Heroes at Nationals from an (insider's) outsider perspective.

HUC had a truly outstanding representation at Nationals across a number of teams.  Given I was able to play with and against a few of you, I thought I'd give a brief review of what I saw.

Quoll
Dan and Gavin acquitted themselves in outstanding manner with the Tassie team.  They both slotted seamlessly into the structure of Quoll and had a number of critical and inspiring moments on both O and D.  Dan was his usual irrepressible self, constantly cutting hard and going for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th efforts.  Dan took a crucial layout grab backing up for a poor throw, and Quoll went on to score the point.  Gavin similarly had fantastic positioning throughout the weekend, with very solid throwing and catching.  Although an injury slowed him down in a few games, a standout moment was a great read and top-of-the-jump D off a threatening throw.

Firestorm Ignition
Playing for 15th was a fierce and competitive game, and I got to see a few Heroes in action that I hadn't seen before.  Jamie had a great game, taking a number of fantastic grabs and getting a D or two at critical moments. His talent is very clear and it will be good to watch him become a superstar. Adam Dowley was solid in handling and a lynchpin of Ignition's attack.  Safe hands at the back with reliable throws, it's great to see Adam at HUC.
Sebastian continues to improve every time I see him play and this was no exception.  He took two super grabs that I can recall, one a full stretch layout to score.  In this game, Sebastian's confidence and assuredness was the most improved aspect of his game.
Although I was often too busy grinding my teeth to notice the opposition, I do recall Chris using his super-leap and hands of iron to take a screamer of a one-handed catch above a pack of friend and foe alike, all of whom where comparatively standing still.
Super-sub Carl came on for a point, and I had the pleasure of marking him.  Ignition scored, and I didn't shut Carl down well enough, so he takes the points on that one. Apparently two stuffed ankles trumps a tweaked hamstring.

The Betties
To my chagrin and disappointment, I didn't get to watch any of the Heroes girls playing at Nationals.  The feedback I got was they enjoyed themselves and got a lot out of it. I'd love to hear more from those who played/watched.

It is great to see so many HUC players out and about at national tournaments.  I can't wait for more!

(apologies to anyone I missed)

Slamtown

Thursdays game saw the Heroes take the line against the big shooting slamming flatballers from the coast.
After last weeks lack lustre performance, the green machine came out with a strong will to bring the intensity and when we got a turn over on the first point from a (insert) wayward stef throw, we capitalised and put in the end zone for 1-0. Then throughout the first half the game was relatively even with slamtown breaking us to take a 2 point lead at half. However the difference between the two teams was the initial pull on the point. I cant remember how many times we turned the disc over in our own half (and endzone) because of a great pull and chase, clamming us inside the endzone with our stack not realising it, and being to deep. With Adam out our handling line was a bit weaker and the gold coast zone worked well for the most part. BUT as soon as we broke that cup, I think slamtown will agree we walked all over them to score freely (for those 7 times.. ) But still and yes this sounds lame the score line didnt reflect how hard the game was played, with our game finishing last of the three and with one memorable 10min point. On a positive note defensively we didnt let the orange 'shooters' loose and kept the D fairly tight all evening. As soon as we stop shooting ourselves in the foot with dumb turnovers (myself included) Heroes will start putting wins on the board.
As ever this season theres no 'easy' games with most teams being able to turn up on their day and win. Next week is no different when Heroes vs the well lubricated machine that is Dojo Mojo.
Memorable moments for the game was Ye Old brown town connection being ever sweet as usual. OH AND... James getting skied by probably the shortest man in the league, Danny. Well done dan. In comparison its like thisguy in red beating this guy in blue (wait is that a Red Vs Blue reference!?!)

UQ

As usual both teams took a few possessions to get going and the first point was a bit of a long one. I decided to put Jangles on a run to the endzone with a flick huck that decided to drifted right, into the creek beating up the lovely new UQ game disc (sorry about that Nat). So that wasn't a good start. Luckily for me, we were able to get the D and score the first point of the game. Lovers replied and the score was 1-1.
After that both teams played very evenly trading the next few points and playing a fair bit of manD. We responded and played offense as a horo, which resulted in many hucks being sent out from Jangles and myself, with the Strelans throwing some in as well! UQ then applied a cup zone which worked pretty well and closing our  hucks down. But in the still conditions our handlers applied the theories that we practiced before the game and managed to get ourselves out, albeit at times a little messy. But to their credit UQ trapped the lines very well making it hard for us to swing the disc at times. At half all that separated the teams were 2(or 3?) cross field hammer assists from aL and a floaty hammer from Nat to score. We knew that hammers were not part of their game plan (their half time huddle break was no hammers!). I think we defended very well and the game came down to the long throws from both teams. There were very few passing up field to score plays actually, kinda odd, perhaps the two teams were enjoying the still conditions. Luckily we were able to match it with lovers in this department. Bevan and Jamie pulled down everything we threw at them, they played superbly. In particular both of them grab sweet layouts in the endzone which was great to watch.
UQ got away from us just after half but to our credit we scored 3 straight on them to pull the score back to 11-14.
Lovers scored the last point and that was that. 15-11 final score. Better than last time we played 15-6.

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!

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

Taking candy from a baby...

Ok the title doesn't really suggest how close the game actually was, it was very tight all the way but I couldn't go past the pun. In fact the game was played with the best spirit and competitiveness too... perhaps it wasn't as cute or as cuddly as this, but it came close...

Baby Chimichangas (hehe)

The scene was set for a somewhat windy Annerlly night and for once heroes decided to turn up early to the game, and Babychimis caught the no players bug. Peta could only count 4 players and was almost insisting on forfiet. Gladly she was able to take our advice and not to such a thing. Eventually their players turned up, right on the cut off time and we had a 'live' game as it were.

The game was very evenly matched and we traded and traded points throughout the entire game, with some breaks and break backs to keep it interesting. Heroes fielded a brand new player by the name of Scott who seemed a little confused in his first outing but by the end scored a point which was really cool for him (In my first BUML game I didnt even touch it!) and I think thats the best positive thing about our team is that we are willing to throw to the best positioned player, regardless of skill or gender.

Props to Brad and James who are both first season players who have improved DRAMATICALLY since their first games. Play of the match for me was when I got the disc in the back 1/3 of the field, called brad long and saw which way he went and hucked it to him to score. Personally its so nice to have someone like Brad who will run down everything. Chimis played with great spirit all game and complimented us on every score we made on them which was lovely. I just hope we showed the same spirit back, otherwise i think we might be losing the beloved mantle of nicest team in the league (Brisbane?!?... Australia???)

Final score 11-10 i believe. Mention must be given on the final point where it was last possession for Baby chimis and they scored their 10th with a great curved forehand to Arrlann who did the nice check of feet in the endzone and caught the disc just outside the field of play - very nice