stadium … Where the game clocks are, hearing calls, hearing audibles regardless of noise.
“That’s all stuff that you’ll adjust to during the game.”
(Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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