UH players play tourist, Rolovich gets a surfboard in Australia

University of Hawaii football coach Nick Rolovich got a welcome gift of a surfboard and UH players toured the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge on a promotional tour before Saturday’s much-anticipated opening college football game of the season in Australia Saturday.

A chartered Boeing 777 touched down at Sydney airport on Monday morning, delivering the California Golden Bears and team officials Down Under, while Hawaii’s chartered plane arrived Sunday.

The Bear’s 14-hour flight left San Francisco just after midnight Saturday night. The 100-plus players and coach Sonny Dykes, were greeted by cheerleaders as they walked off the plane.

Organizers say Saturday’s midday game — Friday afternoon in Hawaii— at Sydney’s Olympic stadium is expected to attract a crowd of more than 65,000.

Former Rainbow Warrior quarterback Rolovich is making his debut as head coach. It will be the seventh straight year that Hawaii has opened against a Pac-12 opponent, and Hawaii is 2-4 in that span.

Hawaii has had six Australians on its roster in the past, and this year’s squad includes Sydney native and first-year defensive lineman Max Hendrie.

Dykes planned to keep the players up Monday to get them used to the time difference, and scheduled a practice within three hours of their arrival.

Today’s events included a public reception at the Opera House.

“This is my senior year and I’m here to win a football game,” quarterback Davis Webb said before the team left California. “That’s the way I’m approaching it. I’ll walk around Sydney, see the culture and embrace it and maybe eat lamb because everybody talks about that.”

Webb, who Dykes has already named as starting quarterback, is one of the key Cal additions this year, replacing Jared Goff, the No. 1 overall NFL draft pick by the Los Angeles Rams.

A graduate transfer from Texas Tech, Webb played in 23 games with 14 starts over three seasons, with career totals of 5,557 yards and 46 touchdowns. He’s enrolled in Cal’s public health masters program.

Dykes says he and the team are embracing the trip. Some of the players had never left the U.S., so organizing passports was among the preparations needed for the season opener.

“When you have an opportunity as an 18-year-old to go across the world to a different continent, see a completely different culture, explore a place you might never have had an opportunity to explore, just the impact that can have on your life is great,” Dykes said before leaving. “The value of that, you can’t determine that.”

The game, with Cal designated as the home team, will be the first college football game played in Sydney and the first significant American football game played in Australia since 1999. Then, the Denver Broncos beat the San Diego Chargers 20-17 on Jason Elam’s 30-yard field goal on the final play of the game in the preseason American Bowl. Also played at the Olympic stadium, that game attracted more than 73,000 spectators.

It is the first college football game to be played in Australia since Brigham Young defeated Colorado State in 1987 in Melbourne. A crowd of 7,652 watched BYU’s 30-26 win at the 32,000-seat Princes Park stadium, far less than the 20,000 organizers had hoped.