Once again, the players in the Amityville Turkey Bowl will meet in a local park

Two dozen football lovers will assemble again Thanksgiving morning to play on Amityville's Lou Howard Field, continuing a tradition that began more than half a century ago.

They have names like Kretz, Lagrassa and McDonough, familiar to anyone in the village. They are plumbers, teachers, businessmen and firefighters; one, Dennis Siry, is a village trustee.

Some started playing the Thanksgiving game years ago next to their dads; some of them are now playing alongside their sons.

The game is called the Amityville Turkey Bowl.

"It's nice to get together for the good things," said Joe Bozza, 52, a plumber and one of the few in the group who played football on a college scholarship. "A lot of times, you don't see these guys much during the year, and then you come out and it's like you saw them yesterday."

The players will arrive around 10 a.m., shoot the breeze and limber up. The game starts at 10:30 a.m. The chime of a local church bell is the two-minute warning the game is near the end. The noon firehouse whistle ends it.

There are no referees, extra points or weather cancellations. Quarterbacks are captains, and captains pick their teams. "A lot of guys call plays: '57 Option, four back flyer,' " said Dan Heller, 55, also a plumber, recalling schematics many learned by heart from Amityville Memorial High School coaches. "There's some drawing in the dirt."

The game is rough touch. How rough?

"You come out with a couple bruises," Bozza said. "There's been a few years when I sat at the table having trouble breathing because of cracked ribs. Last year, a guy got his jaw broken."

Years pass and the game changes. Bill Kretz's sons, Billy and Brian, among the better athletes to come out of Amityville Memorial in recent years, now play; Bozza's son, Joseph, a 6-foot-3, 210-pounder who played for Lindenhurst Senior High this year as a junior, will also play.

Bodies have aged. "It's the knees," said Heller. "I used to be pretty fast."

Bozza learned he had cancer earlier this year. He's undergoing chemotherapy and has dropped 80 pounds. He'll sit this game out but will drive over from the house in Lindenhurst to the place he says he never really left.

"It stays with you," he said. "It's that kind of town."