Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Unigames scores

The ANU are halfway through their round-robin, with five games down and three to go before the head into placing games. It's been a fairly "slow" start for the team, they've lost all their games. However, there are a few chances left to notch up a win and even if they don't I'm sure Brett Massey has won the roller-skate limbo. Scores and all that jazz can be found here.

In other news, two mixed teams from the ACT are gearing up for Mixed Nationals, Team Happy and Soma. Soma have been training for months on Sunday afternoons and feature a pretty exciting roster with lots of new faces. Team Happy feature the same sad, tired, grumpy old hacks that have been grinding away at national tournaments for years, and Kelly Kidman and Andrew Lance, Canberra's very own ultimate glamour couple. Regular ACT mixed club Kaboom are taking a rehab break after World Clubs so it's great to see two teams stepping up to represent Canberra later in October.

Stay tuned for more Unigames details (if we get any) and some largely fabricated mixed nationals hype.

And remember to register for Spring League. It's the best league of the year, and it's rained heaps so the fields will be in top condition. Don't miss out!

Monday, September 27, 2010

Unigames is on!

Anunaki (the ANU team) is duking it out in Perth this week at Unigames. The tournament runs until the end of the week. They're in the top division (of two) with 8 other teams from around Australia. This is one of the biggest frisbee tournament of the year and is held alongside a bunch of other university sports so the parties are epic.

Have a look at forcesideline.com to get updates on how the games are going. They're posting regular updates on the whole tournament and although most of the people posting are frisbee insiders and there are heaps of in-jokes for the uni crowd there's some useful stuff in the mix.

If I get any word on how the team's going I'll post it up here. I doubt, however, that the team will have much time to tell us about their exploits. If you hear anything post a comment.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Did you know...

Did you know that as an AFDA member you've covered by the AFDA's member compassionate fund?

The Australian Flying Disc Association, the peak body for Ultimate in Australia (they do bunch of stuff with Disc Golf and some of the other individual events too) provides two kinds of insurancy-type things for members. One is public liability insurance in case that game of "who can throw the highest" you were playing on a runway at Canberra Airport goes horribly wrong*. The other is a member compassionate fund that helps out players who have encountered financial hardship paying for frisbee related injury bills. So if you're a poor student or a lowly APS 1 or whatever and you need your face reconstructed after a you let the slightly overenthusiastic new guy on your league team pull the AFDA can, at its discretion, help you out with some of your medical costs.

Of course, the absolute worst person in the whole world to rely on for this kind of official important information is me, so check the details out for yourselves here. I can only guarantee that everything I've written in this post will be wrong in some way.

One really important thing is that all of the people involved in the claims process (and there are a couple) want you to contact them within 30 days of getting injured, so if you tear and ACL or badly break an ankle or accidentally set yourself on fire at the end-of-season BBQ use your new enforced down time to fill in their forms and send them off.

Oh - and by the way, AFDA membership lasts for 12 months after your last fee-paying event. You pay a few cents to the AFDA each night of league or every tournament you attend so you're membership is probably current from the last league game you played (unless you're scamming your way in and paying for free - in which case Anthony Perry is permitted by law to drive over you in a snow-plow).

* Actually, that might not be covered because it's unlikely to be an official ACT Ultimate Association sanctioned event. It's also a bad idea. Everybody knows that Leon Smith throws the highest.

Spring league details released!

As promised, the details for Spring league..........


The ACTUA Spring Social Ultimate League is scheduled to start on Tuesday 12th October at the Dickson Playing Fields. Although it been expected that we would not be able to use the Dickson Playing Fields, the scheduled work on the irrigation system has been delayed to an unknown date. ACT Sportsgrounds have advised us that we will be given one months notice before we need to vacate. We are hopeful that we will be able to complete most if not all of our league at Dickson. At this stage it is anticipated that our league will finish on Tuesday 14th December but it may finish early. It is also possible that we could move some games to an alternate location (e.g. we have O’Connor booked as a contingency) but there is no single venue big enough for our Division 3 league.



The consequence of the delay in upgrading the irrigation system is that our summer league (starting 25th January) will not be at Dickson.





Social Division 3



Division 3 will commence at 6.35 and games will finish at 7.40pm.





Social Division 2



Division 2 will be at 8.00pm and games will finish at 9.15pm. Teams that have previously played in Division 2 will not be permitted to play in the earlier timeslot.

Division 2 players who cannot play in the later time slot may register in Division 3 as individual players without a team and we will endeavour to find you a team to play on.





League Organiser



The league will be organised by the fACTory Girls (ACT Women’s Ultimate Team) led by Natalie Blood natalieblood@gmail.com .



League Registration Site



Div 2

http://www.afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1524



Div 3

http://www.afda.com/rego/showdivision.php?divisionid=1525







Cost



The Committee has decided to trial team fees which will be payable in advance. The fee is $300.

We also recognise that some players will not have a team and may need to register as individuals. We will endeavour to find you a team. If we are successful you will be advised when to pay your league fee which will be $25. Payment will be required before the league commences. These steps should avoid the hassle of having to chase fees.



Registration Process



Teams



The team captain applies to register a team to Natalie or myself. You must supply a team name and your AFDA number.



If there is room we will create a team registration site. You have 3 working days to pay the $300 team payment. If payment is not received the team will be removed from the registration site.



Teams will be expected to have a minimum of 6 male and 4 female players (the ideal team size is 7m / 5f). If you require assistance in obtaining a few players please contact the league organiser as we may be able to allocate players from the list of people who register as individuals.



Individuals



Register your name on the website in the individual players without a team section. This does not guarantee you entry into the league.

You must not register with a specific team unless you have the agreement of the team captain. If a captain doesn’t know you, you will be removed from the registration list.



The league organiser may look at allocating you to teams that do not have a full complement of players or elect to create a new team. If we elect to create a new team we will advise you by e-mail and you will have 3 working days to pay the individual player fee of $25.



Registration Close



The registration site will close on Friday 8th October (or earlier if we reach our full complement of teams or individual players).

Be wise and register early.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Spring League 2010

Hello all

ACT sports grounds are upgrading the sprinkler system at Dickson ovals over the next few months.

This means that Spring league will be moved to another set of fields in the inner-north.

ACTUA is still working out the fine detail of exactly how this will be done. It is likely that Spring league will start in mid to late October for this year.

Everything should be sorted out within the next two weeks.

-Tom Watson, ACTUA president.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Anunaki update

While most of us were rugged up in our houses avoiding the bitter winds of the last few weeks, a few brave souls have been out training on Monday nights. In fact, tonight is the last training session before the ANU unigames team Anunaki board their flights to Perth.

The ANU has been steadily building a strong club culture and have had great success recruiting and enthusing new players this year. They even do things that aren't related to ultimate, like have movie nights. I still can't get over that. It's awesome to have not one but two ACT clubs (the other one is Soma) working hard to develop new players and give new people their first taste of tournament ultimate. Anunaki has been hit pretty hard by costs this year. Unigames is in Perth, so players need to be able to fork out a couple of hundred bucks for flights before they even think about dubious ultimate and unimpeachable partying. And of course, they're all students, so a few hundred bucks is about ONE MILLION DOLLARS in public servant money.

So if you see Brett Massey or his hardy band of ragamuffins give them your support, ask how things went, or better yet, buy them a sandwich or something.

Have fun out West, kids!