Eastern Regionals Results

Hello again avid readers,

At some stage in the past, Eastern Regionals was on. It might even have been last weekend (holy crap it actually was last weekend. I just had to check that because I was sure it was two weeks ago...). Anyway, last weekend the ACT's two single-gender club team's packed their cleats and sweatbands and headed to sunny Newcastle for a delightful weekend of ultimate. The tournament was run by the illustrious Tim Gee and the Fakulti boys who are actually based in Sydney but because the Sydney fields were all booked out they had to run the tourney up in Newwie. You see, dear reader, the fields situation in the ACT might be occiasionally inconvenient but it's vastly better than that of our northern friends who are lucky if their fields even contain grass rather than sharp things like rocks and sticks and ordinarily recyclable household waste.

The ACT contingent piled onto a chartered coach on Friday night and enjoyed the scintillating dialogue and intricate plot of "300" on the journey up. Hiring a coach was a great ploy for our trip to nationals last year and worked well again, giving everyone a chance to relax and socialise for the duration of the journey without having to worry about driving.

But I know, you don't care about stories of public transport, you want to know about the ultimate. Well, I suppose we should have ladies first:

The Women's division this year was awkward to organise because it had seven teams registered. It's tough to find a good draw with that sort of number and the Fak boys made what seems like a pretty reasonable choice and opted for a round robin with no finals. Although this lacks the excitement of a big final it does give everyone a chance to test out their opponents and it seemed to work pretty well (except perhaps for some wierd schedualling), especially considering that only a handful of the seven teams actually intend to travel to Perth for Nationals. FG drew their traditional first round opponent, Wildcard (X or Y I can never remember which is which), who had split into two. Wildcard are a pretty tough gig for any team and they showed it again with a solid victory. The FGs took another game to find their rhythm with another tough match-up against Manly (now called the Northern Beeeaatches or something like that). In their third game FG finally hit their stride with a gritty 1-point win over the Sugar Mags from Newcastle. On day 2 the Factory Girls had another early start but took a comfortable win over Hills, then lost to the other Wildcard in a better game. Finally, they had a hit out with one-time women's powerhouse Southside whom they beat up for another win. This brought the FGs in in 4th overall. I'm not sure how many women's teams from the East are heading to Perth but it should ensure a pretty strong seeding for Nationals. The Factory Girls are building from tourney to tourney and should be in good shape by the time the main event finally comes around. Their next gig is Into the Wild, a women's tourney that will be held in Sydney next weekend. At nine teams it looks like it'll be as strong or stronger competition than nationals so it should be another good test.

The boys had a slightly more relaxed schedual for the tourney, playing five games rather than six and starting at a leisurely 11:50 on Sunday. In their initial pool Fyshwick United had two fairly genteel games to ease into the tourney, dispatching Manly's Brick and Sydney's Umlaut fairly efficiently. FU's offence seemed to be firing and their team defence was starting to bite so they took some momentum into their afternoon matchup against one of the two Fakulti teams. FU took control early on and rolled the Fak kids to win 15-6 or something like that. This sent them into Sunday's semi against the other Fakulti with a likely match against the in-form Newcastle if they made it to the final. FU really took control on defence during the game and broke up Fakulti's preferred offensive style. Good conversion on offence saw the FU boys win with a handy 15-10ish scoreline.

This brought the weekend to a head with a final against Newcastle's I-Beam. In their last matchup Newcastle seemed to have all the answers with a 15-10 win at the Brisbane Canberra Invitational so it was always going to be a good contest. Newwie again came out strong and got up a break in the first half. Both teams traded points until Newwie fought off a late rally from the FU lads to take half 8-7. FU made a few tactical adjustments and sharpened up to come out firing in the second half. The scores stayed close until about 10-9 with Newwie still leading but Fyshwick had the legs in the last part of the game and came away with a 15-11 win. This sends the lads through as the top seeds from the eastern region and gives them the first seed position for nationals. Hopefully they can fend off all comers in Perth to win the title. The next appointment in the FU diary is New Zealand Nationals in Wellington at the start of April. The generous ulty community of NZ kindly offered FU a spot at their nationals last year and the Canberra lads suprised everyone by winning the tourney. Hopefully their hosts will be as gracious this year as the boys attempt to defend their title. NZ nationals is a great tourney, big enough to have some great games and small enough to still have that old-school frisbee feel. I had a ball last year and I wasn't even playing. If you get offered a spot on a team you should definitely take it.

Anyway, that's all from me for now. I'd better get back to putting the Factory Girls handler movement into a PowerPoint animation.... I mean, applying for jobs.

(Seriously, if you need someone to write rambling blog posts or do algebra or something let me know.)