UQ Lovers - BW
First round back in the BPL for the UQ Lovers since S2
2010. Although there have been teams that have allowed players to make the jump
from UQ League to BPL (Bandidos and then Blitz), none have been under the UQ
banner. It is exciting to have a team back in the BPL with a team half full of
rookies to BPL and the other half are ex-BPL players coming back from at least
1 season out plus myself.
Going in to the game it was always going to be a daunting
exercise versing a much-favoured Cobras outfit. I had hoped we would put a few
on the board and to have a really positive learning experience for the newer
players and be able to give them some insight in to higher level ultimate.
The game started off with Cobras capitalising on our
offensive mistakes with long throws to the endzone and quickly got out to a 3-1
lead. We managed to tighten our offense a little bit and on the back of some
errant throws and dropped discs from the Cobras we were able to tie it up at
4s. After this the Cobras seemed to take the game a little more seriously and
pulled away to take half 8-5. The second half went much the same way as the
first with trading points early before the cobras took a few for respectable
loss of 10-15.
Some notable plays were Tyson getting a ridiculous grab
between Mammel and Grundy and our two BPL rookies who made it down on Thursday
all over the park. Gareth was getting open on offense all night and was able to
rack up a lot of possessions. His keenness for the disc in hand made up for a
lack of ultimate experience and I am sure he will only get tons better as the
season progresses. Syakir showed he has wheels and on numerous occasions burnt
some decent defenders to make up for his lack of height going long and catch a
few easy goals for us over the night and then capitalised when they changed up
their d on him.
This season is all about growth for the UQ Lovers and I
hope we can look back at the end of the season and say that was the worst we
played as a team, whether the scoreboards reflects that or not.
Many thanks again to the Cobras for a fast,
clean and well-spirited gameDojo - ads
What can I say, Sensei's silence in this week's match report could be seen as strategic denial. Instead of talking about how Dojo dropped off, I'm going to commend Blitz on their game - this was far more a significant factor in their win, than Dojo's lazy Ultimate on Thursday night. The first thing I noticed is that most of their players had the White Firestorm uniform. Most of the boys played for Ignition, which may not indicated much for some, but indicates the growth in experience - two to three BPL seasons plus at least one off-season training with Firestorm, and playing tournaments including Nationals. Although their average age appears to make the team distant from other clubs with experienced outfits, tonight they played like a cohesive unit for most of the game. If they can keep the motivation going, they'll pull out some awesome wins and be in the finals.
I've been watching some online Ultimate recently (as have many of us), and they strike me as playing very similar to the Juniors games. Very strong on cutting in offence, at times lacking defence decisiveness (but not motivation).
Short summary - Dojo up by a lot, then let Blitz come back, Blitz gets universe point. Sucks to be playing in Black that night, I can assure you.
Heroes - Carl
The Heroes lined up against a solid looking Moreton Bay
Buggers team. On first look I counted 7 or 8 odd nationals level players on
their line up...not to mention their worlds players! we started out savage
(with a roster of 16 on AFDA) and quickly put on a zone. Against such an
experienced handling line it worked fairly well and we forced a turn in the 1st
point. Then Sebastian, sporting a terrible hair cut, couldn't help himself and
threw a long pass to his brother. Unfortunately the change of fields meant the
regulation BPL size had shrunk... long story short, Seb over shot the mark by
about 10m! what a rookie. Anyways bugs quickly scored. 1-0 to the Bugs. We
traded until 4's, but I think the Heroes were scoring with a little more ease
than the men in red. We ended up with 2 extra subs turning up a little late,
and then BAM, I found one of the massive potholes in the surface of field 1 and
sprained my ankle. It ballooned fairly quickly (stupid damn fields - on another
note, that 1st field is crap IMO) so then the Heroes where down to 8 able
bodied men. Buggers then took a break and went up 6-5. Now being on the
sideline I didn't hear George rally the troops (actually I don't know if anyone
did) but I'm sure he would have said something like "Insert inspirational
message here". And WHAM we came out and went on a roll - taking half 8-6!
After half the team continued the roll until about 12-8 and then Buzz made some
big time plays, in the only way he knows how and threw some big hucks. But what
really rallied the buggers troops was Mat Ryan with a string of D's. The first
of which was a mac-on into the end zone which he ran down and caught in the end
zone for a sore. The Heroes heads dropped a little but we knew the bugs were
out of time. We scored the final point about a second after the timer went off
and closed what was a very competitive 2nd half.
The Heroes won through some good team defense and had a
little help from the buggers fumbling (but we'll say it was defensive
pressure). All in all a solid game from the men in green, playing with just one
sub in the end. Big shout out to Dan (the new kid on the block hailing from the
Griffith club) In only his second game he scored a good majority of our points.
Definitely one of our MVPs.
Cobras -Wetnose
As the whole of the BPL community is
aware from our season write up the Cobras are playing with only one of our
co-founders Liam “Wetnose” Gillions. To the rest of the team throughout the
beginning of the season it has become apparent that without the other
co-founder the power held by Wetnose was going to be hard to contain. This lead
all other Cobras’ members to enter into a search for the other co-founder,
after many conversations and dead end leads we all had lost hope sitting in a
pub late at night when we were approached by a man who appeared to have been
ravaged by the sands of time before his years. This man told of a journey he
had made into this very topic some years ago, he said he never found the person
he sought, but he had received what he believed to be the answer to his search
one night. He said that on the night in question after the topic had been
broached and many beers had been drunk Wetnose had said to him “I once killed a
man, just to watch him die.” The other members of the Cobras now sit in fear of
reprisal if we extend our search any further and simply accept that his power
will remain unchallenged. Cobras win 15-10.
Bugs - Mat
Bloody average display from the Bugs against the Heroes. Not
the best welcome home present for Buzz.
We traded them until about 5s and then we gifted them a string of
unforced errors and they were good enough to put us away.
Low effort, rank cold drops and poor options. Kinda
frustrating for us all, particularly after our performance last week which
featured very few drops and very good options. Credit to them. They
made few errors, took their shots and won the contests.
I don’t want to dwell on it any more…. We know what we have to do.
But hey, it’s not all doom and gloom because Dojo blew a 9-3 lead
and got rolled by Blitz.
Ha ha ha.
Aaaaah.
I am looking forward to
reading those match reportsBlitz - Craig
This Thursday past had Blitz venture down to the ‘darker’
field 5, to take on Dojo Mojo. I must say Blitz really turned up with a
reinvigorated attitude, as shown by the whole team cleated and throwing before
even the Dojo player was cleated. It didn’t translate on to the field, with
Dojo converting turns (despite being visibly more fatigued).After a classic
Cunliffe ‘turn down the suck’ timeout, Blitz fort back to a much more
respectable halftime score of 8-7 to Dojo.
After half, Dojo came out and punched one in to make it
9-7. At this point Dojo fell asleep. Several unforced errors (and a couple
forced) on the front of the endzone gave all of the momentum and the lead to
Blitz
- 11-9.Dojo managed to get a break to force universe
point, Blitz on offense, the result...
End score 12-11 Blitz, ‘grats boys on claiming our first
scalp of the season. Will it be the first of many?
NIce, Loving the reports. I think most players in the league had the same reaction as Mat when they heard the Dojo-Blitz result.
ReplyDelete