BUML mid season review_#3

Poachers

Poachers have given the Heroes the best run of matches thus far. With 3 outings against them resulting in 1 win each and a 9 all draw, no one knows what will result next time round. The poachers had recruited well over the off season and with the likes of Kalin and  Dan added to the experience of  "Always gets hurt" Theo
and Dan Blacklock (pictured). At this midpoint of the season poachers are in with a real shot at the title, with a couple other teams. They need to hold form, especially with 3 draws, as soon at those close games go their way, Poachers could get a roll on.

Bermuda Triangle

The old Bermuda Triangle lead by 'the old' Geoff Spurling has had an up and down season with 4 wins, 4 loses, and 2 draws. But what do people know about this team? Really not much is known, except other teams constantly get lost in their zone. It’s this un-phantomable predicament. You know you're about to sail straight into it, but you still get lost. All you need to beat this team is compass like this. But getting your hands on it isn’t that easy. It seems as though 6 other teams got lost in the mist of the Bermuda zone, can you make it through to the 'other endzone', no I mean side, agrh Im lost...

Kelvin Grove Cougars

 This team is a previous league champion but with the likes of their best player Mike Nield gone for this season, who was there to step up and take control. Well they've still got Tim Johnson and Gemma Sheridan marshalling the cougars around the field, so they cant be going to badly. I haven’t as yet played this team but from their previous results, the table standings and the average AFDA #, what I would suggest of this team is that they’re blooding some new talent. So with 4 wins and 6 loses, that’s pretty good I think. Rumour still has it that the cougars get extra practice in at recess at KG high school. Maybe some enforced after noon detention and we'll see this side back to their old form from winning the league.

Griffith Go Go's

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 Its a fact I’ve saved the incredible HUCs favourite team until last. The HUC loves what this team/club has done for ultimate in Brisbane since the start of the year. Unfortunately this success has not as yet carried over to the BUML D2 league as yet. But their fighting spirit has. I recall last season a drawn game between Heroes and the GoGos. Instead of registering a draw, they wanted to play one last point to go for the win. They pulled Heroes the disc and put us on O. We scored, but seeing this offer of spirit and the willingness to lay down the points earned for a draw, for a win was great. Seeing them get the first BUML was great this season.


Well with all teams reviewed in this BUML league and with the poll running its' course currently, The incredible HUC has been enlighten. Stay tuned to buml.com and get into the funest league going.

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

Coming undone (Major brain explosion)

As the title suggests last nights semi final was very disappointing. We played Cougars and without their super star Mike we thought we had this in the bag, and I for one was already looking to the final, big mistake. But don't get me wrong, we were still focused on the task at hand. What was frustrating was that we did all the little things right.
1. Hold a training session on Sunday arvos from 3pm  CHECK
2. Rock up early, make sure the whole team is there  CHECK
3. Do a warm up drill to get the blood pumping  CHECK
4. Do that drill well  DOUBLE CHECK (in fact we smashed that drill)
5. Be excited we' re in the semis   CHECK
6. Even win the toss and choose to be on O first CHECK

As you can see everything fell in our laps, Cougars even played savage for parts of the game! So what happened you ask? We had everything going for us to win, we had more players so we could ran harder and longer and everything was shaping to go well. Then we went down the first 2 or 3 points. Argh why was this happening?
Cougars played well, very tight and used a give and go tactic that suited their structure perfectly, we couldn't get much D working, except for Silent George. Actually I was congratulating him on some awesome blocks and I said "two nice blocks George" and without speaking (he did speak but its more dramatic if I say hi didnt) and in only the way George could, he says "3 actually". The humbleness that George shows was something I could have displayed at the very end of the game, more on that in a sec.

Heroes decided we wanted to actually play some good ultimate, it just took a timeout and things got back on track. We got some turnovers, we made some nice long hucks, things started to work and we got the score back to 9-8. At this stage the worn out members of Cougars could sense a come back by the Heroes. Some people may have interpreted the very slow walk back to the line and extended chats to be somewhat like time wasting. It prob wasn't but I thought it would have been in the spirit of the game to try and hurry things up. Their was one player in particular who thought to walk with a limp very slowly from his Def end zone back after we scored on more than 4 occasions. Now normally that wouldn't be frustrating but given it was a semi AND the fact that during the points he showed no obvious signs of fatigue, sprinting long demanding it be hucked - this was somewhat perplexing. So this is where the second part of the title comes in... I basically snapped and had a go at cougars for not playing within the spirit of the game by not trying to commence the game asap on change over. Upon reflection and choosing not to play any part of the next 3 points because of my outburst (self enforced dismissal from the game) I went up to their captain and apologized many times. My opinion that even though they were savage, more effort could have been made to commence the point faster than what they had previously been doing. So in my defense it was not the first time that I felt they were slowing things down but I should have gone about it in a better way. So for that Im sorry. 

Getting away from that Cougars played their game well and they knew their strengths and weakness'. Sure it sucked losing another semi final again, but I don't mind because overall the game WAS played in high spirits and it was quite competitive Final score was something like 12-10 I think. Good luck to the Cougars in the final and Heroes we'll be up for the 3rd placed game next week.

Heroes Vs Cougars

Well last night saw the Heroes take on the Cougars. I liked our chances coming up against what seemed to be a very unfit team of teachers, however I did not take into account the crazy skills of their incredible player Mike. An impressive display of skill took the cougars to an early lead of 2-0 over the heroes.
We were somewhat in awe of Mikes efforts, Laura was quoted during the game to say "WOW, he's good"

However we weren't totally beaten, as we scored two quick points in succession and the team got a bit of a roll on which helped the cause.

Highlights of ChirsB hucking the disc to Benfer in the end zone to score was quite fantastic to see. Also impressive possession game to combat the cougars pretty intense zone was very pleasing to see, we just needed to wait for the scoring opportunity to come instead of going for the glory pass (which happened on a few occasions) might have meant the game finished more evenly.

Final score was 11-5