Dojo beat Bugs (15-7), Blitz 1 beat UQ Lovers (15-8), Heroes beat Blitz 2 (15-10), Slamtown and Cobras was a draw! (13 all).
UQ - moto
The Lovers came out slow against Blitz 1, showing signs that
the Uni holidays were not quite over in some of our players minds. Blitz
capitalised on this, restricting our flow and forcing turnovers near our
endzone which they clinically converted and quickly raced away to take half
8-3. Straight after half it seemed like nothing had changed with Blitz putting
3 more on the board. The Lovers decided to mix things up at this stage and
threw on our 2-3-2 which quickly paid dividends and generated several turnovers.
The success on D carried over to our offence and through some good handler
movement and smarter downfield play, the Lovers put on 4 in a row to bring it
back to 11-7. This seemed to startle Blitz back into gear who showed just how
strong they are, running out the game 15-8.
After shaking of the rust in the first half, the Lovers
showed some real grit to not drop our heads at 11-3 down and had a passage of
play which showed that we can mix it with the best of them. It is also really
good to see that out of the 11 on our roster, 10 are returning from last season
to continue building a strong UQ presence in BPL.
Heroes - Seb
Last night Heroes played out
a very fun game against Blitz 2. All players seemed to be excited that BPL was
back for another season. Heroes started well, getting through the Blitz zone
with ease and managed to get a 3 point buffer which we maintained to half.
Blitz switched up their defense to man and quickly got a couple of points back.
A Mikey Strelan Callahan got Heroes excited again and we carried the momentum
through for a 15 to 10 victory. Fairly good start to the season from both teams
with some good looking ultimate on show.Bugs - Trev
The first game of the season saw the two oldest teams in the
league facing off (Dojo by average age and Buggers by team history).
The Dojo were on song from the first point,
taking advantage of a new buggers team still gelling. The score at half was
Dojo 8, Buggers 1. In the second half the Buggs found their stride. Helped by
Jangles' tactical decision to play zone defence, the Buggers put some real
pressure on the Dojo's risky offence. This, coupled with some aggressive
offence from T Ross and some quality flow from Luke and Tim, lead the Buggs to
putting up a good fight and not letting Dojo run away with the game. With the
promise of more to come the Buggers are looking forward to the season Slamtown - Stef
After what seemed like a long winter offseason
it was reassuring to see that I wasn't the only one to pack on a few extra kegs
(that's right, you're all looking fat) . The Cobras, were hoping to open
the season strong after a massive come from behind victory in the Grand Final,
flanked by a less than stellar rendition of JayZ's '99 problems' on the blog.
The Cobras opened up a 3-0 lead, and looked to
be asserting their dominance early. But the Slammers fought back and
found ways to level the game up on 2 separate occasions,
only to allow them to retake the lead shortly thereafter. There was some
exceptional play in the game, Dan had a huge layout on the goal line, and
Abra's full field rip to Kev standout. As time expired, and last point
was called, the Slammers were set to pull and needed a D and a score to steal a
draw. We employed a man D, and were able to force an errand throw in
their half. Gref inbounded to Abra, and Abra swung to me. I then
calibrated a laser hammer and found Abra on the break side of the endzone for
the game tying goal. In other news, Troy Booth had an unusually quiet
night, as I suspect he was thinking about what song to use to effectively
anecdote the game with... however, he'll probably try something of a more
orthodox nature this week as he's been called out on it, and he always submits
after he's read the rest of the reports anyway.
Dojo - ads
The first game of the season started with an email from Sensei - 'go win Dojo, I'm off skiing'. With motivation suitably high, the team that rocked up didn't even feel like Dojo! Missing walls, pete, sensei, watto, ryan, coops - it felt good to run around with minimal subs.
With Bugs changing things up a bit, Dojo stands out as the retirement team for the league, has the highest rate of 'I don't play any other Ultimate other than BPL', easily has the highest average age, retains the highest average height, and with Fatty/Flan and now Georgie on board - the highest 'least hair' average of any team.
With this many percentages, Dojo is unbeatable. Last week's game saw that trend starting, with Bugs suitably cowering to the height/age/experience/lack of hair of Dojo - all except for TRoss, who hucked indiscriminately and assisted most of Bugs goals.
ads
Blitz 1 - James
First game at the 2nd season of BPL where everyone was
waiting for. Blitz had 25 players registered on AFDA and we were excited to
begin 2nd Season.
Chris had bit of problem with the roster so we had to
rearrange some players to move to Blitz 1 or 2.. We had some imports from
America Trevor, Lev and Stephen brought by Spacecamp, and will be merit to
Blitz this season.
So, we were really excited to start the game with strong
team, we took half at 8 v. 4. UQ came back up after half. We made a lot of
simple errors, made UQ to get back to game mode. However, John made nice shot
to endzone for us to enjoy skying. We played a lot of different offensive plays
and D.
UQ is very strong team, they are getting better and better
every single games. So better to look out!!
Final score 15: 10 Blitz taking the match, starting 2nd
season very smoothly.
Blitz 2 - Chris 'feeling wordy' Cunliffe.
Well another BPL season begins.
Rather than just comment on the Heroes vs Blitz 2 game,
I’d like to take the opportunity comment on the entire league as well. Suffices
to say, I think this is about as excited as I have ever been at the beginning
of a BPL season.
A lot has happened in 4 weeks and you'd be a brave man to
pick which four teams will be in the finals at the end of this season:
Cobra's have continued their strategy of building a
smaller but tighter roster, but with only 9 on the roster so far last night
seemed to suggest they had expanded recruiting to include the opposite gender,
which should give their opponents some strategic possibilities to ponder.
That said, it’s hard to bet against the reigning champs
and a team that seems to finally be playing to their “on paper potential” on a
regular basis. Plus with the Bryan Brothers being deported at the end of the
season Cobras will no doubt be looking for a last hurrah.
Dojo's preseason was bitter sweet, they wooed Silent into
the fold, but they lost the key component of their two default plays,
"huck it to Pete" and “Fatty as puppy and Pete deep”. Whilst this
won’t stop the Dojo juggernaut we could see a very different style of play
coming from Dojo this season.
Blitz, like bacteria in a petri dish, now has 26 up and
coming talents on their roster with a real sense that a grand final birth (if
not
victory) could be on the cards in 2013.
Slamtown went a bit missing last season, finishing 4th,
but their roster looks reinvigorated with a couple of handy pickups and Gref in
attendance for week one. I suspect this season will be different and they will
quickly bounce back from their slow start in 2013 to be in the mix for the
minor premiership.
Buggers are a bit of an unknown quantity this season
after what was looking like a fast finish last season with Mike being back on
board, including a defiant win in the final week over the Cobras who were
crowned the eventual BPL champions, but with Mike overseas it's hard to know
how Buggers will fare in the early stages of the league and their season.
Heroes are actually looking really good at the moment -
they were hurt by their loss of George and Musty, but this has been offset by
the addition of Bevan and Jamie who were both dominate in their first win of
the season over Blitz 2.
It might be a long bow to draw with just one win over
Blitz 2 to their tally so far, but I fully expect Heroes to be one of the
genuine contenders for a finals spot come the end of the season.
Seb best summed up the game in the spirit circle when he
said, "I think that game was played at a standard that most people would
not have expected from a Heroes vs Blitz 2 match up and that bodes well for
both teams".
Then comes Lovers – last season was a “development”
season for the Lovers, and whilst the loss of BW will hurt, rumour has it they
have a few new faces who will go a long way to offsetting that loss, but more
importantly they have a number of their athletic rookies that are back again
for their 2nd and 3rd seasons of BPL which will begin to pay dividends in the
Lovers’ “Win” column.
Finally Blitz 2 – this might be the most exciting
development happening in BPL (though I’m a little biased), Blitz 2 is looking
really strong!
We have 7 or 8 new faces, but they are looking the goods.
And like Lovers, we have a number of “returning rookies” who have polished up
nicely after their first season of BPL.
We may not have got the result against Heroes going down
15 v 10, but taking 10 points off a quality Heroes team with 6 BPL rookies is
no easy feat and the calibre of play was substantially higher than in Blitz 2’s
inaugural season. Expect some major upsets by Blitz 2 this season…
Cobras - Troy
The greatest challenge in sport
isn’t to climb the mountain it is to stay at the top. That is a side note
because last week was lefty week or had lefty day or something like that.
I thought as a tribute to this event I would create a list of great lefties
throughout history. I started thinking about this and quite quickly I
remembered just like God I don’t like lefties. He (Well I presume god is
a ‘he’, but if god doesn’t reproduce does god really have a gender as surely he
wouldn’t create himself (Wow it is really hard not to assign god a gender when writing
about god) as the only being that defies the concepts behind evolution) really
doesn’t like them it is in one of those verses with the name and numbers.
This brought me to thinking about this season and whether the MBP award should
be renamed as the BW memorial trophy in honour to the end of his playing
days? I for one vote that it should as if I could win a BW memorial
trophy I would be much happier never to pass to anyone who wasn’t in the end
zone unless I was confident they would pass it to me in the end zone as I
presume that goal rate is the key factor on which the BW memorial trophy is
voted for. Also people who were right handed throughout history Michael
Jordan, Shane Warne, Tiger Woods, Julius Ceasar, Monkey Magic and Optimus Prime
just saying.
Cobras draw 13-13, Slamtown were
also involved in this game.
No comments:
Post a Comment