And then there were four...

The Kraft Family IFL playoffs kicked into gear over the weekend with a pair of hotly contested wild-card duels that saw the higher-seeded home teams book spots in the semifinals.

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On Thursday night under the lights of Kraft Stadium, in as intense an environment as the league has ever seen, the Judean Rebels banged out a 46-20 victory over the Real Housing Haifa Underdogs to earn a date with the Mike's Place Tel Aviv-Jaffa Sabres that promises to be a cage-match in every sense of the phrase.

Friday's sun-soaked soiree in the capital saw the Big Blue Jerusalem Lions return to winning ways and avenge a late regular season drubbing at the hands of their first-round opponent from Modi'in. The Dancing Camel Pioneers were simply overwhelmed from the start by a resurgent Itai Ashkenazi, who threw for three scores and ran for one more en route to a convincing 42-30 conquest that, if not erased, at least fogged up the memories of the Big Blue's recent month-long swoon.

While the Pioneers rallied in the second half to make it interesting, the Lions turned in just their second turnover-free performance of the season to knock out the defending champs and keep their bid alive to make the finals for a third straight year. They now will butt heads with their cross-city nemesis, the Papagaio Jerusalem Kings, who swept the season series between the clubs and are coming into Friday's Final Four matchup well rested off a bye.

Both the Kings and Sabres were well represented at the quarterfinal matchups, surely to do some last-minute scouting in anticipation of their upcoming all-important contests. In the case of the Rebels' just-returned-to-the-country speedster John Millar, it was the first time he had been let loose against IFL defenses and with, count 'em, one, Two, THREE touchdown of over 40 yards each, he certainly gave future foes some food for thought, and for the rest in attendance, some scintillating highlights for the memory bank.

Besides Millar, who undoubtedly stole the show, Joe Martisius was his typically dynamic self for the Rebels, completing 60 percent of his passes for 104 yards and 3 TDs - two to his bread-and-butter Chris McKinny - while running one in as well. On the other side of the ball, Joseph Widlan was a beast with 14 tackles, a sack and an interception to go along with Adam Ellayan's 11 takedowns and eight from Tzvi Kotler.

Forced to play without suspended captain Itamar Levin for the first half, the Real Housing fell behind 16-0 by the break, and it was 22-0 before the Northerners were able to break the schneid on a Taylor Bearman TD burst and conversion. With plenty of time to mount a comeback, the Underdogs displayed no quit whatsoever, but they were helpless the stop the blazin' Barbadian, who in a two-and-a-half minute span took the game out of reach with a 54-yard kickoff return for six points, encored by a dizzying 56-yard punt return touchdown that saw him weave untouched through a sea of Haifa defenders.

The third Rebel to join the roster in the preseason, Millar was forced to return to his homeland in October due to a death in the family and had much difficulty securing a visa to return, despite his Jewish patrilineage. Luckily for the Judeans - and something quite entirely the opposite for their playoff opponents - he made his way back just in time to run a dagger through the hearts of the Underdogs and into the IFL record books with a spectacular display of speed and athleticism that garnered him Mike's Place Player of the Game honors.

To make matters worse for the black-and-gold, Levin suffered a broken ankle on just his fourth carry of the game, leaving the club severely short-handed on both sides of the ball. It didn't help that Real Housing racked up an exorbitant 17 penalties, mostly on ticky-tack violations at the line of scrimmage, which gave a much-needed 88 yards back to the Rebels. Only transplanted receiver-turned-QB Shahar Yeshurun was able to pick up ground with any consistency and his 98 yards rushing led the team, although even he was only good on 1 of 6 pass attempts on the night, including an interception to Widlan.

Touchdown runs by Guy Berdashevsky and Harrison Bailey put a respectable slant on the final score, but it was a classic case of too little, too late, as the Underdogs dropped their sixth straight contest to go into the offseason with question marks abound. They may have fallen, but they certainly didn't go down quietly and without a fight. However, much soul-searching will have to be done over the next few months to figure out how the wheels came off a campaign that, early on, looked so promising.

The same can be said for the Pioneers, although their season-ending loss on Friday to Big Blue took on a decidedly different feel than the previous night's all-out slugfest. Played before an exuberant pro-Lions crowd in conditions that rivaled a deep Texas meltdown, the Lions got the scoring started early, when Ashkenazi piloted his team down the field to set up a Danny Brill 6-yard thrust into the endzone on the game's very first drive.

Brill and his back-field mate Matan Lavi would combine for a balanced 103 yards on the day, each chipping in with a TD and some hard runs between the tackles, to complement a passing attack that had Ashkenazi complete 20 of 28 throws for 163 yards and no picks in his first game back from injury.

A 31-yard sprint up the sideline by Lavi extended the Lions' lead to 14-0 before the game was even 10 minutes old, before things settled down for a back-forth-start to the second quarter. Just when it seemed that defensive stand-off was setting in, however, a wild sequence to close out the first half would see 28 points scored in 73 seconds as Big Blue took a controlling 36-6 advantage into the break.

A pair of ill-timed turnovers from Dancing Camel both led to Jerusalem scores as the hosts repaid the favor from two weeks earlier, when a season-high six turnovers doomed Big Blue against the same Pioneers. First, Ashkenazi's one-yard plunge after a Yoni Cooper fumble recovery widened the gap to 20, before his Modi'in counterpart Tal Brown burst through the hole on the first play from scrimmage for a 43-yard TD scramble, his fourth straight game with at least score.

Then, the cold-blooded Lions QB took matters into his own hands, tossing the first of two scores on the day to favorite target Idan Yaron, who made a spectacular jumping grab to come down with the perfectly thrown 26-yard TD, his best of a 10-catch performance.

After Scott Eisenberg picked off an errant desperation heave from Uri Schiff and ran it back 28 yards, Ashkenazi found go-to slot receiver Amichai Bergman from 17 yards out on the last play of the half to cap the wild flurry. Eisenberg's 17 tackles (many of which prevented long, game-breaking runs) to go along with his interception earned him a share of the Mike's Player of the Game award with his signal-calling teammate.

Modi'in would not give up and Dan Brunwasser led his team by example on the field, with 19 bone-crunching tackles to spearhead a second-half rally from the troops. Even without 2009/10 league MVP Asaf Katz and No. 1 defender William Weinberg in the lineup, the Pioneers had enough talent to rumble with the Lions. Jason Gosnel turned up the intensity level a notch and his 8-yard TD grab from Brown was a lesson in supreme concentration in draping coverage at its best.

While Ashkenazi continued to sizzle, hitting Yaron on a 5-yarder to make it 42-14, Dancing Camel responded with two quick TDs from Yotam Kushnir and Omri Sapir to open the fourth quarter and it was only a 12-point contest with almost seven minutes remaining, a veritable lifetime in football.

However, Big Blue would clamp down defensively and hold on to the ball with two clock-eating drives to snuff out any comeback hopes from the visitors. When Yoni Mayzel was brought down in the backfield to force a turnover-on-downs, all that was needed was some mop-up ground work from Brill and Lavi and a couple of kneels to close out the weekend and make it a four-horse race.

The IFL now collectively turns its attention to the upcoming semifinals, a pair of games that are sure to up the ante of fervor and excitement to unparalleled levels. Kraft Stadium will be the venue for Friday's noon kickoff in the latest edition of a Lions-Kings Jerusalem rivalry that is growing stronger by the meeting. Their all-time series record sits at 2-2 and this next battle will go a long way in determining which club truly owns the keys to the capital.

Saturday night's 9 p.m. clash in Holon will bring out all the heavyweights, with the Sabres relishing the opportunity to beat down the Rebels for a third time this year. The last time the teams met at the Hapoel Tel Aviv practice grounds, tempers flared on both sides and going into this one, there is certainly no love lost between the two sides. While Mike's Place comes in as the first-seeded favorites, the Rebels have come down the stretch on fire with four straight Ws and will be equipped with their full arsenal of weapons for the first time this season with the return of captain and emotional leader Peretz Rickett.

Friday at noon, Saturday at nine. Lions-Kings, Sabres-Rebels. Winners advance to Israel Bowl III on March 26 in Jerusalem, a bonanza bash regardless of the participants that will be played before a nationally televised audience. If this can't bring out the pigskin passion, nothing can! The Kraft Family IFL semifinals - they're here, they're real and they're (sure to be) spectacular!