Plan B wins Halibut

Several lovely Canberra players were involved in the multi-state team that won Halibut just last weekend. This team was called Plan B and was the brain child of Erin Wallis and myself. The ACT players were James 'Jesus' Ley, Thomas 'Chumpy' Walcott, Sarah Jones (who is now moving overseas) and myself. We played with Erin, Alec, Ali (formerly) and Allison from SA; Alex Ong, Jo Creswell and Luke Stephens from Victoria; and some chump called Jmac from Brisbane. Good times

The tournament was its usual good self. Good fields, food and people. The party did seem to suffer from terrible music selection. Apparently the DJ had been involved in a car accident and thus the manager was in control. The outcome was a big turnout early in the night but rapid losses from the party as halibutters attempted to find a better groove.

The most challenging game was (unsurprisingly) the final. Mind the Gap shifted off to an early lead, going two nil up. Plan B settled and the first half saw the team slowly gain control of the lead, taking half at 8-6. In general, there were very few turn-overs from both teams, with the wiley cuts and undefendable throws of Mind the Gap matching the quick moving, high work rate offence of Plan B.

Half-time looked tense over in the Mind the Gap camp but the Plan B players had other things to worry about....just what exactly was going to be our last dance move? Every half over the entire tournament, we added another sequence to our dance. This was to be our last effort, so we settled on the addition of our team cheer "Plan B - Good enough for me" to close out the dance. Our last performance of the dance was met with wild acclaim and cheers (jeers?) from the crowd and once finished, we were ready again to play.

The second half saw Plan B tightening their defensive efforts and further lock the game down. Mind the Gap rallied briefly at around 14-8 to take the game to 14-10 but Plan B settled to take the game 15-10. Working the way up the field against a 2-3-2 zone defence, Plan B swung the disc wide and punished the defence with several backhands into the middle of the field from the right-hand side. This throw was to be the game-winner, with a wide swing and some gaps upfield giving me a clean backhand shot into the middle of the endzone where Tom 'Chumpy' Walcott, our 6'7'' receiver, had gone into stealth mode and was unmarked. Victory again, my third tournament win for the year.

I was really happy with how I played over the weekend. In the final I had a strong game, with 5 assists and two blocks. I really enjoyed playing as a O/D handler and I am really giving serious thought to giving up on cutting (which really screws the skin on my feet) and working on my core-strengthen handling ability. We will have to see about that....

The highlight of the tournament was seeing a multi-state team come together so strongly on and off the field. At the end of the tournament, our offence was exceptionally clean for a team that had not played together before. The crazy random way our half-time and timeout dance had come together was also a crazy organic happening that was enjoyed by the whole team aside from Chumpy, who is far too cool for us.

There are plans afoot that will see the return of Plan B at another time but it seems likely that I will be going with Plan A for next years Halibut, the ACT mixed club. I look forward to defending the title next year with a different batch of trouble-makers.