Bugs - Mat
Well, another reasonably below average performance from the Bugs
against the Cobras sees us take a stranglehold over the wooden spoon. But
it’s early in the season and we just need to find second gear…. Too many
errors from the experienced guys and fairly low effort on D all round, and
suddenly we were down 5-1 and the game was already gone.
As badly as we played, the Cobras are the real deal this
season. Brian and Dan were too big in the air and too willing to layout,
and the rest of the team seems comfortable with the disc in hand, with few easy
turnovers. My money’s on them for the hubcap. Even their less
experienced guys are good. They’ve got some kind of a plan and they’re
playing it like a team.
Bugs have got some ground
to make up on everyone, just gotta improve on our catching, throwing, running,
Defence … pretty much every aspect of the game. Luckily we have the bye
next week, so we get to go 4 rounds without a win. SweetSlamtown - Stef
The Dojo showed up with at least 7 at the fields before 7pm... a sight I haven't seen in the last 10 seasons.
After losing to Blitz the week before, they were out for vengance. Similarly, the Slamtown Flatball Club was out to avenge an unhearlded loss to the Heores two weeks ago after having a week 2 bye. Something had to give. One of these 2 BPL heavyweights was going home with an unsavoury early season record. Much to our dismay, it was SFC.
Now 0-2, the Flatballers will have to dig deep to find themselves back in the hunt this season.
The game itself was great. Good intensity, lots of bids and a lot of hard fought ultimate. After coming out with a 2pt lead, we lost a marathon 3rd point.. and then after a dropped pull, and a first throw turn... they were in front after we did the 'bulk' of the early work.
From that stage we traded up to 7-7.
The Dojo took half and then won the short second half 4-1. SFC had a good handful of unforced errors, and the Fatty pup Dojo zone forced a few more as well.
We continue to look for our first win of the season, and will be bringing everything we've got next week against the revamped Lovers.
Blitz - Cunliffe
So Blitz at its core is a UQ team, most of the guys are
either current or former UQ Lovers players and passionate UQ supporters, so I
personally had some very mixed feelings about playing against the newly
reformed UQ Lovers (and just as a bit of trivia - I actually put the motion to
the rest of the guys in Blitz's prior to our first season to be called the UQ
Lovers but they opted for Blitz instead), so our alliance runs deep, but
apparently if you were judging the upcoming UQ darby on the pregame FB smack
talk you'd have thought the teams were mortal enemies...
Blitz was riding a little high at the start of the game
after what they considered the best win of their club's history in the previous
week, and they started the game with a quick couple of breaks, but to UQ's
credit they were just as quick at breaking back, Blitz then proceeded to
knuckle down again got another couple of breaks back then there was a lot of
trading with Blitz finally taking half but not before UQ managed to get back to
within 1, I don't know what BW said after half, but UQ came out looking good
and immediately broke back, and then the next you thing you know its 10 v 10,
the hooter has just gone, and for the second week in a row Blitz found itself
with disc in hand on universe point...
In short the game was a cracker and played with good
spirit, I thought UQ really stepped up, their zone defence was fabulous, there
was loads of pressure on the handlers and very few gaps for the popper, and we
had real trouble scoring against it, and to be frank their zone offence was
just as good, they have every right to be disappointed that they didn't win
because they played really well...
All round it was a great game, and no doubt like Blitz,
UQ is a team on the up and up, which should make for another cracking second
round game which I've looking forward to!
Cobras - Wetnose
There are only a few teams in the world who are know for their intimidation of other teams prior to the game though means other than their play but here we have compiled a top five for the fans playing along at home. Coming in a respectable fifth is Mystery, Alaska who made the New York Rangers not only stand on the ice in the cold for an extended version of the American national anthem but also the Canadian national anthem. In forth place is an Australian reference and it happens throughout winter when AFL teams run through their banners, because there is nothing that says scary, like grown men running through crepe paper. Before we move on to number three we would like to give an honorable mention to LeBron James for his chalk thing. Number three was the the T.C. Williams Titans, for their warm up dance with line such as "Woop up in here, woop up in here" and "We are the Titans, the mighty, mighty Titans." how could you look past them. Amazingly we were able to and coming in second in a blaze of agression and historical significance is our friends from the land of the long white cloud, the All Blacks. The Haka, this war cry has been their symbol for years and is a very intimidating gesture and I am sure there will even be those out there that say they should have reached the number one spot. That is however incorrect there have been for some weeks now rumours of an intimidation so fearsome, no team that witnesses it can then walk away that day with a win. I speak of course about the number one the Cobras with their universally feard "clap, clap hiss". Against this no team has proven themselves able to stand and continue unaffected. Cobras win 15-8
UQ Lovers - BW
It is always fun to play against a lot of people you
regularly play with. Battle of the two younger teams was something I had looked
at as a good test for us to see how we are going. After Blitz's game against
Dojo I had shifted my perspective leading in to this game and was hoping for
another strong development game where we could learn a few things as a team,
and hopefully have a little scoreboard presence as well. We had a small roster
this week and came out playing some man defense that got destroyed by blitz to
go up 2-0. We changed it up to a zone defense, a new defense for the majority
of our team, which seemed to throw the blitz off a little and we were able to
square it up and then trade to 4s through some solid offense against the blitz
zone.
Our transition D was lacking throughout the game, and our
man defense wasn't quite where we wanted it so it made for more of a streaky
game than we would have liked. Blitz were able to capitalise on our mistakes on
offense followed by not quite getting their on D to get out to a 7-4 lead
before we worked one in and managed to get back to setting our zone off the
pull. This worked pretty well and with the changeover at half we managed to
keep playing D and setting it up to level it at 8s before we traded out to
11-10 on universe point. It was great to see the development over the course of
the game with our defense, and although Blitz found ways to beat it we were
making it harder and harder throughout the game. Getting a feel for what
position players played best in and working on the overall structure.
Play of the game went to bayney with a layout grab on the
trailing edge of the disc about 1cm off the ground. Either that or Cunliffe handblocking
me at 10-10. Most of our play tonight was unspectacular and just solid, slow
movement up the field and the same could be said about blitz.
Dojo - Ads
With last week showing what a experienced team can do when they don't want it, Dojo was pretty fired up to come away with a win this week. In the back of my head, last week meant less if we smashed out a great game. We played well, came away with the win, and more importantly reminded ourselves just what great Dojo Ultimate looks like. By some miracle we were all throwing 10 minutes before game on. As Sensei walked by a small group on the way to Field 2, Craig B called out to me "If Steve Cameron's here, does that mean its game on?". Ha.
We played to our strengths, hard zone for the most part, and some strong man when Slamtown got a bit tired. Kalin handled our zone pretty well, but we kept structure and got a few of turns with them appearing frustrated by the lack of upfield movement. All in all a tight game the whole time until we got away with a few points at the end. Easily the play of the game was Dan Walls laying out for a disc missed (Pete/Gref?) in the endzone for the point, seconds after the hooter went.
Our two new recruits had great games, memorably Adam Topp sprinting for 3/4 of the field and so-very-close missed a Ryan Black huck, and Joel missing a cross field break hammer in the end zone from Fatty, not realising that half the Dojo throw that more often than a open side throw!
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