Runway Fashion Show

In a pre-emptive strike some loyal readers may have already read that the HUC has received the new uniforms for all teams. Hence this blogger is pleased to announce that our jerseys have actually been first shown in a local Brisbane runway show much like this:

BUT IN BLOG FORM!!!!!

The first of our little creations has obviously got to be the iconic Heroes green shirt. The designers of this number felt it appropriate to stick to the lovely green that the club is known for. The new season style however has gone with the slogan "Bigger & Better" and that is reflected with the new portrayal of the incredible HUC on the shirt itself. The figure has been straightened up and the majestically thrown disc, now gracefully wraps itself around the shirt, bringing the eye to the rear of the garment.

 The second team brand that the HUC created has been drifting in and out of local leagues for some time now. Having experienced rapid growth in our club numbers it was well over due that the Agent Orange team should get real jerseys. With the gradual branding elements coming through from the design team (ie the new Agent Orange figure) all was set to get orange back out there on the field. This beautiful top in what is called 'designer orange' has been loaded up, guns blazing by the incredible HUCs arch nemesis and wrapped around the torso. With great styling we here at the secret lair think these outfits will turn some heads and put lots of scores on the board.

 The most recent team to join the HUC is the Discheads, the reigning BUML champions and subsequent benchmark of the league. If you dont know or havent heard before, the Discheads are actually an alien race of ultimate players that have come here to learn more about the human race. In this process these aliens were first recruited by the incredible huc to fight the fight against the evil agent orange. The designers of this jersey took inspiration from the galaxy and homeland of the discheads and created the logo to suit the feel of the race. The crop circle on the side is a reminder to the players of their new home here on Earth.

 To finish the new catalogue of uniforms, the range could not be complete without the contribution and overall panties-nes of these dashing HUC branded shorts. With the players individual playing number right there on the right hand side of the shorts, wearing these will make you feel at home. Or maybe you ll just always wear these at home - not exactly sure on which one it is.

Thanks to our sponsor Zone Ultimate Clothing for giving us discount on the overall range.

Agent Orange In Vietnam

New Jersey's have arrived for the entire HUC. Yesterday, being a day when we remember the atrocities of war, I considered the irony of having Agent Orange shirts made by Zone in Vietnam....


.....lest we forget.

AO vs Tsunami Match Report

Well given that Nationals is done and dusted it seems that there is a bit more time to grab a hold of. That means more blogging. No doubt there will be numerous posts regarding Nats on the various blog sites we link to, and hopefully one or two on the HUC site, but for now I offer you a brief match report from our Div 2 BUML game.

Now as is the case with the other two Heroes BUML teams we had a number of players backing up from Nats and surprisingly none were tired/slow but rather excited to have another game, including myself with a badly strained knee that restricted me to 50% pace and an awkwardly painful limp. We were however missing Bev and Em to illness and Sam (with good results in his school's cross country today) to study. Recognising only a handful of faces in Tsunami I was not expecting the level of play that they brought. Every player on their team seemed very confident with the disc which was wonderful to see given they are a majority of beginners. Because of this they started strong and it took a while for us to get right in the game. Eventually we were hitting our strides as a team using both unders and longs effectively. Dstrel played an excellent game with dynamic handling and front of stack movement. Vanessa beat her girl every time providing easy options for the handlers, and ate up every disc - high, low, whatever. Emily S scored a brilliant goal (her first I think). Alex looked comfortable with his field presence and was getting the disc often because of this. He was also putting the force on the right side every time without having to stop and think about it! At half time we set a goal of not letting our man get free when on D and as a team we achieved this, which was my personal highlight of the game. Because we played at UQ it was a disappointingly shorter game, with the final result 11-7 to Tsunami.

One thing the shorter game did bring about was the desire for more Disc. Almost unanimously the team cried out in our post game debrief for Sunday training.

AO Play Less Risky vs Frisky

Brief match report from Monday nights game:

Although there were 7 Agents at Annerley for start time (the 6.45 kickoff is hard for many to make) we began play with only 6 on the field as Adilia conducted her official whistle blowing duties. Frisky played 5/2 m/f at the beginning as that's all they had and we mixed it up a bit once Cola arrived from the GC playing 4/3 and 5/2 as people needed the sub.

The early stages of this game were tight. 9 consecutive points took place with both teams trading 1 for 1. Not happy to just trade points to the end, the Agents found some Orange Power and kicked things up a notch. The middle to end periods of the game saw us keep good control of the disc, execute some effective long throws and run tight tight tight D. My highlight was seeing (I think it was) Vanessa use the dump swing (which scored) where traditionally we would have rushed it down the sideline to our demise. As a team we finally seem to be a bit more patient with the disc, which I couldn't be happier about. Shout outs to both Robyn and Alana who continuously got free of their man (in the unisex sense of the word) particularly when making long cuts. From memory both were rewarded with goals for their efforts. Frisky Time played well too and (even when we were scoring point after point) remained calm and confident in their abilities, the result of which was some beautiful Ultimate. Final score 13-5.

The thing for AO to work on for the final series will be generating the flow of hard under cuts by knowing whose turn it is to cut and clearing out faster when you don't receive it. We are hitting our stride at the business end of the season, and will be looking to take out the pool b flag if this form continues.

AO vs GoGos

Most of the Agents were super keen to play tonight after a month or so off. Some of us however forgot how to show up on time. I lead the charge of this tardiness, arriving 5 mins late because I decided to do one more job instead of knocking off early. With me was pick up Josh (founder of Discheads) keen to test his legs again after months healing from an operation. Starky caught a slow bus. Robyn caught the wrong bus. Luckily/unluckily GoGos seemed less organised than us with AO putting 7 on the line first, 5 mins after start time.

With the game eventually underway, AO looked rusty but relaxed. After a couple points GoGos picked up Nat and Tati and so we had a real game on our hands. The GoGos beginners were looking much better this week compared to last time we played them too, particularly after the super pick ups came on. This encouraged us to lift our game. In true AO style almost all of our turn overs were from rushed hucks, but to our credit quite a few of these stuck. Despite his short throwing game somewhat lacking, Dave's long throwing game was on fire tonight providing my personal highlight of the match when Alana took a score by jumping what seemed like 2 meters in the air. Cola preemptively celebrated his birthday (tomorrow) by giving us numerous faultless long throws too. This long game coupled with countless high flying ariel D's, saw us take the game: final score 14-6. The only dissapointing thing about the GoGos tonight was their inability to convert the last point after Matt Boevink's dying-seconds-of-the-game layout D forced the turnover just before 'last possession' was called putting them on O. They came close but no cigar.

AO VS MY

One of the perks of playing in the b pool of BUML div 2 is getting to play against such enjoyable teams as Mellow Yellow. Monday night proved no exception to the oft spoken truth of MY's good spirit.

AO was missing Steph (Europe) and Cam (gone AWOL?), with James playing at 50% having an end of season cold. Relatively recent additions Robyn and Cola have slotted into the team quite well however and have helped provide some handling confidence as well as up field flair. The other usual suspects (read some older AO match reports if you don't know who they are) brought their A game too, and instead of having one or two moments of individual brilliance like we normally do, we had moment after moment of fluid play.

The early stages of the game saw us trade points pretty evenly until MY called a time out after we scored two in a row. We knew they'd be coming hard at us after this so we lifted our game too and scored the majority of points in this middle section of play. They proceeded to get a few back and we traded a couple more points to close out the game at a tight 10-8. Although it was inconsequential to the result, one shining moment of 'glory' came after last possession was called by Adilia (doing her BUML duties) - MY pull the disc, AO are talking up the safe play options to keep control and score as they are running to position, and James (probably thinking about how safe he's going to play it) in receiving said pulled disc drops it cold. Some laugh. Some groan. All consequently shake hands.

And after the dissapointment of an unfitting end had faded, what we were left with was the memory of fun, hard fought ultimate. MY's new players had improved heaps since our last match up. For me though, it was most pleasing to see AO finally gelling as a team, reading each other well and playing disc with some wonderfully seamless flow. The challenge now is to string wins together and get on top of this b pool!

Prophetic Bananas

Recovering from man flu and still suffering from a swollen ankle, I found myself watching tonight's game vs Mellow Yellow instead of playing. I devoured 2 bananas from the sideline in a hopeful prophetic display of our dominance over yellow.

AO got off to a poor start: 3-8
Then brought it back: 9-11
Mellow finished strongly to win: 11-13

AO Man of match: Dave (ran a lot! including a sprint for a point saving D. plus his regular aerial displays.)

Starky mentioned that perhaps if my bananas had been prophetic, I should be expecting a stomach ache later this evening.

AyyOhh

AO tonight recorded their first win since the pools were split!! Hooray. More importantly we played some good disc. It was nice to see the under cuts working for a change and their was a breif period where it looked like the dump-swing-score was going to be the new Agent move (as opposed to the regular hammer-to-the-middle-of-the-pack-in-the-endzone which hasn't worked all season). That only lasted a point or two though and we were back to our classic form throwing risky throws (a couple of which stuck for a change, but most ended up hitting the ground).

Cougars played well too, but dropped easy grabs far too often in the early stages. Huge endzone grabs coming from Tim and Ads for them.

Shout outs for AO to Vanessa, Dan, and James. Personally I think however we are all still playing less skillfully than we are capable. Things are on the up though. (Including injuries - Starky is recovering from a twisted ankle while I did mine tonight - it's swollen up big time!)

AO 9 def. Cougars 7

AO Match Report Round 4

(Image stolen from Sam of Bermuda's Facebook)

After their defeat to in-form Discheads last week, Bermuda were out to redeem themselves tonight. Orange welcomed back Dstrel from his OS adventures but were missing Steph to the same cause. James was seen smashing down a kebab only moments before the game.

Wind conditions (at least at the start of the game) suited zone, which always suits Bermuda, but it was AO who struck first. A strong zone and some fast offence saw AO take the score to 6-3. Dave made some big leaps and new recruit Cam was cutting well. Our zone started getting sloppy however, where Bermuda's was finally getting stuck in. Things got hairy. We had no answer to Bermuda's D. At one point we (accidently) tried playing with 8 players after a substitution miscommunication. Not surprisingly this wasn't the answer. Bermuda scored 6 in a row to 9-6. AO stayed instensely competitive but couldn't convert another point until after the buzzer 9-7.

After the '4 grading games' AO have 1W 2L 1Bye. So it would be expected that we end up in the 2nd pool of div2. That's a shame! I'll wait for the BUML announcement though before I shed a tear.

AO Match Report Round 1

The question on everybodies lips (from AO) tonight was 'Where's Starky?'. And then also for that matter Grant, Karin and Omar, our new recruits (who we haven't been able to contact and so weren't seriously expecting them anyway). And while we're at it 'Where's Bev?' our volunteer superstar pickup. These were the only questions we asked all night though.

3 Girls and 3 Guys provided us with the opportunity/necessity to play Zone defence against the enthusiastic The Ghost Who Walks (who had really great looking shiny new uniforms just btw - and a healthy bench). We would have prefered not to on opening night, especially against a team with quite a few new players, but playing a point of man defence confirmed that they would kill us all night with the extra guy. The Zone obviously worked to our advantage, leaving their offence confused. The score blew out to 16-5 until the 5 min warning when TGWW kicked it up a notch scoring the next 4 in a row. (Final Score 16-9).

Being a player short meant we all had to put in a bit more effort. The team shared the work load really nicely, with several points going through all 6 sets of hands before scoring. Steph had some great grabs (and probably ran so much that she would have been fatigued for Div1). Dave was solid in long D all night winning almost every ariel battle they forced him into. James had a stellar game with the disc. Vanessa and Alana made precision cuts. And I managed a lay out to score (after almost missing it entirely because I looked away when I thought Dave wasn't gonna throw it). Stand out performances from all!

TGWW caught the disc well, ran hard, and didn't give up (resulting in an awesome finish). A few too many wayward throws under pressure was a large part of their downfall. Game experience should see this improve however.

A good start to the season for AO.

Is this the end of it?

Well with poll finished does the result mean a return of the mr. Agent Orange back into the BUML fold? What will the Incredible Huck have to say about this? Are those alien Discheads going to launch an attack anytime soon and wreck havoc amongst the ranks. Will the decision of the BUML higher authority in relation to the new league arrangements influence what happens? Only time will tell...

How should Heroes re-shuffle to suit our large BUML roster?

Nothing leave it as is  1 (6%)

Bring back Agent Orange (2 div2 teams)  10 (62%)

Introduce Div 1 & 2 teams  4 (25%)

Other (please comment)  1 (6%)
Votes so far: 16
Poll closed