Canberra Ultimate Blog

FU Training Squad 2012

2011-12-20T21:01:00.001+11:00

Fyshwick recently held 4 weeks of very competitive tryouts.

I am pleased to announce the Fyshwick Training Squad for 2012:

Adam Mortimer
Alex Leech
Andrew Allen
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Lance
Andrew Sutton
Asher Gentle
Brevin Balfrey-Boyd
Calum Stewart
Cameron Maxwell
Chris Stephens
Dane Robbins
Erik Jan Lindeboom
Gareth Beyers
Ian McKerracher
Ira Deveson
James Ley
Jesse Wallace
Jonno Holmes
Konrad Wallace
Matt Dowle
Mikey Hatfield
Nicholas Harris
Pete Hemphill
Simon Wansink
Thomas Walcott
Thomas Watson
Warwick Shepherd

FU selectors: AJ, Jonno and Asher

Are you a man? Do you play frisbee? Then Real Mitchell needs YOU!

2011-12-20T10:59:00.001+11:00

Real Mitchell FC is Canberra's newest Mens ultimate frisbee team.

We have two goals: development and fun. Our brother club Fyshwick United will look to win first division nationals in 2012. Our sights are set on winning the more relaxed second division nationals.

Are you a:

- league player looking to step up to club ultimate?

- young gun looking to develop your game and play for Fyshwick in future seasons?

- experienced player, who wants to play fun club level ultimate, but can't train multiple times a week?

- player trying out for Fyshwick, but who would still like to play Mens ultimate if you don't make their squad?

Then Real Mitchell is for you.

We'll start training early next year (1 night a week) and will look to head to some great tourneys, culminating in Division 2 Nationals in Melbourne in mid-April.

Awesome! I'm interested. What do I do next? Send Brett (brettdavidmassey@gmail.com) an email NOW. We'll make sure you're in the loop when we start our campaign next year.

Craig, Phil and Brett

Real Mitchell FC

Mens Development - Invite all your friends

2011-11-15T20:49:00.002+11:00

The Canberra men's team Fyshwick United is running 4 development sessions starting Thursday 24 Nov (moved back one week to finish mens league which was postponed due to weather). Everyone is welcome and encouraged to come...so long as your a guy. Don't worry if your a girl, Factory have something for you (see below).

Fyshwick training will look to develop the basic skills that every ultimate player should have so whether your a beginner or an advanced player there will be something for you. If your interested in playing for Fyshwick next year, you should come along as well, as these sessions will be used to select a training squad for next year.

Training starts at 6.30 (cleats on at 6.15) and will go for a couple of hours, problably followed by a trip to the pub.

For more information see www.fyshwickunited.com

Factory Beginners' Clinics 2011!

2011-10-01T17:59:00.005+10:00

FACTORY BEGINNER'S CLINICS: Thursday October 20- Thursday November 24, 5.45 for 6.00-7.00, O'Connor playing fields.
http://www.factoryultimate.com/beginners-clinic.html

Beginners' Clinics are back this year! After the overwhelming success of the clinics last year, Factory has decided to run another set of 6 clinics, leading into the rest of our glorious season. Though the clinics are aimed at Beginners, there's plenty for everyone to learn, so if you came along to last year's clincis, or if you play Frisbee in league, or if you have never heard of Frisbee but would like to give it a go, please go to the website and sign up!

Also, please invite your friends to come along. Last year we had around 40 lovely ladies at the clinics. I think this year we can hit retirement age (the big 65!- that's what retirment age is now, right?). Impossible? If everyone invites 2 friends, we'll be well over 65. So think, who are your 2 friends going to be?

Canberra's Fyshwick United Men's Spring League

2011-09-29T19:05:00.000+10:00

dates	20th October - 6th November, 2011
venue	O'Connor Oval @ O'Connor ACT 6:30-8:00pm
format	Fast Games, Fun Teams, Drinks Afterwards
cost	20 AUD
includes	Best game w best CBR guys, and lowest $$

This is a men's league for all experience levels as long as you want to run hard and have fun. Check out: https://sites.google.com/site/canberraultimatemensleague/

First, join AFDA: http://www.afda.com/editmember.php?action=add - This is FREE and essential!!!

Then, if you have been recruited by a particular captain, make sure that Captain adds you to their team -- it's worth a follow up email.

Or if you are a new player and without a team then email one of the captains and ask them to roster you by providing your AFDA number to them and a little bit about yourself:

Team 1 AJ/Konrad: konrad_wallace@hotmail.com

Team 2 Tom/Asher: ashergentle@hotmail.com

Team 3 Jonno/Dan: danmathunt@hotmail.com

Team 4 Gareth/Mikey: gareth.beyers@gmail.com or mikey_h22@hotmail.com

As a last resort, you could post your info here and you might get picked up: https://sites.google.com/site/canberraultimatemensleague/home/get-recruited-find-players

Other questions, email the commissioner: ultam8 AT gmail DOT com

To email all of the captains at once:
konrad_wallace@hotmail.com, ashergentle@hotmail.com, danmathunt@hotmail.com, mikey_h22@hotmail.com, gareth.beyers@gmail.com, andrew99.46@hotmail.com, mrfrisbee@gmail.com

Spring League

2011-09-25T00:04:00.001+10:00

The Canberra Ultimate Spring Social Ultimate League is scheduled to start on Tuesday 11th October at the Dickson Playing Fields. The league will run for 10 weeks finishing on 13th December.

Divisions 2 & 3 will commence at 6.35 and games will finish at 7.40pm. Division 1 games will begin shortly thereafter.

League Registration Site

Div 1

http://www.afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1850

Div 2

http://www.afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1851

Div 3

http://www.afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1852

Cost

The cost to enter a whole team in Spring League will be $350.

We also recognise that some players will not have a team and may need to register as individuals. We will endeavour to find you a team. If we are successful you will be advised when to pay your league fee which will be $30. Payment will be required before the league commences. These steps should avoid the hassle of having to chase fees.

Registration Process

Teams

Team captains who want to register a team can send a request to me. You must supply three things. They are:

- the division you would like to register in,
- your team name; and
- your AFDA number.

If there is room we will create a team registration site. You have 3 working days to pay the $350 team payment. If payment is not received the team will be removed from the registration site.

Teams will be required to have a minimum of 6 male and 4 female players (the ideal team size is 7m / 5f). If you require assistance in obtaining a few players please contact the league organiser as we may be able to allocate players from the list of people who register as individuals. The league organiser also has the right to add individual players to any team.

Individuals

Register your name on the website in the individual players without a team section. This does not guarantee you entry into the league.

You must not register with a specific team unless you have the agreement of the team captain. If a captain doesn’t know you, you will be removed from the registration list.

The league organiser may look at allocating you to teams that do not have a full complement of players or elect to create a new team. If we elect to create a new team we will advise you by e-mail and you will have 3 working days to pay the individual player fee of $30.

Registration Close

The registration site will close on Friday 7th October (or earlier if we reach our full complement of teams or individual players).

Be wise and register early.

Come and Try Ultimate September Sessions

2011-09-05T22:06:00.005+10:00

Factory Ultimate and Fyshwick United have joined forces to bring you the September Come & Try Ultimate days. Every Friday lunchtime this September free introductory sessions to Ultimate Frisbee will be held in Canberra's centre.

From 12.15-1.15 every Friday lunchtime, FREE
9th Sept Glebe Park, Civic
16th Sept Rose Gardens, Barton
23rd Sept Glebe Park, Civic
30th Sept Rose Gardens, Barton

This is the beginning of what promises to be an exciting and eventful season for both clubs so be sure to get on board!

For more details, check out www.factoryultimate.com/come--try.html

Winter Outdoor Frisbee League (WOFL)

2011-08-17T16:05:00.001+10:00

ACTUA is organising a very short Sunday winter league for 4 weeks from this Sunday 21 August through to 11 September.

The league will be held at Downer fields (Melba St) from 2.30pm to 4.30pm. There will be only one division, basically like Div 2 in our normal leagues (ie you can play zone). You'll get 2 shorter games each afternoon.

Registration cost is $170 per team and $17 for an individual. To pay electronically you can transfer funds to:

Account Name: ACT Ultimate
BSB Number: 801009
Account Number: 309871
Reference: Your name (so we know who it is from)

For those of you who can't make the Sunday league, never fear, Spring league is just around the corner - starting in early October, Tuesday nights at Dickson.

Cheers

Liz (ACTUA President)

ANU2 come 5th in pool, to play off for 9th tomorrow

2011-07-06T20:12:00.002+10:00

After checking the results of the games, I discovered ANU2's glorious victory by two points against CSU2 actually puts them on top of a three way tie! Since ANU2 beat CSU2 by 2 points, and only lost to Sydney Uni Cumberland by 1, they are at +1 in a three-way tie, whereas CSU2 lost by 2 points to ANU2 and won by 2 points against Cumberland, putting them at 0, and Cumberland's 1 point win against ANU2 combined with a 2-point loss to CSU2 puts them at -1! Congratulations to ANU2! This just proves how incredibly valuable those upwind points are not only in tight games, but across the whole of the tournament!

They will now be playing off for 9th place against UTS2 at 12.00, rather than for 11th place as I said earlier.

ANU into Semis at EUGs

2011-07-06T14:30:00.002+10:00

Canberra, true to form, has pulled out the very worst possible weather this week in order to welcome all our interstate visitors to their nation's capital. However, despite the 65 km/ hr winds, 13 brave University teams have struggled on, eager to bring home the EUGs championship medals.

After beating Sydney Uni 11-8 in their first tight game yesterday afternoon, ANU1 suffered its first loss this morning against Newcastle Uni. This leaves the top seeds of Pool B locked in a 3-way tie, with Sydney Uni, Newcastle Uni, and ANU1 each with 4 wins and 1 loss. However, since Sydney Uni beat Newcaslte something like 13-3, points differential puts Sydney top of the pool, with ANU second and Newcastle unfortunately having to fight it out for 5th.

Tomorrow will see these teams matching up with the top 3 of the other pool, which, assuming the further pool play goes as predicted, will be Macquarie on top, UNSW second and UTS third.

This puts Macquarie versus ANU1 in Semi1 and Sydney Uni versus UNSW in Semi2 at 10.30 on Thursday morning. The winners of these two semis will play off for gold at 3.00, and the losers will play off for bronze on the field next door, also at 3.00. There is even a small possibility that the wind speed will drop below 40 km/ hr in the afternoon!!!! (but we're not counting on it)

On the other end of the draw, ANU2 has also been playing a bunch of tight games, including a glorious victory against CSU2 on Monday afternoon and a very tight 1-point defeat against Sydney Uni Cumberland yesterday morning. They are likely to place 6th in their pool, which leads them to the 11/12 playoff, likely against the third Canberra team in the tournament, CIT, at 12.00 tomorrow afternoon.

The semis, finals and 11/12 playoff will be played on the University of Canberra fields, which, coincidentally are also the windiest fields in Canberra, tomorrow (Thursday) at the times mentioned above, so if you are passing by, stop and give us a cheer!

Eastern University Games comes to Canberra

2011-06-29T17:39:00.003+10:00

Eastern Unviersity Games is the third in the Trifecta of amazing Tournaments that Canberra has been lucky enough to host this year (BCI and Eastern Regionals being the other two). EUGs starts next Monday, July 4 and runs through to the finals on Thursday, July 7.

Along with all the rugby, judo, badmington, chess, etc, etc, this year 13 University Ultimate Frisbee teams get to duke it out over 4 days of play in the beautiful Canberra winter weather on- wait for it- 2 fields . Thanks AUS! Oh well, maybe the presence of 13 teams in such a small space will either a) warm the surrounding area slightly b) provide a wind shelter or c) both. It'll certainly be cosy!

For the first time ever, the ANU is sending 2 teams to EUGs, which is a pretty exciting development for the club. It's hard to say which is more exciting: the star-studded lineup that the ANU has for the Annunaki 1 team, or the team of raw potential that will be taking the field- many for their first ever tournament- as Annunaki 2.

Unfortunately, we don't have a complete draw at the moment, so we are unable to provide you all with times that you can come and join the hordes on the sideline, so we'll try to keep you posted on results and schedule throughout the Touranment. At this stage we can say that Annunaki 1 is in a pool of 6 with USyd1, Newcastle Uni, CSU Bathurst, CIT, and UTS2, whereas Annunaki 2 is in a pool of 7 with UTS 1, Macquarie Uni, UNSW, Sydney Uni Cumberland, USyd 2, and CSU Bathurst 2. Teams play a complete round robin, then go straight into either semis or playoff games so in order to advance in the tournament, teams must place in the top 2 of their pool.

We'll keep you posted with times and updates. Keep Thursday at 3.30 sacred- hopefully you'll be able to spend it watching Annunaki1 in the final!

League final results and Dingoes in Canberra

2011-06-14T12:00:00.003+10:00

Darwin's Finches won div 3, and the Balaclavas took out a baffling and controversial victory in Div 2 (both teams lost track of the score and the time cap hooter, and the rules for ending games all at once). Congratulations to both teams who will now be sporting their winter snuggies with pride in shopping malls around the nation's capital.

We need a league organiser for Winter. Basically, if you're willing to run something, ACTUA will accept whatever format you propose - outdoor, indoor, daytime, nighttime - it's up to you. Get in touch (who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com) if you're keen to contribute.

And finally, the Australian Open team, the Dingoes, will be training in Canberra this weekend. If you've ever wanted what ultimate looks like when it's played by the best male ultimate players in Australia, this is your chance. The training camp runs over Saturday and Sunday at Hughes 1 playing field (on Webster street in Hughes). If you're even remotely interested in the existence of ultimate outside of league, this is a great chance to see it first hand.

League Finals

2011-06-07T14:56:00.002+10:00

After seven weeks of gruelling competition, the finals of Autumn League are on tomorrow night! In a shameful admission of blog failure, I have no idea who's playing in the final of Div 3. Regardless of who actually plays you should hang around and watch the game. The standard of this league has been really high and the final is likely to be a good game to watch and heckle.

In Div 2, the Balaclavas take on Shazam. The Balaclavas have some superstars in their line-up and plenty of new talent and depth. Against this star-studded line-up, Shazam are looking like total underdogs. Also, many of Shazam's players are out of town and thus cannot play. To compound the risk of forfeits, the Balaclavas only have two players registered.

Despite the possible absence of players, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that this might be one of the highest quality league games of any league in Australia. I'm then going to qualify that by saying that both teams are also capable of plumbing the very depths of awfulness. But, returning to the limb, I think this game will see moments from both teams that wouldn't look out of place at the international level. With a number of players from each team involved in the All Australian camp two weekends ago, expect fireworks when the Div 2 final starts this Wednesday.

All Australian Camp

2011-05-29T16:36:00.003+10:00

The selection process for the Australian National Teams is underway. The next World Championships is in August next year (the venue hasn't been announced yet) and the top players from around the nation are vying for the chance to represent Australia when the tournament arrives.

Club level ultimate in Canberra has changed a lot since the last selection process for Worlds in 2008. We've seen a huge improvement in the calibre of our club teams at nationals and Canberra clubs have travelled and competed internationally with the best in the world. It's really exciting to see this development has paid off in the number of players from the ACT who attended All Australia training camp last weekend.

The All Australia camp gives the selectors for the Open (the Dingos), Womens (the Firetails), and Mixed teams (the Barramundis) a chance to see the 60 best men and 60 best women duke it out without the advantages or impediments of their normal club teams. From this initial camp, 30-something men and 30-something women will be drafted into the Open and Women's squads, and once those teams have narrowed down their rosters a bit the Mixed team will announce its training squad.

The players from the ACT who attended the All Australian camp were:

Matthew Dowle
Asher Gentle
Jonathan Holmes
Andrew Jackson
James Ley
Adam Mortimer
Warwick Shepherd
Thomas Watson
Max Wheeler
Mica Hartley
Keah Molomby
Vickie Saye
Lucy Stevenson
Heather Tolly
Erin Wallis

Special mention should also go to Pete Hemphill, who has been given the opportunity to coach the Dingos. This is great recognition for the excellent work Pete has done over the last few years with FU and Kaboom.

Congratulations to everyone who was selected for the AA camp and good luck with the rest of the campaigns.

Stay tuned for more details on the process, including the chance to see some of Australia's finest playing and training in Canberra.

Interested in Playing More Ultimate? Play SOMA!

2011-05-18T22:52:00.000+10:00

Hey Canberra Ultimate players!

Are you interested in playing more ultimate on a fun, social team? Would you like to keep developing your Ultimate skills, play in weekend tournaments, and get involved in a welcoming club that organises events inside and outside of frisbee? Then we want you for Soma!

The Soma mixed club started last year and took a group of players from a range of experience levels to various tournaments around Australia on our way to Australia Mixed Nationals, where we played some competitive fun ultimate, and totally won the party.

We’re about to start a new season, with a new group of players and some of the old mob. Soma is a development team, we welcome keen players of all levels of experience to come along and train with us and see some tournament ultimate. The club will aim to get a competitive team to Mixed Nationals in Melbourne in October, seeing a few other tournaments on the way.

Training sessions will be held on Saturday afternoons each week, starting next weekend. Details for introductory sessions are:

Saturday 21 May, Saturday 28 May and Saturday 4 June.

Fellows Oval, ANU (Fellows Road, Acton)

3 – 5 pm

We’ll be there from 2:30, feel free to come around a bit earlier for a throw around.

If you’re interested but can’t make Saturday afternoons please drop us an email.

We look forward to a challenging, productive and fun season with you all!

Cheers,

Soma Leadership Team

Congratulations Erik jan Lindeboon

2011-05-06T09:58:00.003+10:00

For those who are unaware. AFDA has a new "Volunteer of the Month" program which recognizes the efforts of Ultimate players across Australia. As far as I am aware, no ACT player has been award since it was establishsed around two years ago, so huge congratulations go to Erik, Canberra's very own water boy and very first Canberra "AFDA Volunteer of the Month". To bad we didn't get someone nominated earlier, I think previous Volunteers were awarded $50 Rebel Sport vouchers, so that they could buy, like, a pair of sports socks! (note, this is not a dig at afda, I think the vouchers are/ were great and wouldn't turn my nose up at one, I'm just depressed after attempting- and failing-to buy a new pair of skins. Why is it that when you put the word "sport" in front of something, it automatically costs like 10 times as much?)

I quote from the afda trashtalk article, which I assume is quoting from whoever nomiated Erik:

"Erik Lindeboom took time off his PhD to come and support Fyshwick United and Factory Ultimate run regionals and BCI. Erik worked tirelessly over both weekends to ensure that fields always had water, that shade tents were put up and put down and all the other tasks that the TDs gave him. He also billeted a number of interstate travelers. While doing all that he still managed to find time to support Fyshwick in his great get-up including Fyshwick shirt, cape and hat."

You can check out the full write-up on http://www.afda.com/trashtalk/showarticle.php?articleid=843

I have to say, refilling my water bottle at both of the touraments became a one of each day's highlights: I could look forward to a hilariously mis-spelt, gramatically incorrect, but very touching message advising players to drink up, play hard, and call a certain mobile number for refills (and good times).

Thanks for your efforts Erik, I've got your number on speed-dial now.

Bashionals and league predictions

2011-04-19T13:34:00.002+10:00

Congratulations to Conquer or Quit who finished 3rd at Bashionals on the weekend. They also took out spirit and Konrad Wallace won MVP. So sounds like they had a good tournament.

So Autumn league is about to start. Once again I will make some suspect predictions. I don't know what happened in summer league but I suspect I was wrong.

Div. 2: Having said all that I am very confident in saying that Shazam will take out div. 2 this comp. With Annunaki a clear second (no bias here). Expect 'Jonno's team' to struggle with only 1 player registered so far.

Div. 3: Again the sheer number of teams in div. 3 makes predictions difficult. I am going to pick 99 Luftballons and Annunaki to fight it out for the title, with Go Fetch and King Truckers fighting it out for 3rd and 4th.

Bashionals this weekend

2011-04-14T19:03:00.002+10:00

Believe it or not, this seemly quiet weekend is actually a really important moment for club level frisbee in Australia. Several years ago, a set of regional qualification tournaments were set up to trim down the number of teams attending nationals to a maximum of 16 in each division (things had been getting very big and unwieldy, especially in the open division, before that). For some open teams, the new regional tournaments have become the end of their season. If they didn't qualify for nationals, there were no more tournaments for them for the year.

This weekend, a new national tournament is being run for the teams that didn't make it to nationals. As with all these things, in its first year it's a pretty small and low key affair. But hopefully as more players come into club level ultimate and competition for nationals spaces becomes fiercer, this tournament will give an increasing number of teams a great goal for their season. After several years on the drawing board, Bashionals has come to life. Hopefully, from here it will just get bigger and better.

This year the ACT will be represented at Bashionals by Conquer or Quit. I had the great pleasure of joining in for a few of their drills last night and they're a really exciting team to be flying the flag for Canberra. I'm sure they'll have a great time in Melbourne and it will be really interesting to see how they go. Hopefully some kind of twitter-hashtagy thing will pop up to keep us all posted on their progress. This is real low-fi ultimate - no fancy shirts, sports medicated diet plans or business class flights here (a bunch of the guys are driving to Melbourne for the weekend). If ever you've wanted to get involved in tournaments teams like this are an awesome way to get hooked.

Good luck boys! Hopefully we'll get a write-up from someone when they get back (hint hint).

Autumn League and Pickup

2011-04-10T11:31:00.002+10:00

After a few months spent in exile at Kaleen, Autumn League is back at the home of Ultimate in the ACT, Dickson fields. That means more space, more teams, more convenient beer and fewer mosquitoes. Autumn league is the pinnacle of the ACT frisbee exerience. The cool still air makes the disc fly flatter and truer for longer, there's no sun to get in your eyes and you can watch the final with your hands wrapped around a mug of warm soup (or at least you could when I was a lad).

Anyway, Autumn League is awesome, and this league might even feature appearances from some of the ACT's most fragile, shy and endangered players.

League starts on the 20th of April and runs until the 8th of June. It's on Wednesday nights, at the Dickson fields (Antil street, Dickson). Division 3 kicks off at 6:30 and Divison 2 starts at 7:45 (someone had better correct me if I'm wrong...).

The registration page for Autumn league is now online at http://www.afda.com/rego/showcompetition.php?competitionid=990.

If you just can't wait until the 20th for your next frisbee game, Pickup has resumed on Sundays at 5:00pm at Downer playing fields (cnr of Melba and Bonython streets, Downer). These details were apparently decided BEFORE the end of daylight savings so contact Erik (erikjanlindeboom at hotmail dot com) if you want the full story.

Factory finish with Silver

2011-04-04T12:46:00.002+10:00

Factory lost to Wildcard 15-9 in their final in Brisbane this morning. It sounds like the first half was really close but Wildcard ran away with the game after half-time. Congratulations to Wildcard for winning the tourney and to Factory for a great result. We look forward to the ticker-tape parade and heroes welcome when the team gets back.

Factory are in the final

2011-04-03T22:11:00.002+10:00

Factory won their semi final at universe point over Melbourne's Honey today. They play Sydney's Wildcard in the final at 10:45 tomorrow. Follow forcesideline and #auc2011 on twitter to see what's going on.

This is the first nationals final an ACT women's team has played since 2003. Let's hope they can notch up one more win.

Nationals update

2011-04-03T10:50:00.002+10:00

OK, I've been a bit slack updating, so it may come as a suprise to you that the Australian Ultimate Championships (which all the cool people just call Nationals) is on right now in Brisbane.

The ACT has two teams attending; Fyshwick United in the open division and Factory in the women's division. You can have a look at some of the previous posts to see how these teams have gone in their last few tournaments (Eastern Regionals and the Brisbane-Canberra Invitational) but both teams have had some good results so far in the season.

Nationals started on Friday, and since then it's been a pretty turmultous few days in both divisions.

First the bad news: Fyshwick won two of their three games on the first day, but haven't managed a win since then over any of the real contenters at the tournament. Their results from day two mean that they're out of contention for the pre-semis and the highest they can now place is fifth. After several years at the top end of the results ladder (FU have made semis in all of the last three years and the final in two of those years) this is a really disappointing result for the boys and I'm sure they're all wishing it could have worked out differently. That said, there's still a bunch of good teams to play and beat left in their part of the draw and I'm sure they'll put in some good performances today and tomorrow.

Now the good news: Factory came second in their pool of 7 teams, losing one game to Sporting Team Box Athletico United (the reigning champions) and winning all their other matches. This includes some really important wins over Sand Dunes from Sydney and Kaos from Perth, both firsts for the season. It sounds like the team is feeling positive and is fired up to play their quarter final today. Their opponent for that game is still undecided (it depends on the result of a game that's probably ending right about now). Either way, it's a great result for Factory and hopefully they can keep it up all the way to the final on Monday.

If you're looking for results or more info there are a few sources to try. First, Simon Talbot and the Forcesideline crew are providing regular updates and blow by blow commentary for a couple of games on twitter. Summaries of the day's results are here. There are also some slightly sketchy results on the tournament website. And finally, there are a mix of perspectives and posts here. Between all of these different sources you can usually get a reasonable idea of what's going on.

The women's final (hopefully starring Factory) will be on on Monday and Forcesideline will definitely be covering it (they've even been trying to stream video footage so keep an eye out for that). If Factory make it through either get access to Twitter at work or stay home and claim you have an unsightly and infectious rash.

Colony Plunder and Sporting Team Box Athletico United win the BCI

2011-03-14T10:52:00.002+11:00

Despite forecasts of rain, we had two fine and sunny days over the weekend for the 3rd Brisbane Canberra Invitational, held at the Giralang Playing Fields.

It was great tournament, with a number of interesting results for several teams. Heads of State from Melbourne picked up wins over I-Beam and Colony Plunder, suggesting that the dominance of the Eastern Region at open division at last year's nationals (with all four of the semi finalists coming from NSW or the ACT) will be challenged this year. Fyshwick United won against Colony Pillage, giving the local team their first win over the Sydney club. Firestorm from Brisbane notched up an impressive win of Fyshwick United which is a huge scalp for them and their first win over FU since 2007.

In the women's division it seems like the comments from Sand Dunes coach Simon Wood that the depth of the women's division has improved immensely are spot on. Wildcard showed their strength as a club, combining their two teams from Regionals and fighting their way into the final against Sporting Team Box Athletico United. For their part, Sporting Team Box Athletico United had a number of tough games after a fairly easy run so far this season, even tasting bitter defeat at the hands of rival Melbourne club Honey. Meanwhile, Newcastle's Sugar Mags ground out a universe-point win over Factory from the ACT. Black Betty beat Regionals winners Southside and maybe also Factory (I missed the result from their last game) which is another step up from their impressive showing at Eastern Regionals.

In the end, however, it was dominant display from both of the winning teams. Colony Plunder won the open division and Sporting Team Box Athletico United won the women's division, with Fyshwick United and Wildcard runners up. Spirit went to Colony Pillage and Sporting Team Box Athletico United which is a really impressive result for both clubs.

Thanks to Leon for organising the tournament, and to Erin, Hebs, Liz, Nat, Erik, Brett, Sue, Carl and the FU boys for getting food, setting up and packing up, refilling water containers, cooking BBQs and making the event run smoothly. Sorry if I've missed anyone - Leon would know for sure who did what.

BCI is on THIS WEEKEND

2011-03-07T18:40:00.002+11:00

The Brisbane Canberra Invitational, Australia's premier (only?) invitational tournament, is on at the Giralang playing fields this weekend.

The open division features Colony Plunder and Colony Pillage from Sydney, defending national champions I-Beam from Newcastle, Firestorm from Brisbane, Chilly and Heads of State from Melbourne, Gammin from Perth and Fyshwick United from Canberra

The women's division has Southside, Wildcard and Sand Dunes from Sydney, Black Betty from Brisbane, Sugar Mags from Newcastle, defending national champions Sporting Team Box Athletico United and Honey from Melbourne and Factory from Canberra.

Now that we're getting towards the business end of the season, the BCI looks set to showcase some high quality ultimate and should be a great preview of the national championships in Bribane at the start of April. Come along and see Australian ultimate at its best and support the local teams.

The tournament director, Leon Smith, is still looking for volunteers. If you're able to help out on the weekend contact me at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com and I'll put you in touch with him. Volunteering is a great way to support the frisbee community and see the world of frisbee beyond weekly league games.

As an aside, where's Karma? I'm not sure how these things work but I would have thought their 5th place finish at Nationals last year would have secured them an invite. Are invitations just based on Regionals?

Regionals Wrap-up

2011-02-27T13:20:00.002+11:00

Last weekend, Canberra hosted the Eastern Regional Championships at the UC playing fields. This event is a qualification tournament for teams from NSW and the ACT for the National Championships later this year (to be held in Bribane at the start of April). It was a pretty big tournament, with 8 Open Division teams and 9 Women's Division teams. The field was boosted by a few interstate teams that came to get some extra tournament experience including Black Betty and Kaos, women's teams from Brisbane and Perth respectively, and the New Zealand Keas, the kiwi open under 23s team.

The pool play on Saturday included some games in tough conditions, with strong winds and a bit of rain making things difficult. On Sunday, the skies cleared and the wind eased slightly for the playoffs.

In the Open Division, 7 teams were vying for 5 qualification spots for Nationals. In the Women's Division all the eastern region teams automatically qualified.

The final results were:

Open Division:
1 Colony Plunder (Sydney)
2 Colony Pillage (Sydney)
3 Fyshwick United (Canberra)
4 I-Beam (Newcastle)
5 NZ Keas (New Zealand)
6 Magnum (Sydney and Wollongong)
7 Umlaut (Sydney)
8 Duffmen (Sydney)

With the two Colony teams, Fyshwick United, I-Beam and Magnum qualifying for Nationals.

Women's Division:
1 Southside Penguins (Sydney)
2 Sand Dunes (Sydney)
3 Kaos (Perth)
4 Factory (Canberra)
5 Wildcard % (Sydney)
6 Wildcard * (Sydney)
7 Sugar Mags (Newcastle)
8 Black Betty (Brisbane)
9 Southside Swans (Sydney)

The two Wildcard teams are combining for Nationals, so all the eastern region teams qualified. Black Betty and Kaos qualified at their own qualification tournaments in their home regions.

Congratulations to Colony Plunder and the Southside Penguin for winning their divisions. Congratulations also to the NZ Keas and the Southside Swans for winning spirit in their divisions.

Thanks to Naomi, Craig, Andrew, Laura, Erik and Kate for their help during the weekend, and to Erin, Nat, Mica, Liz, Hebs and Amy for their work before the tournament to get everything running. Finally, thanks to the players who were able to help out during the weekend (especially the FU boys) and to Kaos, Black Betty and the Keas for heading along to the tournament and adding some quality competition.

The 12th and 13th of March sees another great tournament come to Canberra, the Brisbane-Canberra Invitational. This will bring the 8 best men's and 8 best women's teams to town for a quality hit out before nationals. The tournament will be hosted at Giralang fields and will be well worth a look. Both ACT teams look sharp this year so come down and support the local clubs.

New websites

2011-02-05T15:31:00.002+11:00

Hi Ultimate Lovers,

The Canberra men and women's teams have created new websites. ANU Disc Enthusiasts also
have a new look on the web.

Check out the sites:
http://www.factoryultimate.com
http://www.fyshwickunited.com
http://www.anudiscenthusiasts.com

Factory and Fyshwick also have new discs with their logo on. Discs cost $15. Look out for a Factory or Fyshwick player at league if you would like to buy one. The Fyshwick home page has a picture of the disc design. They look great so get one fast before they go.

FU Regionals team

2011-02-02T11:39:00.003+11:00

Fyshwick United has selected their team for regionals.
Make us proud boys. Regionals is here in Canberra so come
along on the 19/20 February to the University of Canberra
to support our local teams.

Congratulations to all those who made the team.

The team (in alphabetical order):

Adam
AJ
Asher
Brevin
Dan
Gareth
Ian
James Ley
James O'Reilly
Jonno
Konrad
Lancey
Matt
Mikey
Pete
Tom Walcott
Tom Watson
Waz

Jonno, Pete and AJ: FU selectors

Summer League

2011-01-15T22:33:00.002+11:00

It seems summer league is going to be held at Kaleen playing fields (Diamatina st).
League will be on Wednesday nights and run for 6 weeks from the 2 Feb-9 Mar.
Registration is $200 per team or $20 per individual.

Login and sign-up here:
http://www.afda.com/rego/showcompetition.php?competitionid=964

Eastern Regionals is on in Canberra

2011-01-10T14:26:00.002+11:00

That's right! The ACT will host regionals at the University of Canberra fields on the 19th and 20th of February. The rego page will be up an the AFDA website shortly and details for the weekend should be out soon.

Congratulations to Factory for putting together a winning bid for the tournament. If you're interested in helping out contact easternregionalsact at gmail dot com.

Stay tuned for more details. It looks like there are going to be heaps of tournaments in the ACT this year, we've also got the Brisbane Canberra Invititional in March and apparently Eastern University Games (which I think is in July).

What's going on with league?

2011-01-05T23:04:00.001+11:00

I've got no idea.

We're still waiting on word from the powers that be about how we're going to deal with the closure of our beloved Dickson playing fields. Our league is once again SO HUGE that it won't fit anywhere else.

Once details emerge I'll get them posted up here.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T12:35:00.002+11:00

Merry Christmas. I hope everyone enjoys this holiday season. Don't eat too much! But if you do (which I know I will) then you can go and have a run and throw of the frisbee.

FU Training Squad 2011

2010-12-22T12:36:00.002+11:00

Fyshwick United have named their training squad for 2011. The Regionals, BCI and Nationals
teams to represent FU will be chosen from this squad. Thanks to everyone who tried out. Fyshwick is looking really strong this year.

Adam
AJ
Andy Sutton
Asher
Ben MH
Brett
Brevin
Callum Stewart
Dan MH
Erik
Gareth

Ian M

James L
James O
John Horan
Jonno

Konrad

Lancey

Matt D

Max

Mikey H

Pete

Tom Bradman

Tom Walcott

Tom Watson

Waz

Cheers,

Jonno Pete and AJ: FU selectors.

League Predictions

2010-12-21T22:00:00.003+11:00

Ok so as Bags so graciously pointed out my league predictions were terrible. Lucky I am not
a betting man (and let that be a lesson to the rest of you).

Anyway here are the league ladders:

DIV 3 ladder

		Pts	win	lose	draw	TOTAL Points	Ranking
Hot	The KingTruckers	17	4	1	0	8	1
Hot	The Brethren	14	4	1	0	8	1
Hot	Factory	-5	2	2	1	5	3
Hot	Annunaki	-16	1	3	1	3	4
Hot	Little Bananas	-11	1	3	1	3	4
Hot	The Beige Team	1	1	3	1	3	4

		Pts	win	lose	draw	TOTAL Points	Ranking
Warm	Spin Doctors	39	5	0	0	10	1
Warm	Go Fetch	9	3	1	1	7	2
Warm	Dicky Knees	4	2	2	1	5	3
Warm	11th Hour	-18	2	3	0	4	4
Warm	TTHOT Kelly Gang	-8	2	3	0	4	4
Warm	Damian Webb's Team	-26	0	5	0	0	6

		Pts	win	lose	draw	TOTAL Points	Ranking
Cool	Custard's Crew	21	4	1	0	8	1
Cool	Dynoshite	9	4	1	0	8	1
Cool	The Boffins	-9	2	2	1	5	3
Cool	The Umpires	-5	2	3	0	4	4
Cool	Team Team	-13	1	3	0	2	5
Cool	The Samlets	-3	0	3	1	1	6

DIV 2 Ladder

	Pt diff	Win	Loss	Draw	Total points	Ranking'
Revelation	27	7	2	0	14	1
The Muppets	31	6	2	1	13	2
Annunaki	27	6	2	1	13	2
The Punters	13	6	3	0	12	4
Very Mild Superpowers	-6	6	3	0	12	4
Devolutionaries	-8	4	5	0	8	6
Discotheque	-6	3	6	0	6	7
Dam Beavers	3	3	6	0	6	7
Discotheque 2	-55	1	6	1	3	9
Kick Ass	-24	1	7	1	3	9

Congratulations to Revelation and King Truckers for winning div. 2 and 3 respectively. Also congratulations to Bags who correctly picked the winners. A big thanks to Nat and Liz and their helpers for such a great job organising Spring league.

I am looking forward to more bad predictions when Summer League starts up. In fact my money is on ANNUNAKI and The King Truckers.

The latest from league

2010-12-16T14:16:00.002+11:00

A long time ago, a wise man once said:

"AJ, you're dreaming.

In div 2 I reckon Revelation or the Muppets will take top spot. They've got a bunch of solid rookies and enough star power to overcome the other teams.

In div 3 I don't know what will happen, so I'm going to go with my gut and back the King Truckers. Sure, the Boffins and the Little Bananas may have the experience and the talent, but the Truckers have other, undisclosed things that make them good.

You read it here first."

That was on October 15th, in response to a totally spurious set of league predictions from AJ. And, two months later, my prediction was vindicated.

Admittedly, I vacillated a bit with my bet on Revelation and the Muppets, but I think that's redeemed because then they both made the Div 2 final, which was won handsomely by Revelation. In Div 3, true to form, the King Truckers finished the season with a win over the Bretheren to take the honors for the third season in a row.

I've seen a few games in both divisions this season and there have been a number of pretty exciting developments:

League is huge. After splitting the time-slots for divisions 2 and 3 a few seasons back league has continued to grow and Div 3 is now filling the Dickson fields on it's own. We've got 20 teams in Div 3 and 12 in Div 2. Awesome
Team fees. OK, so I know this isn't very exciting for most people, but introducing team fees has simplified one of the worst parts of league organising - rounding up hundreds of individual player fees. It means it's easier for new volunteers to get involved and it takes a load off our current volunteer stock. It's grouse.
The standard. Div 3 looked heaps stronger this year than it has for a while. The same goes for Div 2. The successful teams in both divisions are using all of their players, making a bunch of passes with each possession and generally looking smoother than any other ACT league teams I can remember. It makes for more fun for everyone involved and gives more players a chance to contribute each point.
Factory organising stuff. Everything seemed well organised, it sounds like the work was shared out among a few people so no-one got snowed under, and Factory got to raise some cash to offset the effects of Nat Blood's Creative Finance Explosion (TM).

League will take a break over the holidays and fire up again in January. The format is undecided because ACT Sportsgrounds are closing Dickson fields for some major renovations. Stay tuned and we'll get details up when they get sorted out.

ACT bid for regionals

2010-12-14T13:27:00.004+11:00

It's been a lean few years for major tournaments in the ACT. We hosted the Brisbane Canberra Iinvitational in early 2009, which had 8 mens teams and 4 womens teams, but before that the only really big tounrament we've held was Nationals in 2003. The ANU and SOMA have been really active lately, running hat tournaments and IVs, but there hasn't been anything on a national or regional scale for a while.

With this history it's pretty exciting that the ACT women's team, Factory, have put in an expression of interest to run Regionals in mid February. Apparently there have been a few bids for regionals from around NSW and the ACT, so let's hope the admin gods smile on us and let us run the tournament here. After all, we've got great fields. Last nationals, all four of the semi finalists in the Open division were from the Eastern Region, as well as 3 of the four women's semi finalists, so Regionals always features some quality play.

The Brisbane Canberra Invitational is also set to be held in Canberra in March (it switches between Brisbane and Canberra each year). This is Australia's only invitiational tournament and is set up to produce some great games.

If you're interested in helping out at either tournament let me know at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com. We'll need volunteers to help with managing the tournaments, parties, food, billet and money as well as a horde of helpers to put up shade tents, collect scores, refill water containers, sort lunches and fill the jelly wrestling pit on the weekend themselves.

Even if you can't help out, make sure you come to the fields when the events are on and support the local teams. High level ultimate is great to watch and you can see where some of the best teams in Australia are headed. I'll post more details when I get them.

Fields are closed

2010-12-02T22:17:00.002+11:00

After the wettest spring and most miserable summer I can remember in Canberra, ACT Sportsgrounds has finally bit the bullet and closed fields. This means no organised sport on the fields until next week.

Now I know that some of you will want to get out and throw or whatever, and might be thinking of flaunting the field closures. While I understand the urge to throw is a pretty deeply ingrained instinct in frisbee players around the world, this is the chance to practise your self control.

Frisbee players already have a bad reputation for using closed fields with ACT Sportsgrounds, and the rangers and staff from the Sportsgrounds office DO actually look at their fields pretty often. I know you're just having an informal throw, but you'll make life harder for the brave and hardworking administrators who'll go in to make the next field booking for your next league/tournament/training.

Besides, they do their best to keep fields open and it has rained a complete boatload. This doesn't happen very often so I'm sure we can all wait it out.

And finally, this is a good chance to do some of the other stuff that most players don't get around to often enough. No, I'm not talking about washing your socks or talking to your loved ones. I'm talking about doing some injury prevention and recovery stuff. A solid investment in this stuff now will pay dividends when the sun finally comes out.

Diskapital round-up

2010-11-27T12:04:00.002+11:00

Last weekend the crazy weather in Canberra finally let up and we had a great sunny weekend for our annual hat tournament, Diskapital. Six teams were formed on the day with a mix of the usual suspects, a contingent of out-of-towners (including Sammy "Sweet Cheeks" Ogden, all the way from Adelaide, and Felix from Tasmania) and a bunch of new players and up-and-comers from within the ACT.

The standard of play on Saturday looked good, with all teams able to move the disc around pretty freely and everyone seemed able to contribute. The by final on Sunday, though, fatigue was starting to show with everyone slowing down a bit. In the end, the team that still had the legs to run hard pulled out a huge comeback victory to win the game. Unfortunately, I don't know the names of either of the teams, but basically the tall team beat the short team, but not by virtue of their height. I was much too busy listening to the Soma crew singing tight a capella versions of 90s dance anthems to really know what was happening on the field.

Congratulations and thanks to Soma for hosting the tournament. Everything looked really well organised and smoothly run and there seemed to be plenty of work put in to make the tournament a success. Each field even had its own shade tent. Nice. With good weather, a laid back atmosphere and great fields it was great weekend for all.

Diskapital is on this weekend

2010-11-19T18:09:00.003+11:00

That's right, Canberra's premier hat tournament is on this weekend.

It's at Dickson, game on is at 11:00.

There's still time to register at http://www.afda.com/rego/showcompetition.php?competitionid=878.

Get out and play.

ACTUA logo redesign competition!

2010-11-14T10:07:00.001+11:00

Mission: To rebrand ACTUA into the 21st century.

Many of you may have seen our old logo on ACTUA disc floating around. ACTUA want to update the design.

Can you give us a modern logo?

ACTUA want to offer $300 to someone to come up with a design. The rules of this competition follow:

-The design (or variants of) should be able to be suitable to put on a webpage, on a disc, on a letterhead and on a shirt.
-There are no limit to the number of entries that an individual can submit
-Collaborative efforts are permitted
-Entries must be in by the deadline of 30 November 2010 and must be submitted in electronic format to thomasgabriel.watson@gmail.com

Tips for the entries:
-Have a look at the new AFDA logo. One possibility is for our logo to have a similar aesthetic.
- Alternatively, look at what other states have done and see if their concepts could inspire a unique ACT design. I have also linked the Tassy association site, which is widely regarded as the best logo currently around. Having something associated with the ACT isn't a bad idea but probably best to avoid parliament house or public service references.
-It is beneficial but not compulsory for designers to have experience with putting designs on to discs

The designs will be examined and a winner picked at the next ACTUA committee after 30 November 2010.

-Tom Watson

The Canberra Ultimate Blog would like to apologise to

2010-11-08T22:35:00.003+11:00

Chris Warris.

Sorry Chris.

(And sorry to Roger, whose photo I've slightly stolen. Am I allowed to do this? I can take it down if there's a problem. You should check out Roger's photos, he's got lots and they're grouse.)

You see, Blogger now gives statistics on pageviews for each post of a blog, and (in a really depressing way) the most commonly viewed post for this blog is the one from 2008 about the 2012 Dingos, the national men's team. In it, ACTUA graciously decided to save the AFDA the heartache associated with picking the team by doing it for them in an arbitraty and inexplicable way. However, looking back at this post to see just who was selected for one of the highest frisbee honours in the country, I noticed that we left off one man who would definitely be in any team ACTUA ever picked to represent the nation, Chris Warris.

We at the Canberra Ultimate Blog sincerely hope that Chris doesn't now dislike us because we left his name off the list, especially when there are so many other fine reasons to dislike us. It would be a shame to pass all of them over just because of a crazy mistake.

Anyway, this is a fine opportunity to educate the good people of the ACT about Chris Warris, and in doing so recall a fine era in the history of our fair city.

Chris Warris has been a stalwart of Australian representative teams for ages. He's played on the Dingos a bunch of times (and even been Vice Captain or something respectable like that), played Clubs with King Brown (an old-school men's club), Pie Wagon and Deathstar and even got the call up for Doughboy, a mysterious team of mostly Australian ex-pats who go to tournaments like the Kiamana Klassic each year in Hawaii. He also earned a well deserved gold medal at nationals with Newcastle's I-Beam earlier this year. It's a great track record.

But in amongst the glory, people overlook some of Chris Warris' real acheivements, like winning back-to-back league finals with Homebrand back in 2003 in Canberra, and leading the ACTion Men (second worst team name ever after Team Happy) to an earthshattering quarter final finish at nationals in Canberra in 2003 (back when the ACT used to host really big tournaments, when Jason De Roy lived here - he now lives in Queensland, guess which state is hosting the big tournaments now). He also hosted one of the last great house parties of the Canberra frisbee scene, with the stated aim of finishing all the alcohol in the house before he left town. I walked home at 3:00 wearing none of my own clothes and as I closed the front door I heard Pete Liddicoat say "Hey, I've found a bottle of wine." Good times.

So, we at the Canberra Ultimate Blog salute you Chris. Your plucky, reliable handling, enormous workrate, deft skills and unwavering committment are something for us all to aspire to. You'd definitely be on the 2012 Dingos if we were picking the team. Which we aren't. But you'll probably still be on the team anyway, because it's just good sense.

Heaven smiles on the women's hat

2010-11-08T21:56:00.003+11:00

As everyone in Canberra knows, everything is better on the North side of Lake Burley Griffin. As you drive/ride/run over Commonwealth Avenue bridge heading North in the evening you can look to the sun setting behind Black Mountain to the West and the clouds over the Brindabellas lighting up and know that life is getting better with every metre you travel. Heading South over the very same bridge at the very same time all you can see are the austere buildings of the Parliamentary Triangle and every metre you go brings you closer to Tuggeranong and damnation.

Anyway, you don't have to take my word for it. On Saturday, while it poured with rain that slowly leached the joy from the Southerners already bleak lives in Woden and the Deep South, it was dry (albeit a little cloudy) on the Northside for the inaugural women's hat. Hosted by local women's club, Factory, the event was well attended with a number of new players stepping up to play. I saw a few points from the final, where it looked like a bunch of athletic new recruits were duking it out for control of the middle of the field. A great start to the season for Factory and a great way to introduce local players to Women's Ultimate.

This weekend also marked the start of Fyshwick United's strangely named "Noodle Sessions". These are a way for players to meet in small groups and run drills that have been preset by the team's coaches, aimed at improving footwork and throwing. Early reports coming in suggest that the first Noodle Session was well attended and got people thinking about some new approaches to skills training. These sessions are mandatory for anyone thinking of trying out for the men's team next year but they're open to anyone attending Thursday night training who just wants to get some extra practise in. Send me an email at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail got com if you're interested in more info.

Also good, and thus likely to be found on the Northside, is Diskapital. Soma are using this to raise some funds to offset some costs for some of their uni student members so sign up on the AFDA website (www.afda.com) and come out for a great weeked of hat ultimate. The party is already looking like being a somewhat epic affair...

Training starts tomorrow

2010-11-03T18:44:00.003+11:00

Training for Fyshwick United the (ACT men's team) starts tomorrow. It's at O'Connor playing fields (off Pedder St, near All Bar Nun) and will run from 6:30 to 9:00 every Thursday night. Get there at 6:15 to give yourself time to cleat up and talk smack. Training is open to all comers and new players are most welcome.

The team is looking forward to a new season with a bunch of new faces. It's looking like another great season with Pete Hemphill, Jonno Holmes and Andrew Jackson running the show. This is great chance to get coaching from some of the best players and coaches in the country, and they're keen to give new players an opportunity to train and improve. There's also some momentum gathering to send two men's teams to nationals this year, so this is the time to show up and get involved.

The lads will be heading to the conveniently located All Bar Nun after training for some serious debriefing.

For those ladies feeling left out by the FU bromance about to take place, Factory (the ACT women's team) is running it's reputedly awesome beginner's clinics on Thursday night at O'Connor as well. Not only are these devoid of smelly boys, they finish earlier so you can get dinner at the pub. The sessions kick of at 5:45 for a 6:00 start. Rumour has it that this week will even include a game at the end of the session. If you want to kick arse like the Factory div 3 team, this is way to do it.

THERE'S ALSO THE WOMEN'S HAT ON SATURDAY. CHECK WWW.FACTORYULTIMATE.COM FOR MORE INFO.

League is on

2010-11-02T13:30:00.000+11:00

Fields are open, league is on.

Have fun!

Holy crap it is raining a lot

2010-11-01T19:33:00.002+11:00

If you're like me and you grew up in Canberra, you might be wondering what all that stuff coming out of the sky is. Lukily, I've been bushwalking in both New Zealand and Tasmania, so I am well acquainted with this phenomenon and am here to enlighten you. The stuff coming out of the sky is water - the very same stuff that comes out of the tap, and when it comes out of the sky it's called rain.

The good news is that rain makes the fields green and lush. In fact, rain is great because ACT Sportsgrounds have been really struggling to keep fields open in the ACT because of the drought and a few good seasons should really help them out. They've done an awesome job of keeping things going for so long so they deserve our thanks.

The bad news is that with enough rain sportsgrounds will be closed temporarily. Anyone who's seen the effect of some serious footwork drills on a wet pitch will know why. In the ACT, field closures are announced before 8:30 in the morning on weekdays, so often fields will be open even if it's rained a heap during the day but has been dry in the days before. I can't really remember when it last rained this much in Canberra but usually ACT Sportsgrounds and pretty good about keeping fields open in wet weather. To find out if fields are open call the field closure hotline on 6207 5957. A friendly automated voice will tell you what's going in no time. Don't call Canberra Connect or the sportsgrounds office, where a weary voice may well break down into tears at their millionth phone call about field closures for the day.

As for frisbee stuff, you can rest assured that if the fields are open, games are on. We play (and indeed have played) rain, hail, shine or earthquake. The only thing that stops games are nearby lightning and perhaps complete nuclear annihilation. Playing frisbee in the rain is one of life's great joys and as Australians it's something of a nationalistic duty to get out and enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime chance to get rained on in that national capital.

Canberra Women's Hat

2010-10-30T13:17:00.003+11:00

Are you a woman?

Do you like having fun?

Do you find ultimate frisbee fun?

If you answered yes to all of the questions above (or really just yes to the first question) you should play in the Canberra Women's Hat next Saturday the 6th of November. Local women's team Factory are running the event and are bringing in several carloads of players from Sydney to beef out the event. It's being held at Downer Playing fields (not for from Dickson fields, on the corner of Melba and Bonython street in Downer) and costs $15 if you pay in advance (see www.factoryultimate.com for details).

Register at the AFDA website (you'll need to log in or sign up for an AFDA number) or the factory website.

A hat tournament is one where players register individually and the teams are put together randomly on the day. They're heaps of fun and a good chance to play with some new people.

This spring weather is great, so get out and enjoy it.

Mixed Nationals - the shotgun effect

2010-10-27T17:19:00.002+11:00

Bathurst pulled out all the stops for Mixed Nationals last weekend. There was sunshine, rain, lightning, partying, two rival bikie clubs in town at once and bogans driving around the Mt Panorama circuit on the wrong side of the road.

The last games of the tournament were cancelled for many teams because lightening disrupted play on Saturday afternoon. That made the placings a bit confusing since most teams didn't play off for their final bracket.

I'm expecting an update from the SOMA crew on their weekend so I'll leave it to them to tell their own stories. The rest of the ACT took something of a shotgun-style approach to the weekend, scattering themselves across a number of teams and finishing up the tournament anywhere from 1st to 25th. Keah Molomby won the tournament with a largely Sydney based team, Jericho Turnpike Bandits. Jonno Holmes brought home silver with MCMLXXX (a team whose members were all born in 1980). Adam Mortimer came in 7th/8th with SMURF from Adelaide. Next up were the kids from Team Happy (worst team name ever) who came in 9th/10th. Long-time-Canberran-but-now-living-on-the-South Coast Jane Andrew finished up with the Mix Masters in 11th/12th and SOMA rounded out the ACT contingent in 25th.

Despite some crazy weather and a small earthquake on Friday it was a great weekend for all concerned. Thanks go to Hills Ultimate for hosting the tournament. These guys are a well oiled administrative machine who consistently run great tournaments in a range of locations. Congratulations and thanks for another fine national event.

As for that meeting about the national mixed team, it sounds like the AFDA is moving towards a better planned version of their current system. They're going to try to set up a head coach and leadership group for the team much earlier than they've done in the past and give themselves more time to make selections and build a team. With luck they'll be able to build on the strong performances by mixed club teams in Prague and put together a medal winning outfit for 2012.

The future is mixed

2010-10-19T23:36:00.003+11:00

Hello avid reader. If you're going to mixed nationals you'll have received the message below from Piers Truter about the Australian mixed team. If not, have a quick peruse through the email below. In case you're wondering, Piers is the director of the AFDA High Performance program and has put a monumental amount of work over the last few years into Australia's elite and international level teams. It's a tough gig - everyone who's anyone has got an opinion on what they want done but they don't necessarily want or have the time to get involved to make that happen, so they try to live vicariously through Piers. Regardless of whether you agree with the approach of the high performance program over the last few years, you have to respect the people who actually get out there and get things done rather than just being theoretical geniuses after league at the pub.

Here's Piers' email:

"Hi there,

Apologies for the lateness of this message.

There is a meeting on Friday of Mixed nationals (this Friday) for all people interested in the Australian Mixed Team for 2012.

On the table is discussing how to bring more focus to the development of this team into the 2012 World Ultimate Championships, rather than making it a poor cousin of the Open and Women's teams. There have been a few ideas floated on how to do this including;

1) The winning team of 2011 Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships winning the right to represent Australia.

2) Selecting the 2012 Mixed ultimate team in 2011 and this team competing at 2011 AMUC as a team for development.

The aim of the meeting is to explore options, gain opinions and to improve the process of selection and team formation for the 2012 campaign.

If you have a good idea or opinion - please come along to the meeting. You will find information on time and venue at the tournament.

I hope to see you there.

Piers Truter
Dir HP
AFDA"

Because I'm a frisbee nerd who loves punishment, I'll be going to this meeting at mixed nats. If you've got any good ideas or opinions and you won't be able to make it along you can pass them on to me and I'll try to get them to the movers and shakers in the room (if I can work out who they are). Both of these options would be pretty radical departures from the approaches of old but they could pay big dividends at the World Championships in 2012. Post a comment or email me at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com if you want me to be your singing telegram.

DisKapital is open for registration!

2010-10-17T17:54:00.003+11:00

Hey all

Registration for Canberra's Hat tournament, DisKapital is open.

If you have not heard of Hat tournaments before, I will quickly explain. Hat tournaments require the players to pick their level of experience and sign up as individuals. Once all registrations are in, the players are all divided up on to teams with an even mix of rookies, experienced players and pros. Hats are a lot of fun and a great opportunity to play with a wide range of people from across Australia and Canberra.

http://afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1543

You should get out more

2010-10-15T22:46:00.005+11:00

If you want to get a snapshot of ultimate in Australia, have a look at the registration calendar for the Australian Flying Disc Association (you'll need to log in to the website). There's something ultimate related on somewhere in the country just about every weekend and most weekdays. There are coaching courses, admin conferences, clinics, training, leagues and tournaments. There's much more to ultimate in Australia than the weekly league game that makes up frisbee for so many of us. And while it's great that so many people can enjoy ultimate as a casual and accessible team sport, it's worth keeping in mind that we're more than just a bunch of wierdos chasing a frisbee around once a week - we're wierdos with a website and a calendar.

Anyway, the story of this post is that it wasn't always that way. In 2003 I played just about every tournament I could get to (I was even part of a road-trip to Halibut in Brisbane for a weekend) which came in at something like 15 weekends of ultimate. Now, if you played everything within driving distance (i.e. Brisbane) you'd play 40-odd weekends of ultimate a year. And you'd be broke, tired and ridiculously fit.

Back in the day I could always rely on a regular posse of Canberra tournament goers to rustle up a team, some transport and some billets and I could just tag along with them to distant places and tournaments*. These days, however, the players who would normally make up that tournament posse are too busy training for club-level tournaments to get to other events. It's fine for them (and me, since I'm guilty of this) but it's a shame for all the folks who don't get a chance to get dragged along to some random tournament somewhere strange like Albury and get hooked on playing ultimate during the day.

That's why it's so great that new clubs are getting a foothold in Canberra. Clubs like Soma and Anunaki have a real development focus and have been going to a bunch of smaller tournaments around Canberra during the year. With the usual summer crop of hat tournaments coming up, hopefully some of the players driving these clubs get along to some of the great tournaments around the place. And hopefully you go with them. Because tournament ultimate is fun. You meet heaps of great people, get to play heaps of great ultimate, and go to heaps of great parties.

So have a look at the calendar yourself, find yourself a weekend where you're not writing ministerials about prohibited seeds or bleaching the fungus out of your socks, fill up a car with friends and go to one of the many tournaments coming up. It's cheap, suprisingly easy and much better than whatever else you were going to do. Besides, that fungus in your socks will just grow back.

* I do mean "rely". I once literally forgot to go to a selection camp for Worlds, and that's the old fashioned kind of literally. From then on there was always someone delegated to collect me from my house and take me to tournaments. Thanks Adam Mortimer.

League Predictions

2010-10-15T17:37:00.003+11:00

Ok, so it is the start of league. Time to make some predictions. I can't remember if I was terribly wrong or on the right track with my Autumn league predictions. I did get Discotheque as div. 2 winners right.

With Discotheque now splitting their talent across 2 teams and with a whole lot of talent back at league, div. 2 is wide open. My prediction is the following:
1) The Punters
2) Kick Ass
3) The Muppetts
4) Annunaki
5-10) Revelation, Very Mild Superpowers, Discotheque, Discotheque 2, Dam Beavers, Devolutianaries

In div. 3 I am predicting:
1) The Boffins
2) King Truckers
3) Little Bananas
4) Go Fetch
5) Spin Doctors
6) fACTory Girls
7-18) Annunaki, The Samlets, 11th Hour, The Kelly Gang, The Brethren, Dynoshite, Dickey Knees, Team Team, The Beige Team, The Umpires, Damien Webb's Team, Custards Crew

I'm probably going to be way off. There is too many teams in div.3 which is great to see ACT ultimate growing, it just makes tipping difficult!

You want more?

2010-10-13T22:04:00.003+11:00

By now the buzz of league after so long without ultimate will have hit the system like smack to the veins. So you're probably wondering where else you can get a frisbee fix in the coming weeks.

If league isn't enough for you, Spring and Summer bring a bunch of great opportunities for ultimate. Here are a few of the offerings on offer.

Diskapital is the ACT's annual hat tournament and has a fine tradition of great ultimate and good times. Years ago it used to be the second biggest hat tournament in Australia (after the Melbourne Hat) and was a great way to see and play with some of the real superstars of the Australian scene. A hat tournament is one where the teams are randomly selected (but roughly balanced for ability) before the first game. They're usually more relaxed than club-level tournaments and are a great way to meet new people, learn new skills and generally have a ball.

This year Diskapital is in November, which should make for milder conditions and less competition for weekend time (January is already full of tournaments). The dates haven't been announced yet because we don't have fields, but once we do rego information etc. will go up here.

If you're looking for something with a more sustained buzz than a hat tournament the two ACT single gender clubs, Fyshwick United and Factory and firing up their season. Factory are already running beginners clinics on Thursday nights at O'Connor and Fyshwick United start training in early November (also on Thursday nights). Both clubs look set to have a great season and given the absence of certain well-known fun-haters from their rosters this should be a great time to get on board. Check out Factory's website (www.factoryultimate.com) for more information on their campaign and watch this space or email me at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com for more information on Fyshwick United's upcoming season.

League is on!

2010-10-12T23:31:00.002+11:00

Finally, after much waiting and considerable fields wrangling, Spring League has started in the ACT. Both divisions fired off tonight at Dickson on a slightly chilly but otherwise lovely Spring evening. I only caught the very end of Div 3 but there seemed to be positively hordes of players and a bunch of new teams and faces. I hear that Factory (the ACT women's team) has entered a team into Div 3 and notched up their first win tonight, scraping home by a point in a close scrap. A nice start to the season following their first beginner's clinic last week, which was apparently a raging success.

In Div 2 it was great to see a bunch of club level ultimate players return to the fields for local competition. These guys and girls have been tied up in serious training for national and international tournaments over the last two years and haven't been able to play so it's great to see them back mixing it up at league. One of the great things about ultimate that doesn't happen in most sports is that you can play with some of the world's best players on your league team. I saw Anunaki beat Discotheque (the one with JJ), The Punters beat the other Discotheque (with all the other Matthews-Hunters), Soma (who have some other name but they're all wearing Soma shirts) took down The Devolutionaries, the Dam Beavers lost by a point to Kick Ass (where James OReilly laid out on D - seriously!), and Revelation played The Muppets and someone won.

The season's looking great. I'll see if we can get some updates from some kind of organiser-types in the know, because it's all too big for me to keep track of. Have fun out there.

How to get ultimate on television

2010-10-07T21:13:00.002+11:00

The dream of every truly committed frisbee kid is to get ultimate on TV. Sure, we all like to say it'll never happen and some of us even go so far as to claim to hope that it never does, but people just say those things so they can live with the disappointment of turning on the TV and seeing Bert Newton on 20-to-1.

Well, perhaps there may be light at the end of the tunnel for the ultimate on TV hopefuls. I've watched a tiny quantity of the Commonwealth Games and two things have become clear to me:

1) Australian TV channels will show any sport that Australia excels in (unless it's a women's team sport) no matter how boring it is.

2) Swimming is the worst spectator sport in the world. You know it's true.

So if we want ultimate to get on TV, all we need to do is become awesome at it. It would help if the UK and New Zealand got pretty good too, without ever being a position to beat us. Imagine it, we'd be beating the US, the UK and the Kiwis. That's about as good as it gets in the sporting universe.

Once we've convinced commercial television to show our international games it should be easy to make the switch to televising domestic competition. After all, if only Australians compete, we win every time.

If you do actually want to watch ultimate on a screen have a look at the world games footage on Youtube. Some of the stuff that was shot by proper camera-people (rather than schmucks in the crowd) is pretty cool.

Have you seen

2010-10-04T18:47:00.002+11:00

this?

It's the website for the ACT women's team, Factory. You should go to their beginner's clinics (if you're a woman) so that you can get into their password area. They've got throwing videos and all kinds of cool stuff.

They're running beginner's clinics for women from the 7th of October for six weeks. It's covering a bunch of important skills for league players and budding tournament goers. These guys have a pretty smart program set out and are looking forward to running a great campaign this year for new players. If you want to brush up your skills or meet some new frisbee-women-friend-folk this is your big chance.

If I could run and was a woman I would go. That's a pretty big endorsement.

Unigames is over

2010-10-03T17:51:00.002+11:00

Just in case you were wondering, Unigames ended on Friday. In the top division Monash University (from Melbourne) won the final, edging out Sydney University in a close game (final score 11-9) and University of Western Australian beat Newcastle University for bronze. The ANU had a tough tournament, coming in 9th after losing all their games. I don't know what happened in the bottom division because I'm a shameless elitist, but you can look it up.

The ANU has done a great job of bringing new players into their club and getting people to a bunch of local tournaments. This is exciting stuff and represents a real shift away from the way things were done when I was there*. It's also stupendously expensive playing tournaments in Perth which thinned out their roster a bit.

The local rumour mill is suggesting that some ANU players might organise the annual Canberra hat tournament institution, Diskapital in November some time. If so, they'll get to keep some of the profits to help cover their tournament costs for other events during the year so get signed up and come along. We're currently waiting for fields so details and rego and all that stuff should be out soon.

* For those who are interested, the ANU used to just rely on people who were already playing ultimate signing up to study there and recruit a few players around the edges to fill in the gaps. While this strategy worked for a while it's great to see the club actually recruiting new players and trying to build a fun atmosphere for new players to improve and meet people and all that good stuff. It's what a uni club should be.

Unigames scores

2010-09-29T21:17:00.002+10:00

The ANU are halfway through their round-robin, with five games down and three to go before the head into placing games. It's been a fairly "slow" start for the team, they've lost all their games. However, there are a few chances left to notch up a win and even if they don't I'm sure Brett Massey has won the roller-skate limbo. Scores and all that jazz can be found here.

In other news, two mixed teams from the ACT are gearing up for Mixed Nationals, Team Happy and Soma. Soma have been training for months on Sunday afternoons and feature a pretty exciting roster with lots of new faces. Team Happy feature the same sad, tired, grumpy old hacks that have been grinding away at national tournaments for years, and Kelly Kidman and Andrew Lance, Canberra's very own ultimate glamour couple. Regular ACT mixed club Kaboom are taking a rehab break after World Clubs so it's great to see two teams stepping up to represent Canberra later in October.

Stay tuned for more Unigames details (if we get any) and some largely fabricated mixed nationals hype.

And remember to register for Spring League. It's the best league of the year, and it's rained heaps so the fields will be in top condition. Don't miss out!

Unigames is on!

2010-09-27T13:25:00.002+10:00

Anunaki (the ANU team) is duking it out in Perth this week at Unigames. The tournament runs until the end of the week. They're in the top division (of two) with 8 other teams from around Australia. This is one of the biggest frisbee tournament of the year and is held alongside a bunch of other university sports so the parties are epic.

Have a look at forcesideline.com to get updates on how the games are going. They're posting regular updates on the whole tournament and although most of the people posting are frisbee insiders and there are heaps of in-jokes for the uni crowd there's some useful stuff in the mix.

If I get any word on how the team's going I'll post it up here. I doubt, however, that the team will have much time to tell us about their exploits. If you hear anything post a comment.

Did you know...

2010-09-25T18:55:00.002+10:00

Did you know that as an AFDA member you've covered by the AFDA's member compassionate fund?

The Australian Flying Disc Association, the peak body for Ultimate in Australia (they do bunch of stuff with Disc Golf and some of the other individual events too) provides two kinds of insurancy-type things for members. One is public liability insurance in case that game of "who can throw the highest" you were playing on a runway at Canberra Airport goes horribly wrong*. The other is a member compassionate fund that helps out players who have encountered financial hardship paying for frisbee related injury bills. So if you're a poor student or a lowly APS 1 or whatever and you need your face reconstructed after a you let the slightly overenthusiastic new guy on your league team pull the AFDA can, at its discretion, help you out with some of your medical costs.

Of course, the absolute worst person in the whole world to rely on for this kind of official important information is me, so check the details out for yourselves here. I can only guarantee that everything I've written in this post will be wrong in some way.

One really important thing is that all of the people involved in the claims process (and there are a couple) want you to contact them within 30 days of getting injured, so if you tear and ACL or badly break an ankle or accidentally set yourself on fire at the end-of-season BBQ use your new enforced down time to fill in their forms and send them off.

Oh - and by the way, AFDA membership lasts for 12 months after your last fee-paying event. You pay a few cents to the AFDA each night of league or every tournament you attend so you're membership is probably current from the last league game you played (unless you're scamming your way in and paying for free - in which case Anthony Perry is permitted by law to drive over you in a snow-plow).

* Actually, that might not be covered because it's unlikely to be an official ACT Ultimate Association sanctioned event. It's also a bad idea. Everybody knows that Leon Smith throws the highest.

Spring league details released!

2010-09-25T10:44:00.001+10:00

As promised, the details for Spring league..........

The ACTUA Spring Social Ultimate League is scheduled to start on Tuesday 12th October at the Dickson Playing Fields. Although it been expected that we would not be able to use the Dickson Playing Fields, the scheduled work on the irrigation system has been delayed to an unknown date. ACT Sportsgrounds have advised us that we will be given one months notice before we need to vacate. We are hopeful that we will be able to complete most if not all of our league at Dickson. At this stage it is anticipated that our league will finish on Tuesday 14th December but it may finish early. It is also possible that we could move some games to an alternate location (e.g. we have O’Connor booked as a contingency) but there is no single venue big enough for our Division 3 league.

The consequence of the delay in upgrading the irrigation system is that our summer league (starting 25th January) will not be at Dickson.

Social Division 3

Division 3 will commence at 6.35 and games will finish at 7.40pm.

Social Division 2

Division 2 will be at 8.00pm and games will finish at 9.15pm. Teams that have previously played in Division 2 will not be permitted to play in the earlier timeslot.

Division 2 players who cannot play in the later time slot may register in Division 3 as individual players without a team and we will endeavour to find you a team to play on.

League Organiser

The league will be organised by the fACTory Girls (ACT Women’s Ultimate Team) led by Natalie Blood natalieblood@gmail.com .

League Registration Site

Div 2

http://www.afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1524

Div 3

http://www.afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1525

Cost

The Committee has decided to trial team fees which will be payable in advance. The fee is $300.

We also recognise that some players will not have a team and may need to register as individuals. We will endeavour to find you a team. If we are successful you will be advised when to pay your league fee which will be $25. Payment will be required before the league commences. These steps should avoid the hassle of having to chase fees.

Registration Process

Teams

The team captain applies to register a team to Natalie or myself. You must supply a team name and your AFDA number.

If there is room we will create a team registration site. You have 3 working days to pay the $300 team payment. If payment is not received the team will be removed from the registration site.

Teams will be expected to have a minimum of 6 male and 4 female players (the ideal team size is 7m / 5f). If you require assistance in obtaining a few players please contact the league organiser as we may be able to allocate players from the list of people who register as individuals.

Individuals

Register your name on the website in the individual players without a team section. This does not guarantee you entry into the league.

You must not register with a specific team unless you have the agreement of the team captain. If a captain doesn’t know you, you will be removed from the registration list.

The league organiser may look at allocating you to teams that do not have a full complement of players or elect to create a new team. If we elect to create a new team we will advise you by e-mail and you will have 3 working days to pay the individual player fee of $25.

Registration Close

The registration site will close on Friday 8th October (or earlier if we reach our full complement of teams or individual players).

Be wise and register early.

Spring League 2010

2010-09-21T17:28:00.003+10:00

Hello all

ACT sports grounds are upgrading the sprinkler system at Dickson ovals over the next few months.

This means that Spring league will be moved to another set of fields in the inner-north.

ACTUA is still working out the fine detail of exactly how this will be done. It is likely that Spring league will start in mid to late October for this year.

Everything should be sorted out within the next two weeks.

-Tom Watson, ACTUA president.

Anunaki update

2010-09-20T21:43:00.002+10:00

While most of us were rugged up in our houses avoiding the bitter winds of the last few weeks, a few brave souls have been out training on Monday nights. In fact, tonight is the last training session before the ANU unigames team Anunaki board their flights to Perth.

The ANU has been steadily building a strong club culture and have had great success recruiting and enthusing new players this year. They even do things that aren't related to ultimate, like have movie nights. I still can't get over that. It's awesome to have not one but two ACT clubs (the other one is Soma) working hard to develop new players and give new people their first taste of tournament ultimate. Anunaki has been hit pretty hard by costs this year. Unigames is in Perth, so players need to be able to fork out a couple of hundred bucks for flights before they even think about dubious ultimate and unimpeachable partying. And of course, they're all students, so a few hundred bucks is about ONE MILLION DOLLARS in public servant money.

So if you see Brett Massey or his hardy band of ragamuffins give them your support, ask how things went, or better yet, buy them a sandwich or something.

Have fun out West, kids!

ACT Mixed Nationals teams

2010-08-30T06:02:00.003+10:00

Hello Everyone

If you want to take up one of the ACT mixed nationals team spots for the 2010 competition, please ensure that you get in touch with someone from the ACTUA committee before this weekend (4th and 5th of September).

We just have to ensure that there are no undeclared teams that are thinking of popping up out of nowhere.

Leaving a comment on this blog with contact details will suffice.

-Thomas Watson

Under 19s World Champs games LIVE at 4:30

2010-08-03T12:24:00.004+10:00

Hello avid readers,

The Australian tilt for the under 19s World Champsionships starts today in Heilbronn, Germany. Luckily for all of us, Ballarat blog maestro Simon Talbot is at the fields providing live updates through his forcesideline website. At under 23s Simon was using Twitter but apparently in the last couple of minutes of his comentary on the nailbiting Women's final, which Australia won, Twitter decided he was a spammer and blocked his account. Now he's updating directly to his website, which is nifty because I find Twitter new and intimidating.

So, at 4:30 this afternoon (that's the 3rd of August) Terra, the Australian under 19s women's team, take on Sweden. Sweden have traditionally been a strong European frisbee nation but things are always a bit mixed up in the youth divisions so this should be an interesting game to keep track of. Head here for live updates from 4:30. It's almost as good as being there with a bag over your head and having someone tell you what's going on. For those of you on mobile devices he's also updating on Twitter and Facebook but not as often. You'll have to look at Simon's website to work out how to do that because I'm technologically illiterate.

More young but not that young action

2010-07-26T23:58:00.002+10:00

Under 23s has wrapped up in Florence, Italy. It was a very successful tournament for the women's team, the Stingrays, who won the whole thing and are now Under 23 World Champions. Grouse! Apparently they bested Japan in the final in a game that went down to 15-all, universe point. Canberra's very own Misch Phillips pulled down the final goal to give the Australians victory. Nice work ladies.

The lads had a disappointing loss in their quarter final but showed their class to win all their remaining games and come in fifth. It's tough to keep fighting in the 5-8 bracket and it's a credit to the team that they stayed focused and won their games, including a win over Great Britain that would have been pretty sweet. All the twitter updates indicate that Andrew "AJ" Jackson was a real weapon for the Goannas on offense which, given his performance on Canberran teams, is no suprise.

So there you have it. The Stingrays are Under 23 World Champions.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of international ultimate. In a week or so the Under 19s World Championships start in Heilbronn, Germany. The ACT is represented in the Open Division by Ben Matthews-Hunter, of the local Matthews-Hunter frisbee dynasty. It's really exciting to have an up-and-coming defensive handler in the squad and we're all keen to see how the Aussie teams go. Hopefully I'll be a bit more organised about getting updates out too. Except if you've read this blog in any detail you'll know that such promises are usually followed by months of silence. At least this time I'm being honest with you. When I talk about long silences. Anyway, I'll try.

Under 23s

2010-07-22T13:36:00.003+10:00

The first two days of games are over for the two under 23s teams. In the open division the Goannas have had 2 wins and 1 loss. The beat Italy first up 17-3, then lost to Canada 14-12, then beat Sweden 17-8. Apparently local heartthrob AJ caught a Callahan goal in the last game. (I'm not sure what the rules are in league at the moment, but in international tournaments if a player catches the frisbee in their scoring endzone that's a goal, even if they were on defense. A Callahan is just such a goal, where you're playing D all the way down in your opponent's endzone and manage to catch an intercept. It's considered a pretty awesome thing to do.)

As for the women's divison, the Stingrays won their first two games 17-0 against Germany and Ireland, which is a great way to start the tourney. In their last game they went down 17-15 to Japan.

Simon Talbot who runs the www.forcesideline.com website is putting blow by blow accounts up on Twitter. Check out his website for details.

Under 23s starts today

2010-07-20T21:32:00.002+10:00

In the latest installment of international frisbee, the Under 23 World Championships starts today in Florence, Italy. Canberra is represented in the Open division by Andrew "AJ" Jackson. We're also sort-of represented in the Women's division by pseudo-local Michelle "Misch" Phillips.

Good luck to AJ and Misch and the rest of their teams at Under 23s. I'll post some scores up once they come in or you can keep an eye on the scores website: http://scores.wucc2010.com/?view=teams

Final day wrap-up

2010-07-13T02:12:00.002+10:00

OK, I've missed a few days and left you all hanging. Sorry, I've been a bit distracted. Here's the update for the last day's play.

On Friday morning Kaboom squared off against the original first seed Axis of C'vill from the states. We'd been chafing to play some Americans for a while and this game was our big chance. I'm not actually sure what happened unfortunately because I had to go to hospital to get my knee checked out. Mica came too to translate so the team was down 2 handlers. Apparently we were scrappy in the first half and went down 9-3 before stepping up in the second half and bringing the score back to 17-13 or something like that. Again, we got a bunch of the disc and our offense needed to convert. The team did well to stay motivated and fight hard after the dissapointment of the day before.

In the afternoon Mica and I rejoined the team for our final game for the 11th/12th playoff. We played Canada's Chaos again and it was clear from the start that we wanted the game more. We were willing to tough it out and be patient to score, we played for each other on O and D and within no time we were pummeling the hapless Canucks. They lacked the heart to run with us and we're willing to play for each other so late in the tournament. It was awesome to see Kaboom still working for each other and playing as a team in the last game and it was a performance we were all proud of. We shortened the game to a 15 point cap and won something like 15-9.

With a final record of 9 wins and 2 losses we had a bunch of good results. It's a shame that our record only took us as far as 11th but we played as a team and showed we were totally capable of mixing it with the best teams in the world. Pie Wagon and Smurf made it through to the quarters then played off for 5th and 6th (Newwie got up) so it was a really strong performance from the Australian teams in general.

As for the knee, I've torn my ACL and there's some bone or cartelidge floating around in the joint. I'm working with my insurance company to come back to Canberra to get surgery so I can on with my rehab and get back to business soon.

I want to say a huge thanks to Kaboom for all their work over the last 2 years. It's been a huge effort from everyone involved and I hope we built a club they're all proud of. It's been a real priveledge to coach and work with everyone and we've all improved heaps through the process. Good luck with the rest of your travels and I'll see most of you back in Canberra soon.

And if you ever wanted to know what the inside of a badly swollen knee looks like, just go to a Czech hospital. It looks like this:

2010-07-09T07:04:00.002+10:00

What a day!

OK let's start at the beginning: Pre-quarter against Upsadaisy from Austria. Kaboom are nervous before the game and it shows- a quiet warm-up and dramatically reduced shenanigans in the corridors of the palatial Hotel Slavia.

Early in the game, Kaboom struggle with Upsadaisy's long game. They huck to contests over and over and come down with a lot of the disc. We try a few different defenses before finally getting some purchase in match force backhand. By this stage we're down a couple of breaks. Our offense is nervous - our handlers are squirreling around and we're throwing to some bad options. When we do patiently work the disc in it's clear that Upsadaisy have no answer to patience and quick movement but their skill in the air sees them win just about all the contested discs. Despite time-outs, a stupid team pointing and dancing game and a bunch of solid points Kaboom can't settle and we're not converting our offenses. By now we're regularly winningthte disc on D. We've got them pinned down in a backhand force and we're winning back our breaks but without reliable offense we can't quite close the gap.

Time cap goes and we score to make it 12-10 game to 14. They call a time-out and we're feeling good-we've won from here before. This proves not to be our day as Upsadaisy score their O and we trade out the last points to lose 14-11. We're prety gutted at missing out on the quarter finals but we're resolved to keep playing hard.

The next game sees us face off against Jeremy Codhand from the UK. Before the game we bring it in during a slightly unconvincing warm-up. We decide that we want to be proud of this game, our intensity lifts and we take the field. Codhand get up a break early against stome scrappy offense from Kaboom. A few points later, Kaboom are about to score when a defener lays out, gets a great block and lands on John's left knee. He goes down screaming and is out for the game.

In John's absence Kaboom lift and by the time he's got ice on his knee and collected his wits the team is pulling ahead. They continue to trade and break throughout the end of the first half and through the second. Our offense is patient and calm again and Ian, Asher, Mica Riss and Jes are holding our structure together. Codhand also find that they can't stop our quick movement and sensible option taking and we pull away to win something like 17-11.

Tomorrow we play 2 games, with the goal of finishing 9th. We're looking forward to some solid games against great opposition, starting with American team Axis of C'Ville, who were in fact the #1 seed and undefeated until they also suffered a loss in their pre-quarter game.

And now, to bed.

We win more games

2010-07-08T07:18:00.002+10:00

Just a quck post because I'm very tired and I want to put some high numbers into our personal wellbeing scoring tomorrow morning, which means a good night's sleep and low fatigue.

Today we played Frizzly Bears who despite their terrible team name were pretty decent at ultimate. Because of the rain yesterday the game formats changed a bit and we won 15-9 in a fairly convincing display. They had one handler who was very difficult to stop so we just stopped everybody else and threw enough different defensive looks at them to keep them off their game.

We also had the number 1 Canadian seed Chaos. They got a break right at the start but we settled in to go up a couple of breaks before half. Time cap went and they scored to make it 10-9 game to 12 (with us leading). We scored, they scored twice and we scored another universe point goal to win and take the notional fourth seed run into the elimination rounds. We played well and they made a bunch of terrible calls so it was really satisfying to beat them. We're now the highest seeded team not from the USA and if all goes well in the next few games we'll improve on that. We've got a round of 16 game against Upsadaisy from Austria tomorrow at 10:45 which should be a corker.

I'll get some more detail up on how we're travelling tomorrow some time.

WUCC Day 3

2010-07-07T05:12:00.002+10:00

Just one game today. We played Columbia's Team 2600 at 8:30. It was another close affair with 2600 really suprising us with their intensity and physicality on D. We got up a couple early on and managed to hold a break or two for most of the game with 2600 breathing down our necks. Their poachy D really rattled our offense and a bit of extra wind took the edge off our execution. Eventually we scored after time cap to make it 14-11 game to 16. Some poor option taking and a few mix-ups in our deep defense saw Columbia creep ever closer until eventually they tied it up at 15 all. They pulled to us and we hucked it away only to get the disc back near their endzone and score. We win. Yay!! It was a little disappointing to see our offense lose shape and our decision making go off the boil but it's a pretty nice luxury to be able to be disappointed about a win so I suppose it's not so bad. Everyone's ready to lift tomorrow and get back to business with the disc in our hands.

Tomorrow we play Frizzly Bears who seem to be something of a mystery. They regularly lose to Sugar Mix but game teams like Pie Wagon much more trouble than the Stuttgarters during their pre-tour. Apparently they run heaps of offense through one very dynamic handler, so hopefully we have the antidote to that.

After that we've got Chaos, the number one Canadian seed and fourth seed overall. They seem very aggressive deep and are happy to give the disc up and try to win it back on D. If our offense fires again it's a great opportunity to take our first North American scalp. We'll have scalped a team from all the continents represented at WUCC if that happens.

Both games have been shortened to 80 minutes to squeeze more games into tomorrow's schedule. We had a little bit more rain today and lots of the fields got closed so the tournament organisers are keen to fit the cancelled games in tomorrow. Games are to 15 rather than 17. We're over at Strahov tomorrow as well, so we'll be playing on great pitches in crazy old crumbling soviet stadiums. It should be a great spot for some hard running ulty.

As it is we're five wins from five games and we're basically guaranteed a round-of-16 spot and a top 16 finish. More wins tomorrow will give us a slightly easier path through the finals.

I've also added honorary Canberran Misch Phillips to this blog for the duration of the tournament so she can tell you about some of the events happening off field. Stay tuned for the tragic tale of "Big Tom and the Sink" and the tale the whole family will love, "60 Euros each for Team Monkeys".

Pokrok Kaboom

Photos?

2010-07-06T06:04:00.002+10:00

Have a look at Pete's blog:

http://www.gdayeh.com/wpg2?g2_itemId=2610

There are a few pics from day 2. Notable mentions: Page 7, bottom row, second from the left - Misch skying Tinsel. Page 9, middle photo - Tom's "Rank it!" goal.

Have I mentioned that more scores have come up? Have a look at Max's 6 assist streak.

http://scores.wucc2010.com/?view=gameplay&Game=1477

We're in Pool M now, with Chaos (Canada #1), Frizzly Bears (Germany #2) and Team 2600 (Columbia #1) to play. Tomorrow is one game at 8:30am against Team 2600.

Kaboom play offense. Good offense.

2010-07-06T01:43:00.002+10:00

Yes faithful readers it was only a matter of time until Kaboom stepped up their offensive completion rate. We all knew that some unlucky team was going to come up against us in that fateful game where we just didn't give the disc back and that hearts were going to be broken. Well today our friends from Sugar Mix who so kindly hosted us in Stuttgart were subject to a Kaboom offense that was precise, patient and in control. The result? We beat the second seed in our pool 17-9, which is a more punishing scoreline than for our game against the fourth seed, Ah Ouh Puc.

Before our game against Belgium's XLR8Rs this morning we set the task of controlling our structure and improving our option taking. After a warm-up that was distrupted by lightning passing over we took some crucial steps in the right direction with our handlers staying in position and holding our play together. We closed the game out a comfortable 17-6.

As we warmed down we caught the last few minutes of Sugar Mix against Squal. Sugar Mix were up 13-11 after time-cap, making it game to 15. We initially cheered for Sugar Mix (since they billeted us) but the terrible spirit of one of their players (#10, whom we later nicknamed "Tinsel") soon had us supporting Squal, who had been spirited and fair all the way through our epic universe point win against them the day before. A bunch of dubious calls and fouls helped Sugar Mix edge the Japanese out in their second universe point loss, which is crazy because literally EVERYONE else on Sugar Mix seems lovely. By the time we came to play them we were out for justice.

First point - statement of intent: We pull, chase hard, earn the disc in midfield and punch in a quick goal. We pull again, they huck to a contest and score. They pull and play zone - it took them to victory against Squal. We crush it. There's too much space in the middle for our active handlers and poppers. We pull again, they score on another contested huck. We score another clean offense. Mica gets a run-through block on Tinsel (#10) who's already given us the disc and we score. Adam gets a great block on a swing pass and we break again to go 5-2 up. We trade and they break back once to get to 8-6 before we break them again and take half 9-6. Their offense is clearly rattled. They're playing a bunch of iso-ish offense with their big male targets in the middle of the field. They're struggling to hit those targets and when they do our women have their downfield receivers covered. The pressure is clearly showing with a bunch of execution errors and bad options from Sugar Mix. We on the other hand are clinical. We've had maybe 3 turnovers in the first half and two of those are in the same point. They can't cover our cutters or stop our disc movement in match and their zone is too spread out.

In the second half our investment in team defense and clinical offense pays off. We're on O after half and we score, then break again. Some trading takes us to 14-8. They don't have a lot of answers and are struggling with consistent pressure. The score on of their offense points after our D line gives up the disc against their zone several times and we take the score to 16-9. We rest our guns and come down in match with a forehand force. They work the disc up the forced sideline before spraying a shot out of the field and we come up on O. The disc moves to the middle of the field, Erin Wallis makes a great break side cut which draws Tom Walcott's player. With his player running towards the break side and the thrower Tom goes where an unmarked 6 foot 7 receiver goes naturally: Deep. His cry of "Rank it" makes James Ley on the sideline smile and John hucks it deep for a goal reminiscent of a different team and a different time. That said, he does have the presence of mind to make it a footrace between Big Tom and the unfortunate girl who switched onto him so he's still allowed to be a techincal handler. Tom scores, we go nuts again and everybody's happy that Kaboom's offense has finally turned up in Prague. Except Tinsel, who's proven he's all about decoration.

The other day Max and Hebs were an a queue behind some of the players from Mental Floss Tycoons. With a surfeit of international experience and a bunch of world titles under their belts the Tossers just had a nasty scare coming from behind against Pie Wagon to win 17-15. With Max and Hebs flying under the "all the good players are North American" radar they were privvy to the candid fears of some of the greats of the mixed division. "If those guys [Pie Wagon] were the third Australian team, we'd hate to play the first Australian team." It's nice to see that Australian teams don't always have to match up against North American teams as the intimidated little guys. Thanks Pie Wagon.

In other exciting news, Adelaide mixed team Smurf knocked off ONYX, the Canadian third seed, to top their pool. Congrats to Smurf for taking the first North America scalp for the Aussies in the mixed division. Let's hope it's the first of many.

Keep sending through your good wishes, it's awesome to know the home fires are still burning.

WUCC day 1

2010-07-05T06:15:00.002+10:00

This morning at 8:30 Kaboom finally took to the field at the World Ultimate Club Championships in Prague. Day 1 proved to be something of an epic for us as we fight for the top spot in our pool. Placing first in our initial pool of 5 teams gives us a great position in the next phase of the tournament and close to guarantees a spot in the round of 16 later in the week. At 8:30 we faced off against Ah Ouh Puc, a French team captained by two Canberrans who have been based in Paris for the last few years (and recently returned to the bright lights and clean air of the Australian capitol) and also starring one-time Canberran Cyril Cayla. Kaboom rested some of their top players and started slow, with Ah Ouh Puc taking the first two points. Kaboom fired up to trade to 3-1 down before going on a 5 point run. The French scored twice to keep it close but Kaboom responded with three more goals before half and two after to go to 11-5. Ah Ouh Puc scored a few here and there and Kaboom ran out winners at 17-10. As usual, Kaboom led the way with stifling defense and clinical execution around the disc. In a hilarious typographic error, Kaboom technical handler John Horan was attributed 6 assists for the game. In an equally baffling result, Gareth Beyers scored once and assisted once without ever stepping onto the field.

No doubt you're all wondering where the epic bit comes in. Sure, a 17-10 win from a scratchy start is OK, but where's the glory we've come to associate with Canberra teams? Well, dear reader, let me tell you about game 2.

12:30. Kaboom vs. Squal, Japanese second seeds. We're missing Gareth, Myall and Riss.

Kaboom seems to be struggling with the heat and look flat in their warm-up. It shows on the field with Kaboom giving up 3 soft turnovers to go down 4-0 to Squal who haven't made a turnover. Simple execution errors and over-generous defensive cushioning cause some of the Kaboom cheer squad to give up on their heroes in the bright yellow shirts.

WRONG. Kaboom finally score on offense with a paradigm shifting Heather Tolley layout goal and we come out in zone to stop the precise Japanese deep game. Two quick defensive breaks see Kaboom draw close at 4-3 down. The cheer squad rethink their early despondancy. Squal and Kaboom trade, first 1 each, then 2 each to bring the score to 7-6 Squal. The wierd half-time cap rule means half is at 8. Kaboom are losing control of their defense in zone and have gone back to trusty match, this time forcing forehand.

Squal take half 8-6 and Kaboom hit back straight after to make it 8-7. Our defense is stifling now, we're jamming up the open side on offense and winning the contests deep. Tom Watson comes down with a bunch of the disc on D, Heather Tolley makes her player look slow, Laina has stepped up her physicality and stopped her defender from shoving her. Defensively we're in control, but our offense still needs to score.

They score again and we score and break to level up the game at 10-10. Squal have been playing 4 women on offense all game but our women are beating theirs on D and getting free on O. They score and break to go to 12-10. We trade and time-cap goes and they score to make it 13-11, game to 15. By now we're getting heaps of the disc. Offense is still sketchy though - unfamiliar D, heat and fatigue are sending a bunch of shots stray and people are anxious to score in a hurry. We stack our D line, win the disc and punch in a goal. Matt Dowle is a nightmare for the Japanese, pulling out some trademark Dowle Family Magic to get a bunch of blocks on the increasingly pressured Japanese long game. We grind out another goal to level things at 13 all. Squall settle and work in an impressively clinical offense to edge closer to victory, 14-13. Kaboom send out another strong line, win the disc and score. It's universe point, 14 all, we're on D. Matt lands a great pull in the corner of the field. Japan swing and huck it deep. They make a tough catch just outside the endzone and throw a certain goal that Laina Hall snaffles with a great block in a very compact piece of defense. We go nuts. Matt informs us all that the huck was a travel, the disc goes back. We stop going nuts. Great pressure around the disc leads to another turn in a stronger position as the Japanese throw a dodgy hammer to a wrong-footed receiver. He falls down, Max gets it and the poor Japanese guy has to leave the field with cramps. Misch Phillips runs deep and the huck goes up but it's too floaty and Misch is soon surrounded with defenders. Something bad (but not majorly bad) happens and she leaves the field with another injury sub. Erin Wallis comes on to keep up our running on D. Again, we grind it out against the Japanese horizontal stack. Our women are dominant in the back field and our one boy in the cutting lanes is working to help cover on deeps and still bid on the unders. The sideline is going nuts again. Again we win the D. The disc swings to Adam who launches a huge hammer to Matt but it's out of bounds and Matt can't keep it infield. Back to D. Again, huge pressure pays off when a throw to one of the Japanese women is overcooked and she drops it. Our third offense is gritty and patient - there's heaps of traffic around the cutters and the handlers continue to recycle and swing. Moving the disc laterally is easy but cuts upfield are hard. Finally, we swing across the endzone to Matt who hits Max running to the forehand front corner. Max catches the final goal and we go really really nuts. Tom and Adam make out on the field (seriously) and we win 15-14 in 125 minutes. Many of us have lost 1.5 to 2 kilos of fluid in the second game and all of us are pumped about a big win and awesome fight back. We've never been behind like that before so it's exciting to know we can punch in goals when it counts. That Kaboom defense just keeps winning the disc.

Tomorrow we play XLR8Rs and Sugar Mix. Check out http://scores.wucc2010.com to stay abreast of developments (I don't think they're live, but then that's probably a good thing because if they were Pete Hemphill would be up all night keeping the baby awake). Spirits are high in the Kaboom camp and we're looking forward to more tough games tomorrow. Once our offense synchs up we're going to be criminally good.

P.S. If you do see Pete Hemphill, say something nice. Poor guy.

Welcome to the Czech Republic

2010-07-03T18:38:00.002+10:00

Welcome all players to Czech Republic. Please be advise that there is strictly NO TRAINING.

It's Saturday at the action end of the world and after a few days hanging around Prague we're all itching to get started. We had a training session on Thursday morning to get used to the area. On Friday we lined up a practise match against New Zealand's Duke (who we played at the NZ Beat Up that I've posted about earlier) after Chad Larson Experience pulled out of their scheduled match against us because of injuries. Fortunately, however, Friday was also the day where we were introduced to the beautiful Czech custom of NO TRAINING. With this new cultural sensitivity under our belts we went to the pool. Going to the pool is like living through a Kafka novel. Amazing.

Today we're going on a tour of the fields to get our bearings and find super important things like toilets, water tanks and places where NO TRAINING will be conducted. Plus, we're testing out public transport between the two fields sites. We're at the beautiful, soviet inspired vrsovice area in Slavia (which is a suburb-type thing South-East of the city. They have a saying in this part of town: "Is concrete, is Slavia!", which is a fine way of expressing their love for their local architecture. Basically, this is a haven for all those planners who always wanted to make all of their buildings brown concrete rectangles. All shades of brown are represented in the Slavia region. The other fields are at Strahov on the other side of the Vltava river and up on top of the hills that run along the western banks.

Tomorrow is GAME ON! We play Ah Ouh Puc, the top French team, then Squal, the second Japanese team. Ah Ouh Puc star recently returned Canberrans Kelly Kidman and Andrew Lance who have been living in Paris until recently. We hope they're just as excited as us about the improvement in ACT ultimate over the last few years.

I'm off to buy a fridge now. Seriously. We at Kaboom don't stuff around when it comes to keeping our milk cold.

Kaboom starts strong in Stuttgart

2010-06-28T16:24:00.003+10:00

In all the excitement of departing for Europe there hasn't been much time to post over the last month. Kaboom's preparations for the World Ultimate Club Championships have been pretty detailed. We flew to Europe with 358 muesli bars, 14 kilos of sustagen, 216L worth of Gatorade powder, 72 bags of lollies and 1 massage table, plus whatever individuals players brought in their own private stashes.

After flying into Europe last week we met up in Stuttgart on Friday to share our latest travel stories. Team Castle saw castles, Team Straggler tried desperately to get someone else to arrange their travel for them, Team Used Car toured the very dodgiest of used car yards and visited one fantastic mechanic (if you ever break down in Frankfurt let me know - I've got the man for you), Team James Ley got delayed, tried to catch an express train just one stop and generally battled the public transport system mano e mano.

We stayed with billets on Friday night before piling into a hostel on Saturday night to prepare for the serious business of playing ultimate. We had a light training session on Saturday and two games on Sunday against Sugar Mix from Stuttgart and the Heidies from Heidelburg. The Heidies were the first to face a Kaboom team not hampered by single digit training temperatures or ridiculously stressful jobs. We got to 10-2 up with 2 turnovers before punching the game out 17-5, in an hour. Snippety snap!

Sugar Mix were clearly a stronger team and had a bewildering array of team cheers. Once again the superiority of cheer minimalism (we have just one cheer, and it is right) was demonstrated as we raced to a 3-0 lead. We traded for a few points until half at 7-4, before taking a couple of breaks early in the second half. This was enough for us to close out the game 12-7, although we lacked a little focus and intensity late in the game. After both days we're indulged in a bit of pool recovery, trekking to our local swimming pool to join the locals in a spot of swinging arms, flapping arms and everyone's favourite,"The Flasher".

The next few days are "Down Time", where people can make their own plans and go their own way. We next meet up in Prague on Wednesday night before another training session on Thursday and a hit-out against 2009 US nationals finalists Chad Larson Experience on Friday.

Game on at WUCC is on Sunday. Stay tuned for more exciting updates.

Bags

Canberra League Cup

2010-06-09T16:03:00.002+10:00

The inaugural Canberra League Cup was played last Saturday. 6 teams turned up to play on what was a lovely sunny Canberra day. The tournament was held at Dickson playing fields.

Div. 2 winners, Discotheque, split their team in two for the tournament. They played off in the first game of the day, with Discotheque 1 proving the stronger of the two teams with some strong div. 3 pick-ups. Div. 2 runners-up ANU started the day slow, scraping in a draw against The Empire after being down 6-3. ANU soon found form and the favourites tag after beating Discotheque 1 8-7 in an epic double game point game to finish top after the pool games.

Dickey knees won 3 of their 4 games to take equal second with Discotheque 1. The Empire rounded out the top 4 with Dynoshite and Discotheque 2 fighting for 5th.

Discotheque 1 defeated Dickey Knees in their semi while ANU was too good this time around for The Empire.

Discotheque started strong in the final with the youngest player in the ACT, Sam Joyce throwing the first goal, after catching a stall 9 flick from Jodie Wilson. Both teams scored their first few offenses with scores trading until Discotheque finally unsettled the until then solid ANU offense with a strong zone defense. Discotheque ran away with the game winning the inaugural Canberra League Cup.

Discotheque 2 picked up spirit to cap off a great Autumn of frisbee.

Thanks to Mikey Hatfield, and the ANU for a great tournament.

Autumn League Champions

2010-06-03T23:59:00.002+10:00

Autumn league is now over.

In div. 3 King Truckers took out the title over the Spin Doctors with Bunny & the Bureaucrats winning spirit.

In div. 2 Discotheque held off a strong ANU to win 9-7. Revelation won spirit.

Thanks to Sonia and Anthony for all the work they put in to make league happen.

Kaboom #8 seed at World Clubs

2010-05-29T09:40:00.002+10:00

The draft seedings for World Clubs have been released.

Force Side Line has a great break down of the seedings and what the Australian teams pools are.

Check it out

http://forcesideline.com/?p=445&cpage=1#comment-168

Trivia Night June 7th

2010-05-27T15:50:00.004+10:00

Next week is the final week of Autumn League before everyone finally admits it's too cold and heads inside for Winter. What better way to celebrate the change in seasons (and the glorious acheivements of your team over the last few weeks) than to head along to the Kaboom Trivia Night. Apparently there will be audio and video rounds as well as the usual types of questions, so it promises to be good fun.

Place: Duntroon Golf Club
Date: 7th June
Time: 7:30pm for and 8pm start, finish up around 10-10:30
Cost: $10/head; Tables of 6-10 people each.
(Drinks will be available at the bar, about $3 a schooner I think?)

Email me (who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail got com) for more information or tickets.

So get your league team together to form a table and come along. It's a fund-raiser for Kaboom's trip to Europe to compete in the World Ultimate Club Championships and it's one of the only chances you'll get to see ACTUAL Kaboom players in the ACTUAL real world. There will be prizes. I don't know what they are. I'm sure they're nice though.

Soma training is HUGE

2010-05-27T15:47:00.003+10:00

Brett has promised some more information on Soma's first training session last Sunday but apparently a whopping 30 people showed up. Awesome!

So if you're one of those people who waits to see whether everyone else likes something before trying it out it seems the evidence is clear. People like Soma training so you should get involved.

New Rules Website

2010-05-24T17:07:00.002+10:00

The WFDF Ultimate Rules Committee has launched a new website to assist players in learning and understanding the Rules of Ultimate: http://www.wfdf.org/rules_ultimate.

The site contains a wealth of resources to help players self-referee as easily as possible, including; rule of the month, a basic version of the rules, various translations of the rules, decision diagrams, official interpretations and the all important rules quiz!!

I encourage everyone to check out the site - or if you have other rules related questions feel free to drop me an email (rules@afda.com)

Jo Creswell
AFDA Rules Officer

Two clubs in one weeked

2010-05-23T17:22:00.003+10:00

Hi avid readers,

This weekend saw Canberra's two mixed clubs take to fields around the city. Although each club is at a very different stage in their journey it's a super exciting time for both clubs and well worth hearing about.

New Canberra club Soma started training on Sunday afternoon. It's great to see another club forming in the ACT. It'll give a much needed opportunity for local players to enjoy tournament ultimate and build and develop their skills. Unfortunately I couldn't make it along to their session but if anyone has any details they want to share it would be great to get a write-up to stick on the blog. Hopefully I'll get a chance to meet the crew and see how things are shaping up soon. Stay tuned for more details on this awesome development in the local scene.

Old Canberra club Kaboom had their second last training camp this weekend in preparation for the World Ultimate Club Championships in Prague in July. With the big event creeping ever closer Kaboom (minus local heart-thob Andrew Jackson and interstate weapon Michelle Philips who were at training camps for the national under 23s teams) had a strong weekend of high level and high intensity ultimate. Look out for an article (hopefully flattering) on Kaboom in that paragon of local reputable journalism "City News". There might even be some photos of somewhat dishevelled Kaboom players braving the cold nights at training last Thursday.

OK, my takeaway is no doubt ready so I'd better sign off. Keep an eye out for players from the local mixed scene at league or around the traps and stay tuned for more details on the exciting ultimate the ACT is producing.

Div. 2 ladder

2010-05-13T12:26:00.002+10:00

Here is the updated div. 2 ladder:

Team	Win	Lose	Draw	For	Against	Difference	Total
Discotheque	5	0	0	50	36	14	10
ANU	4	1	0	45	40	5	8
Bananas	3	2	0	55	35	20	6
The Punters	3	2	0	48	39	9	6
Boffins	1	3	1	40	42	-2	3
Damn Beavers	1	3	1	38	41	-3	3
Devolutionaries	1	4	0	35	55	-20	2
Revelation	1	4	0	31	54	-23	2

Discotheque are now top of the ladder after beating ANU 11-5. Boffins and Damn Beavers both won their first games. With one game left the top 4 teams are decided, only the order they finish can change. Looking at points difference you would expect Bananas to finish 1st, Discotheque 2nd, Punters 3rd and ANU 4th. This just shows the importance of winning the close games, which there has been a number of this league. Had the Boffins and Beavers won more of these they could well have made the top 4.

Div. 3

2010-05-12T10:55:00.002+10:00

Hi all,

Here are the div. 3 ladders so far:

Pool A		Pool B
King Truckers	10	Spin Doctors	8
The Brethren	6	Dickey Knees	6
Team Team	4	Ugly Shorts	6
ANU	4	Dynoshite	5
Go Fetch	4	La Da Duchi Crew	3
Bunny & The Bureaucrats	2	Muthatruckers	2

King Truckers are the only undefeated team so far.

The top 3 teams now go into a new pool and the bottom 3 also go into a new pool. Points carry over from games against the teams going into your pool. So with 3 games to go the new pools look like this:

Pool C		Pool D
King Truckers	4	Dynoshite	4
Spin Doctors	4	Go Fetch	4
Dickey Knees	2	ANU	2
Team Team	2	La Da Duchi Crew	2
The Brethren	0	Muthatruckers	0
Ugly Shorts	0	Bunny & The Bureaucrats	0

My div. 3 predictions are quite off which is probably to be expected. I am going to go out on a limb though and say that King Truckers will win the competition and Dynoshite will top pool D.

Stuff happens but I don't know anything about it

2010-05-11T14:16:00.004+10:00

For weeks now the supercomputer in the Canberra Ultimate Blog secret underground facility has been humming and whirring with unusual fervour. Today, finally, we're beginning to see the results of the latest application of its enormous computational power. I've been given a report claiming that a Canberra team named Indecent ACT travelled to the Ultimate Stampede in Bathurst over the 8th and 9th of May. The Stampede is one of a growing group of tournaments pitched at university teams and league players who are looking to play tournaments without committing to more dedicated club teams.

The rego page lists a bunch of local movers and shakers including Sonia "I Run Bits of Everything" Gorgula, Karl "I Got Naked Before, During and After it Was Fashionable" Adamson and Brett "I'm a Lovely Guy" Massey. Despite these names and a return to the old-school style of working "ACT" into team names these guys managed not to get a mention in the official tournament write-up (here: http://ufnsw.com.au/node/146). As someone who's never been mentioned in any tournament write-up that I wasn't the author of I can assure you that some tall tales are definitely flying under the radar here. So if you know what happened to the Indecent ACTors in Bathurst write something up and we'll post it here so everyone can share in their exploits.

Tournament ulty isn't just for those who've abandoned the rest of their lives to chase plastic. It's awesome fun that anyone can and should get involved in. Keep an eye out for more Canberra teams heading to local tournies as the university season builds up.

Kaboom top Aussie seeds

2010-05-10T15:51:00.003+10:00

Last weekend Sydney played host to the seeding tournament for the three Australian mixed teams heading to Prague in the Czech Republic later this year for the World Ultimate Club Championships. With the tournament numbers boosted by the arrival of two Kiwi teams looking for some match practice against international opponents and an innovative tournament format to fit into the very busy fields schedule in Sydney, each team prepared to play four games in under 24 hours in what became a feverish weekend of frisbee.

Local heartthrobs Kaboom played both the Kiwi teams on Saturday night (with games starting at 5:45 and finishing at 9:15) then played their seeding games against the two remaining Australian teams starting at 9:00 on Sunday morning.

First up, Kaboom took on Credo from Christchurch. With a few connections to the New Zealand ultimate scene on the team your heroes were able to get some smart defensive match-ups early in the game and limited Credo's preferred offense. Credo played a very balanced style of ultimate and looked to run much of their offense through their women. They were, however, no match for the excellent defensive technique of the Canberran ladies and some clinical offense from the Canberrans saw them run out the game with a final score of something like 15-7.

After just enough time to eat their prescribed number of muesli bars and enjoy the feeling of relaxation the Kaboom crew were back at the coalface again, this time squaring up against Duke from Wellington. Duke were clearly more accustomed to playing in the howling winds, driving rain and freezing conditions of their home town and were ill at ease in the still, mild conditions of Sydney. Despite some innovative throws and strong high grabs Duke couldn't keep up their intensity against Kaboom's team defense and hard running offense and your heroes ground out another 15-7ish win.

Within twelve hours of frantic driving, eating, sleeping and making jokes about who got to share a bed with AJ the Kaboom kids were back at the fields gearing up to play Adelaide's premier mixed team, Smurf. In what was later described as "a game of runs" Kaboom caught Smurf napping and got a few early breaks to lead 4-2. Smurf lifted their game and scored three in a row to take it to 5-4. Kaboom called a time out and came out with stifling defense and efficient offense to go on a ten point run, taking the game to 14-5. Smurf seemed to relax a little once the weight of expectation was over and started converting on offense while Kaboom developed a hilarious case of endzone drops and Smurf scored four more to reach 14-9. Finally, after three endzone drops in a point and some stifled laughter on the field Kaboom got serious and captain Max Wheeler pulled down a huck to seal the game at 15-9.

Finally, Kaboom matched up against Newcastle's Pie Wagon. With a few players missing from their roster the Novocastrians had 7 boys and 9 girls and started out the game playing 4 women on offense where possible. Again, the stifling defense of the Kaboom women eventually convinced them to try another approach and Kaboom took half 8-5ish after a late rally from Pie Wagon. After half Kaboom got another break and went up 10-6 before trading to a comfortable looking 12-8ish (something like that). Kaboom looked a little too comfortable and Pie Wagon changed to playing zone defense, normally something that the Canberrans play well against. This time, however, Kaboom was caught off guard by the late change up and Pie Wagon brought the game back to 13-12 Kaboom's way when time-cap went, making it a game to 14. An overcooked Kaboom hammer gave Pie Wagon the disc and their offense marched it down the field to score, making it 13 all, universe point. Kaboom received the pull and some quick movement lead to a huck to AJ deep. He caught the disc just outside the endzone and called time out. Kaboom set up in the endzone and an up-the-line dump cut from none other than Kaboom captain Max Wheeler for the final goal sealed the game and the number one Australian seeding for Kaboom.

Given the strong performances of Australian teams in the Mixed Division at World Clubs in 2006 Kaboom should be seeded roughly 10th, but these things are always a bit mysterious and unpredictable. We at the Canberra Ultimate Blog wish all three Aussie teams (and Credo and Duke from NZ) all the best for Prague in July. If you see a Kaboom player around, sporting their awesome red or yellow shirts, congratulate them and wish them well for the journey ahead. They are, after all, your heroes and mine.

More mixed ultimate fun coming to Canberra

2010-05-07T15:10:00.001+10:00

Dear Canberra Ultimate players,

There is a new ACT Mixed Ultimate club on the horizon, and we want you to be a part of it.

This club intends to develop the outstanding talent in the territory. We aim to go not only to this year's Mixed Nationals in October, but to future tournaments for years to come. This is a bold challenge, but we strongly believe that our community is up to it.

The aims of the club include:
• Development - there's a lot of talent in this town, and we want to create an environment in which yours can flourish. This is intended through focussed & supported training to aid your learning and improvement .
• Competitiveness - whether you've just taken a step up from league, or whether you're a tournament veteran, we want you to be challenging yourself at every moment throughout the campaign

Our first introductory sessions are Sunday May 16 and Sunday May 23, most likely at Downer fields from 3.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.

If you’re interested but can’t make Sunday afternoons please drop us an email (sonia.gorgula@daff.gov.au or brettdavidmassey@gmail.com).

While mixed nats is a step up from league, if playing fun competitive ultimate is something you enjoy then this is a great opportunity to enhance your skills, become part of the wider ultimate community and be part of a supportive and hard working team environment. Trust me, you’ll get lots of great things out of it !

We look forward to a challenging, productive and fun season with you all!

Sonia (on behalf of the club) Soma

New Div.2 Leader

2010-05-06T13:43:00.002+10:00

After the last round, ANU is now top of the table after the Bananas went down to Discotheque in a close fought game 9-7. Revelation and Devolutionaries have also notched up their 1st wins of the season. Here is the updated ladder:

Team	Win	Lose	Draw	For	Against	Total
ANU	4	0	0	40	29	8
Discotheque	4	0	0	39	31	8
Bananas	3	1	0	49	25	6
The Punters	2	2	0	38	33	4
Devolutionaries	1	3	0	31	44	2
Revelation	1	3	0	27	45	2
Damn Beavers	0	3	1	29	37	1
Boffins	0	3	1	29	38	1