Regionals Preview

Regionals starts tomorrow, a weekend of truth. Clear cut truth. 6 teams enter, 2 come out feeling confident that Nationals is where they will be heading, with another sweating on allocation of wildcards. This raises the stakes.   All of these teams are going to compete at their highest intensity. Here is my opinion of what’s going to remain after the regionals shakedown, in seeding order:

Firestorm: 1st Seed, Predicted Position 1st
Well, frankly, the guys on this team are solid, well drilled and hardnosed. History shows us that picking the top players around, and training for 4 months breathes results at this tourney. These guys expect to win, and rightly so - even setting goals/targets for being scored against and hitting points cap in every game, and just to make these challenges more palatable they've be known to do fitness work in between games.

Key Players: John McNaughton, Abra Garfield, Dan Mammel and Brain Grundy.

Slamtown Flatball Club: 2nd Seed, Predicted Position 3rd
That’s right I said it, 3rd. Under seed. The Mayor has again got his famous recruitment hat on and done the hard yards. The likes of ex-Firestorm players, kalin and trachter have been brought to the darkside. I just wonder, can this team shake the drops that let themselves down on Thursday at BPL - allowing Blitz to comeback at the death to finish 14-12. If Slammers come out and replicate that performance, Ignition will come up trumps.

Key Players: Stef Rappazzo, Kalin Thompson, Rob Trachter and Mike Morgan

Firestorm Ignition: 3rd Seed, Predicted Position 2nd.
This tourney will really boil down to these 2 teams, with Firestorm thrashing everyone, and the bottom 3 seeds failing to impress the Firestorm or SFC leadership. SFC and Ignition are by far the 2 most evenly matched teams. Ignition have mostly all been training like possessed, crazed ... umm uni students? Rest assured, the
Ignition boys are up and about... So watch yourselves

Key Players: Browntown, Jack Lilwall, Carl Behrendorff and Dan Wiechec

TownsVillains: 4th Seed, Predicted Position 5th
Using the tourney as a warm up for B Nationals, and fair enough too! As a Brisbane player, I don’t know much about them but no one is scared, so neither am I. I expect this team to offer some resistance, but act as tune up games for other teams.

Key Players: Keith Cameron-Smith and Notty Nott - you'll know what I mean when you see her.

Grittith Heroes 5th Seed, Predicted Position 4th
The two largest club's Brisbane, have joined forces to put together a team. Hmmm will team 'gel'ing be an issue? Maybe so, maybe so. But I reckon, given they all play BUML, they'll get it together and get the flow on. Best of the Rest.

Key Players: Jason de Rooy, Daniel Blacklock, Dustin Czok

 G-Force 5th Seed, Predicted Position 6th
The Gympie team. Sweet! It’s seriously killer that there coming down. We've seen a couple of these guys at the Q-Hat and they didn't disappoint - a few were on the winning team (Greenland). Led by Nathan Litzow, Bayne and Ryan Garrahy (all of UQ Lovers fame) this team could upset one of the lower ranked teams, but probs not, expect turns while playing against them - but watch out for deep cuts.