Nationals update

OK, I've been a bit slack updating, so it may come as a suprise to you that the Australian Ultimate Championships (which all the cool people just call Nationals) is on right now in Brisbane.

The ACT has two teams attending; Fyshwick United in the open division and Factory in the women's division. You can have a look at some of the previous posts to see how these teams have gone in their last few tournaments (Eastern Regionals and the Brisbane-Canberra Invitational) but both teams have had some good results so far in the season.

Nationals started on Friday, and since then it's been a pretty turmultous few days in both divisions.

First the bad news: Fyshwick won two of their three games on the first day, but haven't managed a win since then over any of the real contenters at the tournament. Their results from day two mean that they're out of contention for the pre-semis and the highest they can now place is fifth. After several years at the top end of the results ladder (FU have made semis in all of the last three years and the final in two of those years) this is a really disappointing result for the boys and I'm sure they're all wishing it could have worked out differently. That said, there's still a bunch of good teams to play and beat left in their part of the draw and I'm sure they'll put in some good performances today and tomorrow.

Now the good news: Factory came second in their pool of 7 teams, losing one game to Sporting Team Box Athletico United (the reigning champions) and winning all their other matches. This includes some really important wins over Sand Dunes from Sydney and Kaos from Perth, both firsts for the season. It sounds like the team is feeling positive and is fired up to play their quarter final today. Their opponent for that game is still undecided (it depends on the result of a game that's probably ending right about now). Either way, it's a great result for Factory and hopefully they can keep it up all the way to the final on Monday.

If you're looking for results or more info there are a few sources to try. First, Simon Talbot and the Forcesideline crew are providing regular updates and blow by blow commentary for a couple of games on twitter. Summaries of the day's results are here. There are also some slightly sketchy results on the tournament website. And finally, there are a mix of perspectives and posts here. Between all of these different sources you can usually get a reasonable idea of what's going on.

The women's final (hopefully starring Factory) will be on on Monday and Forcesideline will definitely be covering it (they've even been trying to stream video footage so keep an eye out for that). If Factory make it through either get access to Twitter at work or stay home and claim you have an unsightly and infectious rash.