Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas. I hope everyone enjoys this holiday season. Don't eat too much! But if you do (which I know I will) then you can go and have a run and throw of the frisbee.

FU Training Squad 2011

Fyshwick United have named their training squad for 2011. The Regionals, BCI and Nationals
teams to represent FU will be chosen from this squad. Thanks to everyone who tried out. Fyshwick is looking really strong this year.

Adam
AJ
Andy Sutton
Asher
Ben MH
Brett
Brevin
Callum Stewart
Dan MH
Erik
Gareth

Ian M

James L
James O
John Horan
Jonno

Konrad

Lancey

Matt D

Max

Mikey H

Pete

Tom Bradman

Tom Walcott

Tom Watson

Waz

Cheers,

Jonno Pete and AJ: FU selectors.

League Predictions

Ok so as Bags so graciously pointed out my league predictions were terrible. Lucky I am not
a betting man (and let that be a lesson to the rest of you).

Anyway here are the league ladders:

DIV 3 ladder
		Pts	win	lose	draw	TOTAL Points	Ranking
Hot	The KingTruckers	17	4	1	0	8	1
Hot	The Brethren	14	4	1	0	8	1
Hot	Factory	-5	2	2	1	5	3
Hot	Annunaki	-16	1	3	1	3	4
Hot	Little Bananas	-11	1	3	1	3	4
Hot	The Beige Team	1	1	3	1	3	4
		Pts	win	lose	draw	TOTAL Points	Ranking
Warm	Spin Doctors	39	5	0	0	10	1
Warm	Go Fetch	9	3	1	1	7	2
Warm	Dicky Knees	4	2	2	1	5	3
Warm	11th Hour	-18	2	3	0	4	4
Warm	TTHOT Kelly Gang	-8	2	3	0	4	4
Warm	Damian Webb's Team	-26	0	5	0	0	6
		Pts	win	lose	draw	TOTAL Points	Ranking
Cool	Custard's Crew	21	4	1	0	8	1
Cool	Dynoshite	9	4	1	0	8	1
Cool	The Boffins	-9	2	2	1	5	3
Cool	The Umpires	-5	2	3	0	4	4
Cool	Team Team	-13	1	3	0	2	5
Cool	The Samlets	-3	0	3	1	1	6

DIV 2 Ladder
	Pt diff	Win	Loss	Draw	Total points	Ranking'
Revelation	27	7	2	0	14	1
The Muppets	31	6	2	1	13	2
Annunaki	27	6	2	1	13	2
The Punters	13	6	3	0	12	4
Very Mild Superpowers	-6	6	3	0	12	4
Devolutionaries	-8	4	5	0	8	6
Discotheque	-6	3	6	0	6	7
Dam Beavers	3	3	6	0	6	7
Discotheque 2	-55	1	6	1	3	9
Kick Ass	-24	1	7	1	3	9

Congratulations to Revelation and King Truckers for winning div. 2 and 3 respectively. Also congratulations to Bags who correctly picked the winners. A big thanks to Nat and Liz and their helpers for such a great job organising Spring league.

I am looking forward to more bad predictions when Summer League starts up. In fact my money is on ANNUNAKI and The King Truckers.

The latest from league

A long time ago, a wise man once said:

"AJ, you're dreaming.

In div 2 I reckon Revelation or the Muppets will take top spot. They've got a bunch of solid rookies and enough star power to overcome the other teams.

In div 3 I don't know what will happen, so I'm going to go with my gut and back the King Truckers. Sure, the Boffins and the Little Bananas may have the experience and the talent, but the Truckers have other, undisclosed things that make them good.

You read it here first."

That was on October 15th, in response to a totally spurious set of league predictions from AJ. And, two months later, my prediction was vindicated.

Admittedly, I vacillated a bit with my bet on Revelation and the Muppets, but I think that's redeemed because then they both made the Div 2 final, which was won handsomely by Revelation. In Div 3, true to form, the King Truckers finished the season with a win over the Bretheren to take the honors for the third season in a row.

I've seen a few games in both divisions this season and there have been a number of pretty exciting developments:

• League is huge. After splitting the time-slots for divisions 2 and 3 a few seasons back league has continued to grow and Div 3 is now filling the Dickson fields on it's own. We've got 20 teams in Div 3 and 12 in Div 2. Awesome
• Team fees. OK, so I know this isn't very exciting for most people, but introducing team fees has simplified one of the worst parts of league organising - rounding up hundreds of individual player fees. It means it's easier for new volunteers to get involved and it takes a load off our current volunteer stock. It's grouse.
• The standard. Div 3 looked heaps stronger this year than it has for a while. The same goes for Div 2. The successful teams in both divisions are using all of their players, making a bunch of passes with each possession and generally looking smoother than any other ACT league teams I can remember. It makes for more fun for everyone involved and gives more players a chance to contribute each point.
• Factory organising stuff. Everything seemed well organised, it sounds like the work was shared out among a few people so no-one got snowed under, and Factory got to raise some cash to offset the effects of Nat Blood's Creative Finance Explosion (TM).

League will take a break over the holidays and fire up again in January. The format is undecided because ACT Sportsgrounds are closing Dickson fields for some major renovations. Stay tuned and we'll get details up when they get sorted out.

ACT bid for regionals

It's been a lean few years for major tournaments in the ACT. We hosted the Brisbane Canberra Iinvitational in early 2009, which had 8 mens teams and 4 womens teams, but before that the only really big tounrament we've held was Nationals in 2003. The ANU and SOMA have been really active lately, running hat tournaments and IVs, but there hasn't been anything on a national or regional scale for a while.

With this history it's pretty exciting that the ACT women's team, Factory, have put in an expression of interest to run Regionals in mid February. Apparently there have been a few bids for regionals from around NSW and the ACT, so let's hope the admin gods smile on us and let us run the tournament here. After all, we've got great fields. Last nationals, all four of the semi finalists in the Open division were from the Eastern Region, as well as 3 of the four women's semi finalists, so Regionals always features some quality play.

The Brisbane Canberra Invitational is also set to be held in Canberra in March (it switches between Brisbane and Canberra each year). This is Australia's only invitiational tournament and is set up to produce some great games.

If you're interested in helping out at either tournament let me know at who dot is dot the dot schmooze at gmail dot com. We'll need volunteers to help with managing the tournaments, parties, food, billet and money as well as a horde of helpers to put up shade tents, collect scores, refill water containers, sort lunches and fill the jelly wrestling pit on the weekend themselves.

Even if you can't help out, make sure you come to the fields when the events are on and support the local teams. High level ultimate is great to watch and you can see where some of the best teams in Australia are headed. I'll post more details when I get them.

Fields are closed

After the wettest spring and most miserable summer I can remember in Canberra, ACT Sportsgrounds has finally bit the bullet and closed fields. This means no organised sport on the fields until next week.

Now I know that some of you will want to get out and throw or whatever, and might be thinking of flaunting the field closures. While I understand the urge to throw is a pretty deeply ingrained instinct in frisbee players around the world, this is the chance to practise your self control.

Frisbee players already have a bad reputation for using closed fields with ACT Sportsgrounds, and the rangers and staff from the Sportsgrounds office DO actually look at their fields pretty often. I know you're just having an informal throw, but you'll make life harder for the brave and hardworking administrators who'll go in to make the next field booking for your next league/tournament/training.

Besides, they do their best to keep fields open and it has rained a complete boatload. This doesn't happen very often so I'm sure we can all wait it out.

And finally, this is a good chance to do some of the other stuff that most players don't get around to often enough. No, I'm not talking about washing your socks or talking to your loved ones. I'm talking about doing some injury prevention and recovery stuff. A solid investment in this stuff now will pay dividends when the sun finally comes out.