Frisbee Tournaments

I kept a short record of all the frisbee tournaments I've attended. It was originally designed as a reminder to myself of my frisbee history, but here it is for all to see.

1. Melbourne Hat XIV - The Super Hat

This was my first ever tournament, and was a fantastic introduction to the larger world of ultimate frisbee. I struggled with my knee injury for most of the tournament, but I kept going on the field even when I shouldn't have. My team was very strong, and we went through to the final undefeated. Alanna was out of the final due to a stuffed ankle. We lost the final to Kenny Shepherd's team in what many say was the best Melbourne Hat final they've seen. The 17 points cap game went to 16 all and we finally lost 18-16.

2. Seeds of Doom

The first day of this tournament was incredibly hot - around 42 degrees celcius or something ridculous, and it was very hard work. Jo ended up with heat exhaustion and was spewing all night, so we missed the party. The first Dregs team won a corker of a final against Southside. The last point was mammoth, with throwaways from both sides but Dregs going with the wind. I think the final score was 11-10.

3. Bra Cup

My first beach tournament.

4. Border Classic

Albury was the best of the Nationals lead up tournaments. I drove down with Ash and Geoff Mattes, and we camped in a scout hall near the fields with a group of Ash's Vic mates. Camping very close to the fields made for a superb social environment. The party was fantastic, especially as it seemed to start directly after the end of the games, and by the time we'd walked to the venue we were all in very good spirits. It's just a shame I lost Glen's Lemongrad. It ended up winning party of the year, so it wasn't just me. This tournament also saw the birth of the Dregs mascot Dregzilla.

5. Banana Republic

I took the day before the tournament off and drove up with Jo. Most of the team stayed in cabins, but I elected to camp at the fields for financial reasons. Halfway through the first day I was assigned captain because nobody else could be bothered with the paper work. I was initially a bit bothered by it, but I ended up calling a few lines and doing a bit of the captaincy work. Dregs A won the tournament.

6. Terrigal Towel - Phoenix Towel

Definitely one of the more enjoyable tournaments of the year. Drove there with Ash on Saturday morning and enjoyed a very fun day of play and cheers. I was quite stoked with the team name, and we did well with the cheers (most notably using The Penis Song). My team was a tops bunch when it came to the social side of things, which is probably the most important thing when it comes to a fun tournament like this one. The party ended at midnight, but everyone kicked on back to the beach where most of us were camping, and the goon flowed freely.

7. The Last Call

I think I had officially taken on the captaincy role by this time. I can't recall too much of the tournament. Probably more notable for me was staying with my friend Bonnie while we were there.

8. Australian Ultimate Championships

Nationals 2003 was so good I could probably write a book about it. It started with the road trip to Canberra the day before the tournament with Pottsy, Piers and Dregzilla in the 504, then a day of drinking by the lake and art appreciation. I was given the task of out-skolling all other open team captains by the end of the tourney. Nearly all other members of the dregs squad also had a task, some of which were quite crazy, but that's not currently in the scope of this document. By the end of that first night I had taken out Pottsy and Ian Piggott (the captain of Dregasaurus), but had a tactical chunder by 8pm. A great start for the team captain at his first Nationals. However, I was fine in the morning and very keen.

Although I was the captain I was one of the least experienced people on the team. The more experienced players seemed quite happy to trust my judgement, giving me guidance but not over-ruling my decisions, which was fantastic. I learnt quite a bit about tactics over the tournament because of this.

We lost Simon Wood and Thom Hill after the second day (two of our most experienced players) which made things very difficult for us. Nathan Hare kindly picked up with us, but we were still a very undermanned team. With other injuries we were generally down to two subs, and during one point we had two injury substitutions, so all our fit players were on the field. Luckily shoulders were popped back in and a pickup was found so we didn't have to play savage. We still didn't have enough energy to win our close games though, and in three games we lost a 3 point lead to go down by 3.

The party was fantastic, and we kicked on in Canberra until about 4am, when I caught a taxi back with Jo, Sarah, Pottsy and Ian Sinclair. I was quite exhausted by the end of the final (which New Zealand won easily against Fakulti). The last night was spent winding down with Goldy and a friend of his and having a good sleep. I drove home with Goldy the next day.

9. Savage Sevens

An enjoyable one day tournament. I paced myself for most of it, only to find that playing half hour games with half hour breaks is pretty easy.

10. 2nd Indoor Tournament

11. 3rd Indoor Tournament

Having been relegated to the bottom pool, we managed to mostly just enjoy ourselves this tournament, we had a couple of useful pickups (Pottsy and Marty) which helped us a little in our campaign. We made it to the bottom pool final, and it turned out to be possibly the most exciting finish ever. We were about 4 or 5 points down with 5 minutes to go, but had it within 1 with 10 seconds to go. Marty scored the equaliser with about 2 seconds to go, and knowing time was an issue, tapped and threw a no look backhand. The buzzer went while the disc was in the air, and it was caught in the opposite endzone for a win. It could only happen in indoor.

12. Halibut

The name Eric came from the particularly flat Halibut who stars in Monty Python's Fish Licence sketch (which gave us Eric the Half a Bee). Mark Briedis' shirt design was inspired, and remains a favourite of mine. The tournament was fun, and I think we gelled pretty well as a team. The party was fairly subdued, although we managed to make it somewhat enjoyable. We were entertained by a video of Nationals 2003 (complete with the Manly Muffler strip-tease). The walk back to our place of residence with Gill and a very drunken Onno was an epic event, and stories the next day seemed to revolve around Onno and a stray kitten.

13. Joint Sitting

This was a Mixed Nats lead up tournament which I picked up with Scrumpy for. It started at about 4pm Saturday afternoon on a freezing cold and very windy Canberra day. The sideline had to huddle in a blanket for warmth, and cold hands led to a lot of handling errors. A few sips of port on the sideline were very welcome. It was the coldest, windiest, most miserable weather I have ever played in. The party, however, was brilliant, and Dom and I closed it down with our billet and a few other Canberrans at about 5am. I'm quite convinced Canberra is party central. We were on the line in the morning an hour late, which was luckily just in time for the first point. Our dazed condition must have helped a little, as Dom and I connected to score the first point. The team played excellent zone throughout the day, and we recorded a fine win over Hammered who ended up winning the tournament.

14. Glastonbury

Jo and I played a practice game with Strange Blue when we were in Cambridge and they invited us to the tournament. We travelled the ten hours from Edinburgh to Glastonbury in a hired Smart car, an adventure in itself. It's a fun tournament, which seems to be mostly a big party. Everyone camps at the fields, which with 32 teams of people makes for a huge tent city. We stayed in a crazy six person tent with some team mates. We had the tent pitched by about 1am and got to bed at a reasonable reasonable hour, but drunken shenanigans were going on outside until about 4am - the night before the tournament! The tournament was pretty breezy, with three or four half hour games a day, and two byes in between each game. Jo and I had to pickup with other teams to get more of a run. On the second day we had time between games to do some sightseeing and climb "The Tor".

It didn't look like we had a strong team on the surface, but our handlers were strong enough to keep the disc under pressure, and they were all quite fast with competent throws. Most of the teams played (funnily enough) pommy zone, but not very tightly, so it was pretty much popping heaven.

The party was great as well. Hanging around with the Cambridge lads made it feel like I was back at uni and some fantastic drinking games were enjoyed.

15. Tassie Two-Hat V

The Tassie Two-Hat was a great little one day tournament. Four teams makes for an entertaining draw. We lost to yellow in the round robin, but beat them in the quarters to get through to the final. We lost to the much stronger red team by one point. We were playing with generally less experienced players, and there was quite a lot of running to be done. There were only about 15 or so people at the party, but they were all lively so it made for a good time. It was also a good way to meet some Tasmanian players, who we don't see at tournaments too often.

I visited Joe Zagari on the Sunday, who was in Hobart for the lead up to his Antarctic adventure.

16. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships

This was basically a Sydney Uni team which needed a couple of extra players, and I joined them only for the weekend (I missed the first day). Clad in tie-dyed shirts we took on the best of them and got pantsed, but we played well at the lower level and took it to some of the better teams. For the first time ever I was one of the most experienced players on the team, and also one of the tallest. I was stoked to be able to play deep in zone defence for once.

The theme of the party was halloween, which was just a good excuse for everyone to get dressed up. A lot of great photos resulted. It was also a good opportunity to see the people I had met in Tassie again, and get a good bit of dance floor action.

I did my ankle in the last game of the last day, which was a bit of a bummer, and was a bit sore and tired when I got home. A small consolation for this was almost not making it onto a plane, then for some reason being upgraded to business. I didn't change my shirt before the flight, so I managed to fly business in a very ugly smelly tie-dye t-shirt.

17. Melbourne Hat XV - the True Blue Aussie Hat

I turned up to this tournament proudly wearing my Australia flag boxers and an Australian flag as a cape, which I played in all the first day. We didn't win any games, but we were competitive in most of them and enjoyed all of them. I stayed in the pub across the road from the fields with George, James Aubrey, Ian Roxborough and Valeska. It was well worth the effort.

18. Seeds of Doom

After more than a year of tournament playing, I finally got my first win. We were seeded first due to being the only strong squad not broken into two teams, and only had one close game - Owen's Fakulti team, which we beat by one point. Personally I played well in the final, and generally OK throughout the tournament.

The party finished about half an hour after the dancing started, but with important games to play the next day I didn't mind too much. The only downer from the tournament was the winners got a teddy bear, and the runners up got alcohol.

19. Border Classic

I drove to Albury in the 505 with Ash, Iain Piggott, Fergie and Jess Dempsey. The weekend started off in pretty exciting fashion when we were stopped at a drug testing blockade (like an RBT but with lots of dogs). The dog picked up something on the car, so we had to sit around for half an hour while they got us to empty our pockets. The dogs sniffed us, our bags and inside the car. They picked up on something on someone's pants but couldn't find anything (it was in their shoe) so they let us go. It was a close call for one of us.

Albury wasn't a touch as good as the previous year. It didn't seem as well organised, and I missed out on breakfast the first day. The fields were rock hard (which is no fault of the organisers) and it was hot and dry. The party was at an RSL and not suitable for dancing, but we went on to the Globe nightclub and made an OK night of it. The highlight of the party night was probably the spa back at the motel before we went out.

20. The Bra Cup

This was a pretty fun day at the beach. We raced through to the final with ease, so Fakulti combined all their best players from their three teams for the final and beat us by one point.

21. Banana Republic

This was a very interesting tournament. It poured rain on the night before and left the fields completely soaked. After the first game they were mostly mud. It was sometimes fun, but mostly hard work and very slow going. The Holmes family put on a fantastic barbecue at the reserve on the Saturday evening, and we had a bit of a swim in the river. The party was great as well. Loads of good dancing and good chats, helped by a bit of a bar tab. I travelled to Coffs and back with Helen, Cass and Erroll.

22. Terrigal Towel IX

Again this was an excellent tournament. I went up Friday night and had a relaxed Saturday morning with a bit of a swim. My team was good to play with. We never bothered calling lines, but we kept the disc moving and played pretty good ultimate. We were knocked into the bottom pool in an exciting finish. We were one down needing a draw, and I got a hand block on the opposition's endzone just as the buzzer went. Ken put the last throw perfectly into the endzone, where Nick dropped it. I didn't mind too much, as it's much better winning the plate than being a low team in the top pool.

The party was a nice walk down the beach away. It seemed to go on into the wee hours, even though we finished up before midnight. The party didn't kick on back at the beach, but we went for a bit of a swim before bed.

In all, a lot of fun ultimate was played, drinks were drunk and swims were swum, and I was very exhausted by the time I got home.

23. April Fools

We played much better in this tournament than in the other lead up tournaments. There was no plate final, and we only came runner up for the plate on head to head results against Fakulti B, who we lost to in a 13/12 clincher on the first day. All other B games we won convincingly, including Wollongong.

The party was laid back and included only a little dancing, but was a fun night nonetheless. I was in bed early due to a rather urgent need for some catch-up sleep.

24. Australian National Ultimate Championships

Again Nationals was a lot of fun. I drove up with Zuk and Helen in the 505. It was a nice drive even though we were in a bit of a hurry because Zuk had to be there by 5 to pick up a hire van for his team. Southside hadn't organised to stay anywhere as a team, but most of us were staying at the Kedron Palms Motel, which was quite dodgy. Most of the Southside women, Wildcard (northside girls) and Wildside (a B team combining Southside and Wildcard) were also staying there, so it was a good social environment. I was in a room with Marty, Ash and Jimmy.

Our local was the Kedron Park Hotel, which we started enjoying the fruits of at an early stage. George, Ash and myself were part of the bar closing brigade the night before the first day of play. This didn't do anything good for me, as I suffered from terrible cramping on the first day and had to take it easy the next night. I had a massage towards the end of the day and very nearly fell in love with the masseuse - it was the best massage I'd ever had! I went back to her a few times before the end of the tourney.

The third night was another good one. After the AFDA AGM Marty and I followed the others down to the Kedron Park. The two of us were temporarily removed from the premises because we brought in take-away. Ironically everyone who ate at the pub restaurant had to wait hours for their meals, while we took our beers outside with us consumed our food contentedly. This time it was Sarah Jones, Nicole (from Wildside) and Drucy who closed the bar with me.

The party at the GPO was certainly the best frisbee party I'd ever been to. The theme was "back to school", which led to great shenanigans. Southside had organised a team schoolgirl uniform, complete with homemade shortish blue skirts. The whole team went out to dinner before the party in our uniforms, which got the attention of a few of the locals. The party was drinking, dancing, pink ribbons and schoolgirls until 2 in the morning when it closed. We went to a couple of bars in the Valley until there didn't seem to be anything open which would let in men in skirts. I got back to the motel at about 4 with Robin and Sarah and a couple of other Wildside girls. I had to get up at 4:30 to comfort Ash who had just spent some time with the police, and was in dire need of a drunken d & m. We ended up getting to bed at about 5:40, which probably had something to do with our terrible last game the next day.

The team started off playing really well, but gradually declined as we all got tired and the more experienced players started dropping off. In the first couple of days we had convincing wins over Fakulti B and WA B, only to be beaten by them both later. Our most disappointing loss was to Manly B. I think we lost by a point. Anson had ulti-stats on his palm pilot, and we had complete stats and a throw-by-throw record of every game, which was great.

I found this the most difficult team to captain, probably because of the huge gap in experience and skills between the top and bottom players. There was a lot of pressure from the more experienced players, but also a lot of less experienced players that I needed to keep involved.

Southside A ended up winning the tournament, as did Southside women, so there was much to be happy about by the end. On the way home we stayed overnight at Byron Bay, and went to the lighthouse in the morning. A very relaxing end to a very exciting tournament.

25. Indoor Hat

A nice little 4 a side indoor hat tournament. A lot of running about was done, along with lots of dodgy throws as is characteristic of indoor. We won a shot-glass full of M&Ms. There was no party per se, but a few of us went off to have a beer in Balmain afterwards (Sarah + Balmain crew).

26. The Gladstone Crusade II

This small hat tournament in Central Queensland rated very highly for me. The team draw was excellent, with five of the six teams being closely matched. It started at about 2pm on the Saturday and we only had two games the first day, but I was getting over the flu and I found those games pretty hard. My team won both though. There was a Queensland City Vs Country demo game that evening, and I played for Country. We were beaten soundly, but I'd started to find some energy and was playing well. My parents had driven out to see me, so they got to see me playing some quality ultimate.

There were three more pool games on Sunday, of which we won all, but they were close. Two came within one point, with the last, which we needed to win to get into the final, being a draw at full time and decided by a golden point. The golden point was a disc flip to see who started on offense, then whoever scored won the game.

The final was superb. We were down 8-4 at half, and went even further down to 9-4 before starting a brilliant comeback. We didn't concede another goal, and fought our way back to 9 all at full time. The opposition won the disc flip and started the last point on offense, but we got the turnover and won the game 10-9.

We had a few great cheers, including a Les Mis cheer (which I enjoyed). Our pep-cheer was also pretty good. It started off being "I like slippery nipples", but we added to it throughout the tourney until in the end it was "I like perky, strawberry, champaigne, meaty, tasty, pierced, milky, chocolate, dirty, hot, slippery nipples." Pulling that one off was an effort, but we did it with style.

The spirit prize was decided at the party by which team could suck a frisbee full of beer dry through straws. Our team won this as well. We also won the party. Basically we rocked. The party was great. It's possible that nothing special happened, but I'm not sure because my eyes were elsewhere for most of it. I certainly had fun.

I went straight from the party to the airport, and got back to Sydney very weary indeed.

27. World Ultimate and Guts Championships

I travelled to Finland to help chaperone Aussie Juniors. Partied a lot with Rob from South Africa (who played with me on Southside) and the staff (including Yvonne Shepherd) at the school.

I supported the boys and helped on the sideline. They played above expectations, and improved through the tournament. Pulled off a brilliant play "Rolling Thunder" a couple of times.

I got a couple of contacts from different parts of Europe. I also copped a lot of bagging from the kids for my shenanigans. It was brilliant fun.

28. Wyntre Roots

We formed the Pirates for Mixed Nats, and this was our first chance to play together as a team. We were basically a Southside B team, and most of us had played together either in Southside or in my NSL div 1 team. Hugh and Sealesy were kind enough to pick up with us for the tournament, and Sam Stewart (Zoe's husband) played with us on the Saturday. This worked out as I was only playing half of Saturday as I had a wedding to go to, and was recovering from the flue so couldn't play much on Saturday morning anyway.

The first day there were four games (of which I played two). We won two, lost two. I didn't think the team was playing particularly well in the games I saw, even though we won one of them convincingly. We were thrashed in the game against Canberra - something like 14 - 6.

I didn't get to the party because of Joe Lipson's wedding.

The second day the team pulled it together and played a much better offence. We were worried about Wollongong because they had taken it to Southside (an uber-team) and lost by one point at time cap. However we played them in our first game, and although it was a great game we won fairly convincingly by 3 or 4 points. Then we played our semi-final against Canberra. We were playing quite well at this stage with far fewer turnovers, and we won by a couple of points to make it to the final.

For the final we were hoping for nothing more than to play well, give the crowd an entertaining game, and end up with a dignifying scoreline, which we did. We lost 17 - 9, but I was very happy with the way the team played and with my own effort.

29. Tassie Two-Hat VI

I travelled to Hobart on Jetstar with Natascha. We billeted with Tim Phillips the first night (who drove a 504 wagon). I didn't enjoy this one near as much as the first one. I didn't enjoy the games near as much - there was a huge difference between the top and bottom teams. The party was OK, but nothing exciting.

30. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships

We came into the tournament seeded 6, which was always going to be out of reach, but that's what you get for getting into the final of Wyntre Roots. The first day of play was OK. We beat South Australia and Sandy Crack (a low seeded Manly team) and lost to Southside (a given). The second was horrible. We lost all three games by big margins. The third was OK. We beat another Manly team, then lost by one point to UNSW and were beaten convincingly by Wollongong.

The social side to this tournament was enjoyable. The theme for the party was "B&S Ball". I'd purchased a very nice full length black dress with floral edges, and I ended up looking quite fetching. The party involved a few drinking games, and quite a few men in terrible dresses. Pottsy's short fishnet dress in particular was an eye-catcher. I went out after the party with Sarah and Anna Jones.

31. Indoor Tri-Series II 1

32. Barbados Hat 2004

There is no frisbee scene in Barbados, and this tournament was organised by an English couple. There were about 25 people turning up from mostly from the US and England. Because of the small number of people it ended up more like three days of well organised pickup, but was still very good.

The first day was rained out due to all the flooding, so we broke up into three teams and played on the beach. The second and third days we had two teams (which we switched up between days). Both days the playing was hot and hard, and the teams were very well matched. The only complaint I had was losing the last game of the last day by one point.

During the week I was there I partied pretty hard and enjoyed myself immensely.

33. Melbourne Hat XVI - The Hat With No Theme

The tournament was pretty average in terms of fun, but the party was great. It was good to catch up with Tasmanian and Melbournian friends.

34. The Longest Day 2004

I joined the pickup team, and it ended up being a lot of Frenchies. They were good fun. A lot of beer was drunk during the games, and they were smoking it up quite a lot on the sideline.

35. Disc Fools

Diskapital was cancelled this year and replaced by this second level tournament. It was a pretty enjoyable affair. This was the first of the second level tournaments with limited NL players. We had a pretty strong line up, and made it through the round robin undefeated. The highlight throughout was our warm ups with a few trivia questions. In the final we fell apart to lose by 6 or so to Deathstar.

The party was a little subdued compared to other Canberra parties I'd seen, but still very enjoyable.

36. Border Classic

The border classic nearly died this year, with no Southside team, no Manly team, and only 4 mens teams in total. It was, however, a vast improvement on the previous year in terms of organisation. The fields were pretty good, the food was good and the party rocked. I picked up with Fakulti for the first time ever, and enjoyed playing with them.

We played a round robin the first day, and beat both Chilli teams but lost to a very strong Deathstar side. The second day we mixed up Deathstar and Fakulti teams to play against a Chilli side again, which my team won. The final was a mammoth 2 hour game between all of Chilli and all of Fakulti/Deathstar. It was a tight game with a couple of changes of lead, but we won by two points.

The worst part of the tournament was getting heat exhaustion on the Saturday. I was spewing up after the last game, but before we got back to the caravan park. I had some ice and slept a bit at the party and was eventually able to eat some dinner and have a few beers. We weren't allowed into the Globe because boat races had been happening at the party (?), so we kicked on to a different joint where the dance floor happened. I was spent early because of the heat exhaustion, but it was still a great party.

37. Fields of Doom

A one day tournament, in which we had a fairly strong team, but played quite dismally to be beaten by all worthwhile competition. We had one close game against the team that eventually won it, where we were up by three, but lost 4 points in a row to lose the game.

38. Terrigal Towel X

A much fun towel. We played quite fairly well and all had heaps of fun. Alison was a girl who saw the game being played on the Saturday and joined the tournament on Sunday. Gavin didn't turn up on the Sunday. My knee had been injured that Wednesday and I was originally planning on not playing, but I couldn't help myself. It was strapped up and handled it fairly well, and I was able to run well in the last game of the first day.

Our playoff for 7th was a very enjoyable game of silliness, with lots of spectacular gratuitous layouts, upside down points, and nobody taking any notice of the score whatsoever.

The party wasn't too much, with a bbq then some drinking games (byo drinks was a bonus), but Glenn and I went out afterwards. We were very pissed and jumped a fence to get into a club in Terrigal but got busted, then went into Gosford for a while. Much fun.

39. Eastern Regionals 2005

Two days playing with between 0 and 2 subs. Hard work, but fun. Southside teams were split into those going to Perth for Nationals and those not. There was a bit of switching of teams each game to give Non-Perth enough players, and for the last game we played against Deathstar with a combined team, because a lot of Perth players went home.

Most notable about this tournament were the complaints from Dave Zuk about swearing in the team, and the email apology he sent to the Southside girls on our behalf about our heckling (an unwarranted apology according to a few girls I spoke to). Also there was the Trash Talk article by Piers about Southside players chucking a stink and going home. Only a somewhat accurate description of what happened, and kind of blown out of proportion.

40. Sydney NL3/2L3

This was the first time NL (National League) and 2L (second division) had been run alongside each other, and the women also had two divisions. It was the first time of the season with everyone together. Sadly the party at Penrith Panthers didn't go off. There was nowhere to dance, and not much to keep people interested in staying. The rest of the tournament went very well though. It's the first time I've really enjoyed a tournament that didn't have a great party. There were only 4 teams in our comp, so the draw was a double round robin and final. We beat both Manly and Fakulti fairly soundly, but were beaten by Chilly twice. We came back in the final to beat Chilly 12-6.

Southside A lost a close final against Chilly after a fantastic comeback, meaning Chilly won the NL for 2005.

I slept in my car in St Mary's Saturday night, allowing me to sleep in Sunday and saving me a couple of hours travel time. A very good idea.

41. Australian Ultimate Championship 2005

42. Sydney Indoor Hat II

43. Savage Sevens

Most of the team spent all day complaining about the draw, which admittedly was quite bad for us, not allowing us to jostle for position where we should have been placed. However, I had a very enjoyable day. We didn't have too many close games, a few big losses and a few big wins, but we did play quite well as a team. My flatmate Mel and her Mum came down to watch one game in which I played particularly well, which was cool.

44. FSL 25th Anniversary Hat

This was a great introduction to European frisbee. 4 teams, nice fields, lots of beer and sausages. I don't think we made the final, but it didn't really matter. I stayed with Sybel the first night, who had a big house on a lake, and had hosted Australians in the past. The second night after the party, which was just dancing and drinking in a big shed and well worth the effort, we slept in an old bunker.

45. World Games

46. The Hills Hoist

A nice day at Castle Hill marred only by injury. There was a good show of players to this Sound of Music themed hat tournament, with quite a lot of experience turning up and eight teams in total.

After drawing our first game we cruised through the rest of the pool games, quarter and semi, only to meet our match in the final. We were down by about 6 poinst at the beginning, but brought it back to lose by 3.

The only major issue I had with the day was the damage I did to my knee. It was dodgy at the beginning and I shouldn't have been playing, but I played all games and could hardly walk by the end of the day. It took a couple of weeks to recover enough to walk OK, and a long while before I was back to 100%.

47. Singapore Open

This was one of my more flamboyent uses of Qantas Stafftravel, as I flew there just for the weekend. It was a big tournament, with a great atmosphere. There was also a lot of moisture in the atmosphere, and sweat was dripping heavily even after a little effort. JD's tournament report covers the games very well. It was a lot of close fought games and comebacks, and it was a great team to play with. Along with Dan Smith, Kwong and I, there were a couple of pickups from abroad.

All the exertion from the first day resulted in me getting minor dehydration / heat sickness that night. I managed to pull through to get to the party though, but I'm not sure it was worth it. There was a podium with one guy dancing to the loudest music I've ever heard, drink discounts which applied to spirits but not beer, and not much else going on.

The second day they had free beer happening from a keg after we'd finished play, and that definitely added to the enjoyment. Singapore airport doesn't let you go into the checkin area where there are showers until you get your boarding pass, so I didn't have time to have a shower before boarding. I also got a talking to at customs for bringing cleats in with Singapore mud all over them. It didn't matter though. It was a great weekend, mostly due to the on field effort of our team.

48. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships

One of the most enjoyable tournaments of the year. The team was a UQ team with a few of us pickups from elsewhere. We lacked girls and as a team where a lot of us hadn't played together I thought our 8th seeding was a bit high. The only person on the team I'd played with before was Dan, who had been on my winning Gladstone Crusade team. It was great to be able to play with the others I'd met but not played with previously - Brett, and particularly John, who I'd watched rip up the field as juniors captain at Worlds in Finland.

We had one day where we were happy with our play, one where we were unhappy, and one where we were very unhappy indeed. Although we didn't have much depth to our lineup, John and Brett were really able to carry the team, with Dan and Matt providing fantastic support. Our puppy and fence was very effective as well. By the end we were working very well as a team. On the last day in the rain and wind we played very well, only just losing our quarter and semi, then getting a very satisfying win against Anson's team Turd Ferguson. I had a lot of friends on the team, and they were seeded above us, so to beat them fairly convincingly was enjoyable.

We had accommodation just across from the fields, and both parties were within walking distance. The cheap Coopers was very enjoyable, and both parties were quite tops. In terms of both on and off field value, it was the most fun competitive team I've played with.

The final was a bit of a downer, with Vic winning easily against Owen's team, but the stadium seating at the venue was good, and the crowd found ways to entertain themselves.

49. NSUT XX

Indoors in Finland. Yay.

50. Kiek 'n de Kok

Estonia's indoor tournament. We didn't have as strong a team here, and some of our games were a bit disappointing.

The Estonian girls fared much better however, coming third. I helped a little as a sideline coach and got quoted in the local newspaper as a result.

51. Paganello

Paganello lived up to all the hype 100%. It was a fantastic tournament. Millerine and I tried to make it as cheap as possible by taking our own beer and staying on the street in Milan on the way there. Rimini is a nice town, but very touristy and somewhat expensive on an Estonian wage.

Hook was supposed to be a San Francisco based team, but it was really a pickup team, with only Dirk and one other having played with the team before, and only as pickups. All of the players were capable, with a few very capable indeed. Seth, Jason, Dirk and Billy all put in stellar performances. We were competitive amongst the middle teams and generally very well spirited, as well as putting in a good team effort off field.

Another great thing about Paganello was meeting so many other Australians and people I knew from elsewhere.

52. Pirita/Pärnu Hat

This was a very relaxed hat on a Thursday and Friday. A few Finns, Paul Ericsson and a German girl filled out the roster of Tallinn and Kivi-Vigala players. The first day we just had a very informal couple of games with quickly whipped together teams at Pirita. After this I jumped on a bus with Avo and went to Pärnu, where we got drunk cheering on Sweden in the World Cup with Paul Ericsson. Then we threw a few discs down at the beach. Pärnu is a lovely town and it was an OK night out. We stayed in the dodgiest hostel building I've seen - really seemed about to collapse.

The second day at Pärnu was only slightly more organised, but up until probably BUC my most fun day of playing with the Estonians. Afterwards all the others headed to Jurmala, but I missed out on this as I was going to Germany. Shame, as they won.

53. European Club Championship Qualifiers (NE Region)

54. Baltic Ultimate Championships

I put in quite a bit of effort preparing for this tournament fitness wise, and was pretty happy with my condition. It was still very hard work as we only had two subs for the two days. As always Kristjan was the mainstay of the team, and both he and I only took a couple of subs during the weekend. The whole team stepped up for it though, and we were a comparatively strong team both on offence and defence. Our game for third place was quite close, and it was generally a very enjoyable weekend on the field. I was particularly happy with my defence throughout the tournament.

Off the field it was a good time. A cool road trip there and back from Tallinn, with the whole team in a minivan. A somewhat happening Saturday party, with a quality mix of alcohol and strip card games.

55. World Ultimate Club Championships

56. Melbourne Hat XVIII - The Hangover Hat

The best Hat I've played so far. It was a very international tournament due to all the leftovers from World Clubs. We had a couple of US players, a couple of Finns and a kiwi. It was a team of fairly strong players all out to have fun, and it was good.

Again we stayed at the fantastic Gunn Island. The party went well, with Millerine and I closing it down in the wee hours.

57. The Longest Day

58. Diskapital IX - Return to the Gulag

It was very difficult to find accommodation for this because of Summernats, so the first night Millerine and I camped at the fields. The second night we managed to get a cabin with Brendan and Elsey.

I remember very little of the games, so I'm guessing my team was just average. Millerine's layed out to score the winning point in the final though, it was worth the effort.

The party must have gone OK, as we got completely pissed. The taxi driver refused to believe that anyone in our state could know their way home and trusted his dodgy GPS, which led on a tour of Canberra. We did pass a kangaroo hammering down a footpath somewhere though, so it was all good.

59. Eastern Australian Ultimate Championships

60. Terrigal Towel XII

The party was fun and I enjoyed diving around in the sand after swill, but my team wasn't too crash hot. Most players were a bit too lazy to run. We had a couple of good girls and a couple of OK handlers, but that was it. The wooden spoon was no surprise.

The most memorable occurrence of the tournament Matt Swadling's fracas with the bouncers of a local pub.

Millerine and I took our bikes on the train to Gosford and rode to Terrigal. Although it's fairly hilly it's a nice reasonably short ride. We stayed in a house near the beach with the Manly guys. 'Twas a very enjoyable weekend, even though my team sucked.

61. Australian Ultimate Championships

As Nationals was in Melbourne this year we spent the week leading up to it at the comedy festival. We saw about 6 or shows, some of which were very funny, some of which were fairly funny, and only one of which was absolute shit. It was worth the effort, anyway.

In terms of playing this Nationals was probably the least eventful. I still had a buggered knee that I'd done at Regionals. Although I tried to play numerous times, I was never in good enough condition to run properly. The team was stronger than at Regionals though and had some excellent games.

At the party we pulled out some stylish salmon shirts, and spent the evening slap pointing Manly style and spanking Borat. Plus a bit of not impressing girls with fake Irish accents. Good times.

62. The Ultimate Stampede

There's something about regional tournaments. When they get a bit of promotion and a critical mass of attendants, they go off. For some reason Bathurst was the regional tournament that everyone wanted to go to, and it went off. The format was one day team tournament, one day hat tournament. For the first day I picked up with Numchuckas, an NSL league team. We did OK and were about in the middle, having a few wins and a few losses.

We had organised accomodation in a strange unsupervised bunch of hotel rooms, and it was perfect for a big night in drinking the night before play. The Saturday night party went off, as the party of the year prize suggests. It was B&S Ball themed - a perfect excuse to wear a dress - and it was a late night of jollities.

63. Midwinter Solstice

A fine one day tournament. Millerine and I picked up with the UNSW kids. Abra and an American pickup Ryan held the team together, but the rest of the team held their own, so it was a surprisingly strong team. We ended up winning the tournament fairly easily, even though there were enough injuries that we were savage for half the final. It was a very enjoyable day on the field, as the team created space well and the two top players were very good at helping the rest of us to step up.

64. NSW Mixed Ultimate Championships

65. Hills Hoist II

I started for this one day tournament by riding the 30km to Caslte Hill. I thought we would be one of the lesser stacked teams, but it seemed we had a plethora of solid players, and our beginners were very handy. We won the tournament without too much trouble.

On the way home we popped into the pub, then I got a bit lost finding a train station on the way home and ended up riding another 10 or so km, but all good.

66. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships

It was a bit of a mixed up team for this time, with a lot of players missing a day or two. I myself missed out on the first day due to work. They lost the first three games on the first day, losing the last in a close game. This put us at the bottom of our initial pool. All the games on the second day were fairly close, with 2 wins. It seemed to me we were a much stronger team than I had expected, and the team was probably playing close to it's capacity. However on the last day we were very lacklustre. Quite a lot of silly mistakes were made, and it seemed that it was being treated as a social tournament rather than a competitive one. We were quite lucky to not get the spoon.

To be fair, I think we had quite an OK team, and the level of play amongst the bottom teams had risen substantially from previous years. All of the bottom five or six teams were closely matched.

The party went well. The theme was "go as your team name," so our planning was very simple - dresses for all. We were not the hottest team there though, with the seamen from Special Sauce looking fine indeed. Stephen Weller was the best dressed from Manly, managing a complete outfit from his girlfriends wardrobe, including frilly knickers. Wayne was kind enough to let Millerine and I stay at his place, so there was no monster commute. Although it was a fun and well fueled night it wasn't too late, so I was ready to play in the morning.

67. Melbourne Hat XIX - The Top Hat

This was another fantastic Melbourne Hat, although probably not as good as the previous year. Millerine and I went down a day early, so for the first time I managed to get to the disc golf. With the Manly lads we managed an OK round and finished fairly drunk. As per tradition we stayed at the Gunn Island, but this time there were about 20 frisbee players staying with us.

My team was nothing special in terms of skills, but we could hold our own most games. We had a good mix of wins and losses and ended up about 16th. Our top players were Seb and Jill, an absolute star from Prime in Vancouver. I felt a lot more fit than I have previous hats, and apart from some toe difficulties my injuries weren't noticeable. This helped my enjoyment on the field, but the frequency of my throwing errors did not. My first point playing axis against a zone indicated a fantastic tournament to come, but I made a lot of mistakes following that.

The party at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow in St Kilda was memorable. The theme of "Moulin Rouge" resulted in a plethora of rather sexy girls. We didn't go out after the party closed, but finished off night with some Glenn Molnar style hedge jumping and a nap in a hedge on the way home.

The final was the best since my first hat. Gack's team took the lead, then dropped ten points in a row, then brought it back. They finally lost 15-13.

68. Longest Day

My first ever tournament with the goats. An enjoyable day at the beach.

69. Diskapital X

This was a great hat team. We had no super strong players, but no weak players. I was also playing a solid game with few turnovers, so it was a very enjoyable time on the field. We gelled quickly and well, which was evident in our spirit win.

We won 3 of our 6 pool games, then lost our semifinal by two points to Ant Dowle's team. We put up a bit of a fight though. There was a mess up with the draw and we only knew we had made the semis a couple of minutes before game time. Except for the first pool game where we went down by four, all of our games were won or lost by one or two ponts.

Steve Gangemi drove us up and back. Summernats was on again, so we camped at the field on Friday as we had the year before, then billeted Saturday night with a nice Canadian guy called Ryan.

70. Share the Love

This tournament was appropriately named for my 69th. It was also Umlaut's first outing. Umlaut were always going to be further down the ladder on this one, and probably performed a little better than I expected. We lost to I-Beam (Newcastle) by 4, Hills by 4, and got flogged by Barefoot about 13-1. After lunch we defeated Bozza's team by a big margin. Something like 12-3. Gong were undermanned so we lent them some players and played them in a short 6 on 6 game to 7 points.

Barefoot were a very good defensive team, but we were also tired by that stage and making throwing errors and bad decisions. We had trouble playing against the Hills very loose zone, not adapting to it at all. Our lack of depth was definitely showing in this game, as it was difficult to find two good poppers once we put three experienced players in handling. This was also a big problem against Barefoot. Our best game was probably the first against I-Beam. We were never really a chance to win it, but we were getting good cuts happening with our man offence and they had to work to score.

Because of the strange draw where the winner of 9/10 (us) automatically qualified for the 7/8 game, we never got a chance to play Fakulti, which I was hoping to do.

Anyway, with 10 not-so-fit players we finished quite buggered, and the 10km ride home was hard work.

71. Terrigal Towel XIII - The Reggae Hat

The plan was to ride the bikes from Gosford again but I was too ill to ride Friday night and the trains weren't running on the weekend. We ended catching public transport and arriving around lunchtime Saturday. My team was quite strong, with everyone running hard and gelling. We went through the preliminary rounds with two draws and 3 wins, then won all the crossover games to make it into the quarters as top seed. Even though we were hot favourites by this stage, we had worked very hard to get there, with all of our games being close.

We knew from the start that the game against Dark Blue would be difficult. They had been one of our draws in the opening rounds, but had since learnt that throwing to Matt Dowle is a good strategy, and they had John McNaughton and a couple of other throwers. They flogged us 9-6, and the dream was over. They ended up easily beating light blue in the final, who had been our other draw.

The tournament was at Wamberal beach because the organisers had been a bit slow and Terrigal had already been booked, but the beach was much better than Terrigal anyway. The party was at the Country Club which was about ten minutes walk away. It didn't go crazy but there was enough dancing and happenings to be entertaining. I left early due to my illness and had a good nights sleep in my tent on the beach. A campfire was happening there for a little while.

Being my fifth towel, I was awarded a small hand towel with the reggae camel emblem on it for my efforts. Briedis gave us a lift back to Sydney.

72. Eastern Regional Championships

This was the tournament that Umlaut had been training for. We never expected to qualify for Nationals, but it was always an outside possibility. And, being seeded tenth, there was much honour on the line with three teams seeded above us that we could possibly beat, so there was definitely something to play for. Millerine and I travelled to Orange with Christian after work and arrived in time for beers at our hotel, where we were staying with the Southside girls.

Our first game was against Bozza's team, Westies, who were the only team seeded below us. They weren't very experienced, but they played with more intensity than us and took the lead early. We worked hard to bring it back and eventually won by a point. The other competitive game in our pool was against Manly. We'd been able to pull ourselves together by then and brought our best to the game. Although we were definitely the underdogs but the scores were fairly level throughout the game. It was very enjoyable giving them a fright and watching their internal team relations get a little fiery, but we weren't good enough to pull out a win, going down by about two points. The other result I recall was against Barefoot, where we got pantsed about 15-0. It was easily our worst offensive game. Had were certainly a good enough team to score points against them, but we were completely lacklustre, only putting together a few points of reasonable offense.

The party was a little drunken due to all the pre-drinking at the dodgy Chinese restaurant, but it was a great vibe and very sociable. Bozza seems to know how to throw a party.

After the pools had been rearranged on the second day we played against Fakulbee, but we couldn't match their intensity and didn't score a point in the second half, losing something like 12-5. Our "final" was a 9/10 playoff against Westies again (who had defeated Hills and had a close game against Manly), which was again fairly close but we won by a few points.

The fields were as hard as cement, which with my normal cleats made it very difficult on my ankles. Running was very hard work. On the second day during a break Marty and Christian and I went to the public pool to loosen up, and that helped immensely for our last game. With muscles that worked again it was my best running and playing of the tournament.

Umlaut is the first team that I had not only captained but run the training sessions for and organised. It was also one of my more rewarding ultimate experiences. A lot of what I was hoping to do with the team from the training sessions was achieved. I was fairly happy with the plays and how we played them, even though there were some obvious weaknesses and some improvements to be made to deal with the opponents who exploited them. Everyone had a positive attitude, so it was always fun on and off the field. We also looked damn fine in our livery.

73. Australian National Championships

My own team Umlaut didn't qualify for Nationals, so I managed to pick up with New Zealand along with three Manly guys. The trip there was by way of bicycle and train, and it was very wet when I arrived. I was expecting something like the Coffs Harbour tournament from 2004, but although a few of the fields were mudbaths they weren't all so. Millerine and I stayed with the Southside girls to the north of Coffs.

New Zealand had some high quality and very competitive players, and it was obvious from the outset that we could do quite well. We won most of our early games, but the key game was against Barefoot. If we lost to them by two points or more they would go up and we down, otherwise we went up. They had the opportunity at the end to win by two points, but made a mistake in the endzone and we ended up taking it by a point. Barefoot went on to lose the rest of their games and do well below expectations. We went on to the semis.

The semi was against Fakulti, and they were a far better team than us. Canberra had also beaten us soundly earlier, and they were the finalists. Our playoff for third was against I-Beam, and we started out confident having beaten them by 5 earlier. It was a very competitive game, but they took it by a point.

It would have been nice to get a medal, but being the quality of player I am I shouldn't complain about fourth. It was a bit of luck that I was playing at all, and fourth is likely to be my best result at Nats. Anyway, it was a great experience and I learnt a lot about intensity from the kiwi boys.

74. Pärnu Beach Hat

A repeat of the Pirita and Pärnu hat of 2006, but without the Pirita bit. It's basically a very informal hat on Friday as a leadup to Jürmalas Bite. Millerine and I arrived by bus on Thursday night and checked in to the dodgy Hostel Staadion then bought some beer and played stubby guts until the others arrived. By that time we were already a little drunk. We had a few drinks at the hostel then went to Mirage nightclub for continuing fun times. As usual with the Estonians it was a good bit of party action. Millerine shouted everyone tequilas which resulted in a little bit of illness for herself.

The day of play was fairly relaxed. Three teams were chosen the traditional way with names out of a hat. We played a round robin, decided the winner, then chose new teams to do it again. Afterwards we all jumped into cars and went to Riga for the weekend tournament....

75. Jürmalas Bite

I had missed this tournament in 2006 when the boys had won it, so was glad to get an opportunity to go. It was also a chance to play with the Kivi-Vigala lads who were now much more experienced. We arrived in Riga on Friday night and all camped on Kristjan's floor.

We were seeded third in our pool and had to come second to make it to the semis. Our first game was against Taskas who were the top seed. First game fitness blues seemed to effect everyone, but we put good pressure on defence and won by a point. They weren't able to break our backhand force. We used a backhand force for most of the rest of the tournament, with mixed results. The weather was a little on the wet and cold side, but it only rained during one of our games. We had another close game the first day, but won them all.

We lost our first game of the second day to the other higher ranked team in our pool but still made the semi finals. Our semi started off looking bleak, and we were down 9-5 when we changed our force. The first day our backhand force had been effective, but the second we were constantly getting broken by high backhands. Our defence picked up enourmously and we brought it back to 9s at full time with a game to 10. A small defensive mistake and we lost it, but a pretty gutsy game. The playoff for third was another game down to the wire against the team we had lost to first game of the day. This time everyone was putting in 100%, our defence (forehand force) was more solid, and we won by a point.

The girls won their division, and we took out spirit of the game for open. It was the most fun I'd had at a tournament for a long time. The young guys played very solidly and (most importantly) with a lot of intensity. Then the second day we picked up Sanka, Martin and Tõnu (who had all been at Sanka's wedding) when we really needed the legs. Every team we played against was very well spirited, playing hard and fair and with a positive attitude. There weren't very many disagreements and they were all sorted out easily. This is one tournament that I really hope to play again sometime.

76. Whose Baby

Predboj is a small town about 30 minutes outside of Prague. We were camped at the fields and all facilities including bar with very cheap (20CZK) beers and good food were at the fields. We travelled there by plane as a team and spent the Friday walking around Prague. It's a very beautiful city.

This was the first time I had run specific training sessions with the Estonians for a tournament, outside of their regular pickup game "training". We had four training sessions and I had specific aims for plays and strategies. The main thing was our straight up force, using the sideline for communication. We also had some endzone plays, a J, and a zone (the last two of which we didn't use). I was very happy with the state of the team after so few training sessions. Obviously there was a lot left undone, but there had been considerable progress and we knew our main plays fairly well.

The draw was two pools of six, with the top, middle, and bottom two teams joining up for semis and final for final placings. So we had to get in the top two to make it through to the final and that looked to be a challenge. I had no real idea of the level of play, but even though it was supposed to be a fun tournament I was under the impression it would be quite high. Names such as Endzonis and the Polish National team graced our pool and we were seeded last.

Our first game was against Endzonis, and it turned out they weren't so good after all. They were already drinking and were making a lot of mistakes. We had a terrible game though and lost it by a point. We had to win all our other games to make it to the finals. We won the next game easily but lost to the Slovakians in another tight game. We won our last game again quite easily.

Our last pool game was on the second day, but we had already secured third place. The horror themed party went down well, with a lot of dressing up, a lot of drinking, and a lot of good party fun. I had a good time mixing with other teams after mine had gone to bed.

We lost the first game of the day, but it didn't matter and we played against Saxy Divers (another team I thought would be good) in our 5 - 8 semi. It felt like a badly spirited game from us, but we outplayed them with our straight up defence and played solid offence to win by about 7 points. The 5/6 playoff was against the Austrian team Spin. They had a young lad who had been a frisbee baby and was a very good lefty handler, one fast receiver, and the rest older but experienced players. It was tight game. Kristjan and this Jakob kid were a great match up to watch, and they were the first team to be able to score long on us. The last golden point was horrible with good defence and terrible offence from both sides, but we took it. Fifth was a great result for us, but a better first game would probably have made us semifinalists.

I was very happy with how the team worked. We generally weren't that strong individual players (as the number of drops and throwaways shows) but we were one of the stronger teams. Our straight up defence was the best man on man defence of the tournament, and our endzone plays were played almost perfectly, resulting in a score every time. My only complaint is about the spirit, particularly from Endzonis. It was a fun tournament, but there seemed to be a bit of hostility from some of the teams (not much, but it was in the air), and Endzonis were pretty much just obnoxious drunks. We in turn played a less spirited tournament than usual.

The team name ended up so because of my laziness when I applied, thinking I was just going to be on a waiting list and wouldn't actually get on the team list.

77. World Ultimate and Guts Championships

78. NSW Mixed Championships

79. Savage Sevens

80. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships

81. Summer Fling

We were seeded second coming into the tournament, but I think the seedings were fairly arbitrary except for the first ranked team which seemed rather stacked. They were pools of four, with us seeded first in ours. The wind was a big factor throughout the day and we seemed unable to handle most zones thrown at us. We came third in our pool, and then lost to Henry's supposedly stacked team in the 5/6 playoff.

Although I was more fit than I had been the games were very tiring. This may have had something to do with the sunny weather and I also ended up very sunburnt, but it was a fun day overall. Bel was very relaxed with her captaincy and got everyone was calling lines during the day. The team was very relaxed and nobody seemed unhappy with our underperformance. We had a few beers and a couple of icecreams watching the final, which was a big win to Hills.

82. Melbourne Hat XX - The Bond Hat

83. DisKapital XI - The Bay of Pigs

For the first time in three years of attendance Millerine and I didn't set up the tent at the fields, but slept in our van. Camping at Canberra fields had become somewhat of a tradition, but staying in the van is much more comfortable and just as cheap.

It was a good fun tournament. I can't remember much of the games, other than it was a pretty good level of play and I think we were knocked out by James Ley's team in the semis by a point.

We went back to Gerry's place for a shower before the party. He's a crazy man with seven kids. We started getting our drink on at the Bar Kremlin, then finished off with bombs and a good bit of fun at ICBMs.

Pottsy joined us for the trip home and did all the driving, which was very welcome.

84. Share the Love 2 - Summer Lovin'

85. Terrigal Towel

Probably my favourite Terrigal Towel so far on the field, and a good time off it. We went up Friday night and camped in the van near the beach. I visited a house Josh had rented with Molnar and heap of others Friday night and had a few too many, which was fun.

We lost our first game but dominated the rest through to the semi, which we lost by a point. I was left with the disc with one throw after the whistle and couldn't get a huck off.

The Saturday night party was at the Terrigal Bowlo and went well. Simon Farrow had his head shaved at the party for charity.

86. Eastern Regionals

Regionals this year was organised by Fakulti but played in Newcastle. Umlaut had lost a few experienced players from the previous year but gained a few very handy and probably underrated youngsters. Most of those coming back had probably improved quite a bit during the year, as we seemed a little more focused than before.

We had a pretty tough draw the first day. We started off feeling pretty good against one of the Fakulti teams. The final score of 15-3 was really just an indication of how many drops we had in the endzone. We were regularly getting turns and were able to move the disc fairly comfortably. Fyshwick United was a much tougher game which we lost 15-2. However again I was cheered by the fact we able to get turns from them and nearly always had options with the disc, even against their zone. Manly was a more fun and less disciplined team but still had a few stars and no chumps. We were able to match them until half time when they pulled away to win 15-9.

Although we had lost all three games, I could see we were playing better than I had expected and was feeling quite positive. We had an esky of my homebrew at the fields and were able to relax while watching Hills girls vs Southside twister. It was a good bit of hands on entertainment.

The party went down fairly well. Sylvain's drinking game Caps at the motel followed by a good bit of food, pool, and tea pots of cheap cocktails.

The second day was much easier, playing off for the bottom four places against Hills, Westies and a Newcastle Uni based pickup team. The first game was against Hills who were seeded above us and we were expecting a close tough game, but it wasn't so. We came out hard against them and didn't let up, and won it 15-3. We were making offensive mistakes, but we were always able to get the disc back. It was a similar score in our last two games.

As a captain I feel I did a much better job than I ever had previously. Part of that may be because I'm getting better at it, but it was also because we seemed to have a fairly balanced team with a fair bit of depth (at least at the level we were aiming for). Whenever there was a role to fill it always seemed there was a good player for the job.

Individually Dan was a standout player, but everyone contributed and although he made our job much easier, I don't think our final standing would have changed had he not been there.

Umlaut's second year at Regionals was a better campaign than the previous. East had five spots at Nationals and only five teams including Umlaut wanted to take them, so qualifying wasn't an issue. However beating our seeding to come an easy 6th and being somewhat competitive against a very strong Manly team made it feel like we had earned the spot.

87. Bra Cup

This was the reprisal of Charlie's beach tournament which had run back in 2003. They couldn't get any girls teams together so it was just open. At this tournament Umlaut did not have enough depth to be competitive, and lost all of the games by a big margin (10-1, 9-3 etc) except for the game against sCAPEgoats, which we lost 5-4 after being up for most of the game.

I didn't enjoy the day, but objectively it was a good tournament with a high level of play. With such a small team it was quite exhausting, and the ride back home to Marrickville tired me out.

88. 2009 Australian Ultimate Championship

Not such a success. We had quite a few pickups for this tournament and the team just didn't gel as well as we had at Regionals. All of our games against the other bottom teams were close (within a point or two), but we were at the losing end of all of them. We pulled out one of our best games against Chilly B to go down by just a point or two.

Felix Kennedy from Tasmania had picked up with the bottom WA team and was the probably the main reason they beat us, other than that we sucked.

There seemed to be more complaints about this tournament than most. The fields were superb, but they seemed to under cater just slightly each night. The party in Freo gaol was cool, but it was cut short a little early because Tim Booth was climbing around the rafters and so all were kicked out.

89. The Ultimate Stampede III

Great weather, lots of drinking, good party with sumo wrestling, and a good ultimate performance. Bathurst seems to be able to continue to deliver. I brought a bottle of port to the fields as I had expectations of cold weather. It wasn't that cold, but it was far from too warm for port on the sideline. About four beers into watching the City vs Country demo game on Saturday arvo Millerine reminded me I was supposed to be driving. Luckily Emma Briggs volunteered to take us back to our accommodation.

90. Mid Winter Solstice

91. World Games

This time for the World Games I was involved as a kind of IT officer. My role was to get the website wg09.net up and running with live scoring and content updates, and to do the scoring for it. Although I spent a bit of time before the tournament getting the live scoring done, most of the content was done on the fly as the tournament was underway. It was very busy, but I found it much better to be involved in the whole affair rather than just be a spectator.

Most of my time was spent sitting in the control room scoring games, updating the website, and fixing bugs, but I did get to sit in the stands for a couple of games where the atmosphere was amazing. It was a brand new 40,000 person stadium, which at times had about 5000 - 10,000 people watching frisbee.

Australia ended up coming in third, but they missed out on the final by being at the bad end of a three way tie. There were a lot of amazing players at the tournament and this led to a lot of amazing games. The best were probably the pool game between Japan and US, where Japan won by a point, and Australia's very tightly contested win over Japan.

92. Savage Sevens

Blue Bucket was put together quite late. It was named after a blue bucket. It was a fun day with some reasonable games, but nothing special.

93. NSW Mixed Ultimate Championships

This was a ridiculously windy tournament. I personally had a hard time throwing up wind, but in general our team was not so bad at moving the disc. We lost a game to Cannon Fodder because Glenn Hodges was the only person in that game who could huck up wind. Although we beat Cannon Fodder later in the placing game, we lost our chance to play Wollongong, who I think we had a good chance of beating.

Our most exciting game was probably against Special Sauce. They won the toss so started with an advantage in a game where the wind was straight up and down the field. We were obviously the stronger team but couldn't quite get the upwind point we needed to win until the first point after full time (with the +2 rule). We held serve and won the game.

The party at the North Wollongong Hotel was lightly loose, aided in part by free drinks for most of the night. However it finished quite early and didn't reach it's potential.

94. Hills Hoist 2009

Obviously not too memorable. A hat.

95. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships 2009

What an excellent tournament. We were in a very difficult pool, and even though we were seeded in the middle of it had to fight to win a game. We had to win one of our five pool games to have a chance of making the top 16, we won one in sudden death to make it through. After that we had a pretty good run, winning most of our games, with a win over two teams we had lost to in the starting pool.

The main theme of our games was "close". Out of nine games, six were within two points.

Our strong pickups Jimmy, Izzie, Mike and Ryan added a whole new dimension to the team. Jimmy in particular with his energy and great play definitely lifted the team.

Personally, my first game was horrible, but (apart from abysmal short forehands all tournament) played well after that.

The parties were great. It started with a big night on Friday before playing, and my netball uniform at the main party on Sunday looked very good indeed.

96. Manly Summer Fling

A quite laid back tournament with a bunch of UNSW youngsters and a couple of oldies. At lunchtime we headed to the beach.

The prize for spirit was superb - a whole bunch of vegetable and fruit plants. When we got the prize most of the team had left so Millerine and I were left with them.

97. 21st "Blackjack" Melbourne Hat

Another Melbourne hat. I'm sure it was a particularly fun one, with good weather and good times.

For the first time since 2002 I didn't stay at the Gunn Island as the hostel accommodation was being replaced with four star, which is quite a shame.

98. Longest Day 2009

The second game against a very strong Antique Roadshow had an incredibly long epic point which I scored with a layout grab, then buggered up my hand. After that I was playing left handed. It was quite fun.

Paul never turned up because he forgot about it.

99. Share the Love 3

Umlaut had a few younger inexperienced players who really stepped up. We lost to most teams fairly well but were able to beat Hills on depth. A good start to the season.

100. Eastern Regionals 2010

Initially East had only six places at Nats so we had to beat our seeding of seventh, which meant beating Fakulti. Although we were very much the underdogs we had hoped to at least make an impact of not win, but it wasn't a close game. Partially because we didn't handle the wind very well and partially because they played a very solid game.

The party was a pretty good gig. We stayed around drinking and enjoying ourselves until the local women at the pub became to huge to walk around before heading home.

On the Sunday we started with a loss but a great game against the masters, then had a couple of easy wins against Newcastle B and Hills to hold our seed. We made it through to Nationals because another wildcard became available.

Throughout the tournament we had Sam doing UltiStats for us, which helped us earn bragging rights at the end of each game.

101. Bra Cup

Our main competition in this tournament was the other Umlaut team. Sadly they beat us. A fun relaxed day at the beach.

102. Australian Ultimate Championships

This Umlaut team was considerably stronger than the Regionals team, and much stronger than the team we had taken to Perth, but the level of ultimate was also quite a bit higher.Mike Connolly was a strong addition, and he probably helped us out of a few tight spots. We beat Bad Apples (Tassie) twice, but things might have been different had Mike Baker not dislocated his shoulder before they played us. We also beat the Juniors the first time as they weren't so crash hot against our zone, but they were a much better team when we played them in the 13/14 playoff. They got up early, and although we had a decent comeback we weren't able to catch them.

I had expected we'd have a couple more easy games and maybe get to 12, but we were clearly outclassed by Ultimate Evolution. Even Fakulti, significantly weakened by the existence of Colony, only came two places above us.

Our Jap was quite successful at times - in some cases it was the only way we were getting turns. In general I was very happy with the way the team performed, although it was obvious that our lack of handling experience made a difference.

I stayed with Millerine and some Southside girls in a house a few km from the fields, and walking distance to the party. The party itself was OK, but when it shut down we didn't find anywhere to drink so it was a relatively early night. We didn't have a game on the last day, so instead of watching the finals we went to Hahndorf for the winery and a pub lunch with Jamie and Brocky.

103. The Ultimate Stampede 4

This year they went back to the "first day teams, second day hat" format. Millerine and I picked up with Richard's NSL div 3 team. They were OK, but most of the guys weren't very fit and weren't doing a lot of running by the end of the day.

We stayed at the same house as the previous year, which was pretty comfy, and a suitable place for drinking. The party was some kind of winter theme, and the gimmick was a snowboard ride. We got rather tanked and I spent quite a while walking around lost after taking Millerine home and getting a tasty pie. I didn't sober up until about the second game on Sunday.

104. Windmill Windup

This was a tournament I had been hoping to play for a long time, so I had high expectations. The team was originally entered in the competition by the Tallinn Frisbee Club, but most of them pulled out. I put the word out and got together a bunch of my friends a couple of others. We were reasonably solid on the field and made a good showing off it.

It was one of those tournaments where everything is at the one place - bar, food, camping and fields. The beer was cheap and good, and it's a popular enough tournament that I met quite a few old friends there.

The draw was the unusual "Swiss" format. A few people weren't fans but I think it's definitely got potential for bigger numbers of teams. We were pretty strong throughout the preliminary rounds, losing only two games. The most problematic of these was when we were 6th seed and were up against the 2nd seed (contrary to our understanding of the draw), and they destroyed us. This was enough to put us out of the top eight for the quarters. We won our next three games to take 9th, but we felt we could have ended up a couple of places higher. Anyway a very good result for basically a pickup team. The highlight was probably beating the Columbian team 2600. Twice.

Otherwise the parties were great and there wasn't much slowing down. Glenn and Jeff made a troublesome pair, I got dunked in some water (as a 100th tournament celebration), and we drank quite a few wheels of beer.

After the tournament Millerine and I travelled to Bruges, Brussels and Luxembourg before heading back to Estonia.

105. Jürmalas Bite

For this tournament we played with our mixed team in the open division. Kind of a crazy idea when there was a strong mixed division, but there it was. We did OK though. We won two games (one being againist the runners up for the tournament) and except for one were within a couple of points. We played the winning mixed team afterwards and they destroyed us though.

The best thing about the tournament was heading out with the Estonians in the evening. There was no organised tournament party. We went to Shots Bars which is now my second favourite bar.

106. World Ultimate Club Championships

This was my second WUCC and Estonia's first time in a WFDF sanctioned event. We had relatively low expectations, but felt it would be a bit of a failure if we only made our seed of 38th out of 40.

The tournament was a little disorganised. It took us an hour or so to check in to the accommodation. The dorm style rooms were a quite rundown but they were rooms of two and with the whole place being frisbee players it wasn't too bad. The food was a disappointment. There were breakfasts without bread and cereal would run out, which is quite bad when your choices are cornflakes or ham and cheese sandwiches. Dinners were not much better.

The facilities were in some ways impressive (the shear size of the 8 field stadium) but in some ways very disappointing. The Strahov stadium was massive, but looked like it hadn't been touched since the 70s. It was very rundown. Other stadiums were OK. There wasn't a lot of extra space around the fields, so there were often bits of metal within a metre or two of the sideline. Some fields were about 3/4 size, and there were fake turf fields which were good to run on, but not good to layout on and got very very hot.

Our draw was 6 days of play and 10 games. Our first pool was difficult as expected. We only scored 6 against Credo (NZ 1) but made a good showing against Mental Floss Tycoons (3rd seed). A major highlight of the tournament was taking half against Pie Wagon. They were far too good in the second half and beat us about 17-11. The last game in our pool was against the local Czech team who were seeded about 10 above us. We expected to beat them comfortably because they hadn't fared nearly as well as us against the other teams, but they were scoring readily and it was a game to the wire. On universe point they had the disc on our line, but we got the turnover and won with a bit of help from the wind with a dodgy floaty throw over the defenders head. It was Estonia's first win at Clubs, but also mine as Redbacks hadn't won a game in 2006 (Redbacks only won one game at this tournament). We were all pretty pleased.

The only bad thing at this stage was that we'd lost Lauri early on the second day to knee injury. This left us with 15 players for the rest of the tournament.

After the second day I was more exhausted than I've ever been. I got to bed early and quite a good amount of sleep, but was still pretty tired the next day. We only had one game organised, but we didn't even get to play that. A vicious storm came up late in the morning and games for the rest of the day were cancelled to preserve the soaked fields. The highlight of that day was the Colony vs Heads of State game, that was tied at about 13 all when the storm came along. They finished the game on the fake turf after the storm was over and Colony took it 17-13.

By the fourth day I was basically recovered, which was lucky as we had three games. We were in a low end pool of four. If we topped it we would go into the 20th - 28th playoffs, last we went down to 37th - 40th, and otherwise 29th - 36th. The game against Brazzinga was more difficult than expected, but we still won reasonably easily. Luxembourg had more depth than Brazzinga, but the margin was the same.

We were expecting a tough game from Slovenia, but we weren't expecting a spirit timeout in the first point. Their captain couldn't break Alina's mark in our zone and was bumping her a bit, she called foul whenever he did, and after a few of these he called a spirit timeout. Afterwards the game was a bit more cheerful, but it didn't really clean up. They played very aggressively, with lots of contact, and our players call some fairly weak fouls, so it was never really going to work. There was quite a bit of bitching, but we were playing better and won it fairly easily.

We were top of our pool which meant we couldn't come less than 28th and could let loose a little that night. It was quite lucky for us, as with our small team we were getting exhausted. For the next few games we did well in the first half but couldn't keep up in the second. We came 28th, but I feel if we hadn't been in that pool a lot of the teams below us would have had a more juice left at that stage of the tournament.

Kristjan recognised that we we had three quality pickups and wouldn't have performed as well without them (Mike, Jeff and Alina). Anyway, 28th was a great result. One positive note was that although we only won 4 games out of 10, we won 7 of our first halves.

The best thing about the tournament (other than our very pleasing result) was the party. Apart from too little food (a recurring problem throughout the tournament) it was made for good times. There were boat cruises along the river from the party venue and back, and we started with that and quite a lot of vodka, and from then on it was drunken shenanigans until the wee hours.

For me the most pleasing moments were winning that first game against Czech, getting a layout deep grab on the fake turf (which leaves a somewhat stinging graze), and one of my scores after we had called a timeout at the endzone.

107. UNSW IV

A pretty fun pickup team. I didn't know too many of the players, but the newbies were reasonably athletic so it made for a good day. We won three games and lost two - there were no finals or whatnot.

108. Savage Sevens

We had a reasonable team, but I think a couple of minor injuries meant our defence wasn't that good towards the end, and we were beaten by a student team or two. There were some fresh faces for me on this team.

109. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships

This Mixed Nats was a bit of a mess. There was a lot of interest from NSW teams and players. Quite a few Sydney players were representing an NZ team (Megapussi), and a Bathurst team tried to sneak in on an ACT spot. A few weeks after Regionals they opened up 4 extra places at Nats, so all teams would qualify.

Our team Scapegoats had not made the original cut, and by the time the extra places were available there wasn't enough interest to get the team in. It looks like Regionals 2010 will be Scapegoats last outing, and the team has basically disolved.

Millerine and I picked up with a Victorian team, Funny Duck. They had played Mixed Nats teh previous year but are usually a league team. To fill out the numbers this year they had to pick up quite a few players. It was a fun bunch. We fit in and supplemented their roster quite well.

We ended up in the bottom end of the draw as expected, but topped the bottom 6 draw quite easily.

Bathurst is a great place for a tournament, but probably not for a National Championships. The interest from interstate teams was quite low, as it's a bit of a hike to get to. The placings table was heavily biased in NSW favour. The final was also a little boring, being between two teams created just for the season, which nobody cared about.

110. Harry Potter Hat

The Harry Potter theme had a strong influence on the rules. There were five "spells" that could be cast during the game, with wonderful results such as an instant turn from the opposition, or sending one of their players off the field. Having a bunch of people leaving their games to try to catch the snitch (someone dressed in a gold leotard or something) was also a bit of a novelty.

Apart from that, a reasonably fun tournament with a reasonably fun party, but nothing particularly memorable. The first day was on grass and the second on the beach.

111. Melbourne Hat

We had what looked to be a pretty reasonable team, scoring a draw in our second game, but we didn't win a game until the end. We missed out on the spoon, but to be at the bottom end of the ladder was a surprising result.

My ankle was pretty bad throughout the tournament. I tried to rest it for a lot of the points, and I took a game or two off.

112. The Longest Day

This was a team that started with Joel, Molnar and I, and grew to take in anyone who we thought would be fun. Heather, Joel and myself got wasted in Narrabeen the night before, then were pretty much drunk before the games started in the morning. It was a disaster. Troy got too wasted to be of any use, and we played (and I guess acted) like drunken idiots. Way too much rum throughout the day.

We came ahead of about five teams, but it was probably due to the draw more than our play. Fun day I guess, but I probably wouldn't do something like that again in a hurry. I'd rather play good ultimate.

113. Australia Day Beach Ultimate Championships

This was a fantastic weekend. The beach is only 10 minutes taxi from the airport, we found a nice room near the beach for about $50, it was a great party, and we won the tournament. I had a good game, with only one throw away (and a couple of dodgy throws that were dropped) and one drop (ground strip in the endzone).

The day after the tournament was the tryouts for the Australian teams for beach worlds. I did OK, and at least gave myself a chance of selection.

114. Share the Love 2011

115. Eastern Regionals

116. Terrigal Towel

117. New Zealand Nationals

Definitely the best on-field performance for Umlaut, and some of the most fun competitive games I've ever played. Of our six games three were very tight. Coming back from 10-14 down to win 16-15, coming back from 1-9 down to 14 all then to lose it 16-14 in a 135 minute game, and another win by one point. We won half of our games, so the final result doesn't reflect how good we felt our performance was.

In terms of attending New Zealand Nats vs attending Aussie Nats, I'm glad we ended missing out on Aus Nats. We had a great time and the competition was different and more around our level than Australian Nats. It wasn't all that inconvenient either, being a little cheaper overall than Australia and the same amount of leave.

118. Sydney Uni IV

A nice fun day at Moore Park with a bunch of reasonable players. We probably won more than we lost and generally did OK. The most entertaining game was a close one against UTS that Aaron insisted we won and Ash insisted they did. I love a tournament where nobody properly keeps score.

119. Mid-Winter Solstice

The first tournament outing for Team DUFF. A promising start, but the team didn't do anything more this year.

120. World Championships of Beach Ultimate

It was a fantastic tournament off-field, but not so much on-field. It was ridiculously hot - up to 36 C. The sand was too hot to touch without sand cleats between about 11:00 and 16:00. There was no breeze and no clouds, and it was tough during the middle of the day.

We were completely outclassed by the top 12 teams, and we were well ahead of the teams below us. We were pretty much on par with France and Currier Islands, but picked those games to not play our best. I would have been happy with 12th, but 14th felt a bit sucky. Basically our throws were just not up to the standard of the other teams. We could match or better most teams for speed and fitness. For myself the six months of prep felt worthwhile. I was fit enough that fitness was never an issue (except for once when the heat got to me). Every night was a nice night out, but the last two nights were solid parties. Ninja on the beach at sunrise was great.

The tournament was quite well organised. Certainly better than Prague. The food was exactly what was needed, and the fields were next to the accommodation. The official parties were not always great, but that did no stop awesome parties from happening. The main complaint was that it was very hot at night and there was no air conditioning or even fans. Quite a lot of people were sleeping on their balconies.

121. Sydney Indoor Tri-Series 2

122. Gnarly 9s

We had a pretty good day of play. We only lost two games out of five, and they were against the finalists, and some strong wins. Our low rank in the placings was due to the draw being completely mathematically challenged. Apart from that it was a great fun day. The 9s concept is a good one and led to more teams turning up, and some fun, tough games.

123. 23rd Melbourne Hat

There were no dingoes and few of the usual old guys this time round, so the level of play was a bit weaker at the top, but there seemed to be more depth than usual. Our team had a bunch of athletic and reasonable guys who were all willing to run hard on defence, and we were a solid team from the beginning. We were weakened by our loss of Calan towards the end of the first day, but had enough depth to continue to win games. The party was nothing special, but the pre-party back at Anson/Glenn/Joel/Neil's place was fun. A bit of goon and Glenn and Joel getting done by the cops for drinking on the street as we left the apartments. Good times.

124. Longest Day 2011

Richard's thrown together DUFF team had a lot of fun people. We were drinking beers and still winning games, so it was fun all round. For the first time ever I didn't have to drive, as Jeff drove us. Good day.

125. Sydney Indoor Tri Series III

This was billed as a kind of finals for the indoor series, so had some roster eligibility rules. We weren't eligible because we had too many pickups, so we were allowed to play but not count towards results. We were the lowest ranked team but won at least one game, so a good result.

126. Sydney Melbourne Open

We had one close game, losing in universe point against Bench. A reasonably fun tournament, and my first outing with DUFF men. I had a very pleasing layout D against Bench, which is pretty much all I can recall from the tournament.

127. Terrigal Towel XVII

There was a smaller turnout to Terrigal this year, which may have been the reason it was one of the most fun towels I've been to. My team was not crash hot, but we enjoyed ourselves. We parked the van outside the house near the beach where a whole bunch of people stay every year and joined them for drinks and shenanigans. The party was alive, and the tournament generally had a great vibe. Good times.

128. Eastern Regionals

I've never attended to a tournament where my team has been so severely slaughtered as this. Our highest score was 4 (against I-Beam and against Magnum). Our lowest score of 1 was against who we thought might be our closest opponents, Bench. On the plus side, we avoided getting pantsed. Only narrowly against the Wombats (Australian Masters team), where we were 12-0 down in a game to 13, and finished it 13-2.

Even with such thrashings though, I somehow managed to enjoy it. I guess that says something about the positive outlook of the people on the team. We knew this wasn't our field and we'd have better games in the future.

The highlight of the tournament was watching the game to go between Bench and Magnum. Bench took a big lead but Magnum had a strong comeback before going down. There were some long points towards the end. Magnum ended up making it to Nats anyway because a Southern team pulled out, giving East another spot.

As with all major Sydney tournaments, there was no party. However a bunch of our team met up at the Local Taphouse for American beer night. Some delicious beverages were had.

129. Wallflowers

I'm sure it could be argued that three teams does not a tournament make, however Bozza did a great job of making this feel like a great, if tiny, tournament. The draw was a double round robin. For the first time of the season we were against comparable opposition, and we beat both teams convincingly.

The party was definitely a highlight, ending up at Phoenix Bar which has a somewhat bohemian feel to it, and is a great place to spend a few hours.

130. Division II Australian Ultimate Championships

The first night I arrived before most of the others, but got home at about 3am after watching the Bathurst boys losing at the Casino (and drinking my own winnings). I was in OK form for the first day though, considering I had expected my calf injury to prevent me from playing much at all. The draw started with two pools of five. We lost our first game against Hot Chilly in universe point after getting the disc in the last point. Maybe things would have been different if we had had a warmup, and half of our team hadn't turned up a few points in. We lost the rest of our pool games, which didn't bother us too much since we were obviously in a much stronger pool. Of the final top 6, only one team came from the other pool.

The Saturday party was a great night out in St Kilda, even if we didn't have much female company. We got in very late after much silliness. I did seem to lose my forehand overnight though, and couldn't find it all the next day.

We beat the other two Eastern region teams comfortably to earn our place in the 5/6 playoff. The field was very even. The southern teams were generally a bit stronger, partly due to home ground advantage (more strong players turning up) but probably more because they had trained more than us. I was most impressed the Tassie team, who were expected to be close to last, but came runners up. They didn't have any guns, but they were all athletic, and they played the most structured offence of any team there.

This was the first Division II National Championships - something a few of us had been encouraging for about 3 years. Previously there hadn't quite been enough depth to Southern and Eastern Regionals that enough teams would miss out to field a second tournament. That it happened this time was a sign that competitive ultimate has grown, but I hope it will also kickstart further growth in intermediate Australian club teams.

131. Australian Ultimate Championships

132. Sydney Indoor Hat

This was the second three team tournament of the year that I won. I've found these tiny tournaments to be very enjoyable.

133. Sydney Uni IV

This was something of a pickup team that Em put together. They were a good bunch and we were reasonably strong, although I can't remember our final result.

A defender from ANU took out my ankle about half way through the tournament, but it was only a minor sprain which took a few days to recover.

Millerine, Richard and I pub crawled our way to the party afterwards. Fun times.

134. Australian Beach National Championships

It was great to get this crowd together. We weren't sure how strong we'd be, but it was evident after the first few games that we were one of the stronger teams and were a chance to win it. We made the semi, but missed out on the final. There were some great games throughout, and our semi loss was a one pointer.

As usual with Gold Coast beach tournaments, they put on an excellent show. We flew in Saturday morning, then stayed in our normal place near the beach - Bombora Resort. Dusty's team rented out rooms in a hotel on the beach, including the penthouse suite with sauna and spa. They hosted an after party, and we relaxed there after play on Sunday with beers. There's pretty much nothing better.

135. Sydney Mini Mini Ultimate Tournament

This was the first tournament I ever ran. The idea was to run a full mini ultimate tournament over two hours, and be finished in time for lunch at the pub. I ran the draw as a form of Swiss draw. I don't know of anything like this ever being done before, so it was a bit of an experiment. We modified the format a bit as we progressed and could see what was and wasn't working.

Although it was a struggle to keep up with events with the format I'd selected, especially as I was playing as well, there was some very positive feedback.

After the tournament we went for lunch at the pub, then went back to Joel and Jenny's place to watch the Barramundi's WUGC final on NGN. A good day.

136. Mid Winter Solstice

Just another tournament. We did OK and drank a lot of apple pie shots.

137. Manila Spirits

Comments: This was an amazing tournament, with two days of hard played ultimate, and three nights of great parties. The format is Open/Women's on the Friday, then mixed on the weekend. We only played the mixed but a lot of our team members played the Friday as well. Cabs are Here had won Australian Mixed Nats, but not all of the team could make it so they filled it out with pickups from the rest of Australia and overseas. Kristjan was living in Singapore and Lelde in Bangkok, and they both played with us, which was awesome.

We flew in from KL on Friday evening and went straight to the party. They had free cocktails and the bar staff knew their stuff. The flaming shot they called Armageddon was a great warm up for the tournament.

Manila is a crazy place for traffic but has reasonably cheap taxis, so we could catch a taxi to the fields for around $10 even though it took about an hour. The time it took to get places is pretty much the only problem with the tournament. The fields were in a gated community with security, and were excellent quality fields.

I can't recall the games on the first day, but we did reasonably well (possibly winning all our pool games) and earned ourselves what should have been an easy crossover to make the quarters. Boracay Dragons had had a surprise loss to Junk though, and we ran into them instead. They crushed us, but we won the rest of our games to end up as "Division Two Champions". Hooray! The level of competition was quite high, and even though we had a bunch of excellent players we had a few very tough games.

The Saturday night party was a big one, with free beer and rum and a whole lot of very sociable people. The Asian scene seems to be very easy to get into and meet new people. We had one major party injury, with Stef breaking his foot on the dance floor. The Sunday night party was at the fields after the final. A sort of acrobatic dance troupe put on a superb show which involved throwing a girl quite a way into the air. There was also more free beer, although it was limited. Things had escalated for our team by the time the sun went down, and a few people had to be helped home.

On Monday we flew to Boracay with Kristjan. There were heaps of other ultimate players on the island, and local players put on parties at bars they owned on the Monday and Tuesday. More free drinks and big nights, but relaxing on the beach instead of playing ultimate.

Overall it was a superb experience, and if I get the opportunity to go again I certainly will.

138. Melbourne Hat XXIV - Time Warp

It's sometimes hard to explain what makes a great tournament. This Melbourne Hat didn't seem to have anything different from the last few years, but there was a great vibe and everyone I spoke to thought it was the best hat in a long while. For me, our team was fantastic. We had no worlds players, but with few weak points and a good base of strong youngsters we topped our pool. They also knew how to enjoy themselves, which is the most important thing. The party was a silent disco, which was a real hit. Perhaps because it was hard to converse with headphones on so everyone just got drunk.

139. The Longest Day

Joel started us off with cider during the morning games and through lunch, then Richard brought a carton of beer to the party. We didn't get ridiculously drunk, but we still performed very well considering we'd been drinking a bit. Richard and Sarah also brought us some socks from K-Mart, as the sand was too hot and we ended up with burnt feet after the morning games.

We were playing well and came second in our pool by beating Wollongong, which put us in the quarters. The crunch was then beating the team of Germans (and Bavarians and others) led by Jens and Ru. We started down about 0-4 and then came back to win 5-4. I felt a bit sorry for them because the first point we won was when they put on someone's young son (I think Stefan and Ingrid's) because he'd been pestering them to play. It was his first ever point and their zone was left with a lot of holes, so we scored easily. That started us on our winning roll. Even so, we performed reasonably well. We lost our semi, but everyone on the team was very happy with the result, and the day in general.

140. DUFF Cup

A tournament originally meant to have DUFF teams competing, but only a few DUFF based teams turned up. I was with put with a fairly random bunch of other individual players. We had Ed and Libby from Run Hard, but the rest were a motley crew. A Canadian who hadn't played since "before they invented zone", a guy playing his second game, a couple of reasonably good American girls, and some other inexperienced guys who I'd never met. It was a good fun bunch though, and I enjoyed the day.

141. Share The Love 2013

The first time I played with Magnum. The draw was a full round robin. We pretty much destroyed our opposition for most games, although one of the DUFF teams were close. Our only real competition was I-Beam, who we beat by a few points in the round, but who beat us in universe in the final.

142. Eastern Regionals

To qualify for Nationals we only needed to beat two teams, and this was always going to happen. It was more about getting a good seeding and seeing how the team was shaping up for Nationals.

This time I-Beam were way too strong for us and we lost to Dench as well, to take the last spot for Nationals. There was a general feeling that we had underperformed and had a lot to work on for Nats.

143. BCI

BCI is, apart from Nats, the premier open/women's tournament of the year, and this was the first time I'd had the opportunity to play. Sublime were in need of pickups and I was happy to oblige. We had I think 11 players including pickups.

The level of play was very high, and it was fun to play at that level, although I didn't see all that much disc. The teams we beat were I-Beam and Colony Plunder, which was easily the highlight.

I was staying at Lisa Walker's place, so instead of going to the party I went with her to a bachata and zouk dance party. It was fun. We had beginners lessons first, then I had a few dances and drank a whole heap of coronas.

I travelled to Canberra with Jimmy and back with Emer.

144. Australian Ultimate Championships 2013

I felt that Magnum's preparation might not have been up to the standards required to come 11th at Nats. The first day was a little disappointing, but we really came together on the second day after some changes to how our O line was called.

The highlight was probably beating Slamtown in universe point in the 9-12 semis, after they had beaten us 16-6 on the first day. The win before that against Karma was a good one and gave us confidence we could come back against Slamtown. It was a very strong wind end zone to end zone. We started scoring the point with the wind and had an upwind break early. It was point for point until they got an upwind break towards the end of the game, but we held out (just) to win it. They had some great upwind bucks and were very close to the upwind end zone a couple of times during the game, but we also had missed chances, including an excellent Alex Shepherd layout which all spectators with best perspective called in but Dan Rule sent back.

We implemented a punishment system for mistakes. $2 per throw away or drop to go to the beer kitty. That combined with $10 for every hacky sack landing in the disc meant we had enough for beers at the fields at the end of each day. It was a good idea. We had fun each night, but usually starting early and not ending too late. Even at the party a lot of people got pretty slaughtered but were home in bed before 2.

Did a road trip to Bendigo and back with Ian, Gaby and Alex Shepherd. It was a long drive but a nice trip. I'm a big fan of road trips so it was great to be on a proper frisbee road trip again.

145. Indoor Crocs Fundraising Tournament

146. Dodos Dos Dias II

An awesome tournament for a bunch of people from DUFF and Wollongong. We won all our games on the first day, then played a quality game of stubbie guts, then got incredibly drunk at the party. Then we won the rest of our games and went home.

We had a weak team relative to tournaments in Sydney, but in this field we were very strong. Our only close games were against Bozza and Tom Walcott's team. Both times we played them were very close games, but otherwise we won our games easily. One team was a bunch of locals who had only ever played pickup in the park in Wagga Wagga. I picked up with them against Head Spikes, which was a solid heckle fest.

An excellent road trip type tournament.

147. Midwinter Solstice

A pretty lazy day of ultimate, helping a few of the DUFF newbs.

148. New Zealand Mixed Ultimate Championships

We found $200 return tickets to Auckland so couldn't pass up going to NZ Mixed Nats. Glenn, Millerine, Megs and I picked up with the Ballarat guys after Amy Thornton suggested it. We were basically a pickup team with five from Ballarat, a few from Melbourne, a few from New Zealand, and us. We found out early on the first day that we were pretty rubbish, with mostly either inexperienced or very unfit players, but we were good enough to be competitive against the lower level teams. We also drank a lot and got on very well as a group.

We introduced Estonian Zone (FSU) fairly early on and it was effective against most teams. A few of our losses were very close, but it was only our last game that we won.

The main party was pretty rubbish but we managed to make a good party ourselves. Many vodka apple bombers were consumed, and we had social events back at the hotel and at the house of one of our local team members. We went out for karaoke after the tournament before our early flight home, which made working the next day very difficult.

149. Gnarly 9s

I wasn't originally planning on playing this, but I rocked up to the tournament after a 10km race and wife carrying event in the morning, and managed to find a team to pick up with.

We did quite well, and came in around 4th somewhere.

150. Melbourne Hat XXV

Finally I won a Melbourne Hat. It was still a fun team, as well. Awesome!

151. The Longest Day

Another enjoyable day of drinking at North Narrabeen Beach.

152. Share the Love

153. Sydney-Melbourne Open

We played the Saturday with only 10 players and it was exhausting. We performed very well against Colony, going down 13-9, and then not so well against Phat Chilly. Our last game was against team we were pretty evenly matched against (Outbreak, from Adelaide), but after a few points I was confident of a win. We flagged with our small team though, with a few of us unable to take subs at all in the second half. We were still running strongly on defence at the end, but our decisions on offence were affected by our tiredness and we lost in universe after starting on O. Sunday we had more subs and won all our games, against the two Bench teams and against DUFF.

We didn't party with the other teams on Saturday night, but we did get solidly drunk at a local Japanese restaurant and at Mark's place.

This was a fun weekend, both for the way Magnum were playing, and for having a few drinks on Saturday night. It felt more like a proper tournament than any in Sydney for many years.

154. Eastern Regional Championships

155. Australian Ultimate Championships

Millerine and I stayed out at Emu Plains with a few others (Ian, Gabi, Neil, Nat, and Yann). It was nice, but not like having the full team around you.

This was a tough Nats for us. We were slightly weakened, but the level of opposition was genuinely much tougher than any previous years. We ended up playing Newcastle for 13th, who we had played for 9th last year. We had our moments, but we didn't really get our break until the game against HOS White in the 13 to 16 semi, which we won on universe. It was a big relief.

156. Sydney Winter Series (June 2014)

It was a small tournament, but Sydney Uni was pretty strong opposition and we did well to beat them. The other teams didn't put up a fight. Inner West was looking reasonably solid. A nice relaxed day.

157. Dodos Dos Dias - Trias

This was a completely different team to the one that went last year, with me being the only returnee. Brendan mobilised Inner West a couple of weeks before the tournament and managed to get a great group of mostly less experienced, but athletic, players.

Even though we were a weaker team than last year, the tournament went pretty much the same, with us dominating every team except for Bozza's Canberra team.

158. Halibut XVIII

159. NSW Mixed Championships

160. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships 2014

A great tournament for the culmination of the season with Danger Zone. We had quite a few Nats first timers, and everyone was there to enjoy themselves.

We lost the ninth place playoff to Black Sheep from NZ on universe point.

161. New Zealand Mixed Ultimate Championships

Another really good tournament with Ballarat. This time we were a stronger team with some more solid pickups.

We won the ninth place playoff on universe; my third universe point ninals of the year, and it felt good to win it.

Wellington is a great city to be in. After the tournament Millerine and I got married then went hiking along the Queen Charlotte Track.

162. Melbourne Hat 26 - The Alphabet Hat

A strong team with a bunch of Canadians, hence the name. We were outclassed in the final, but it was good fun to be there.

163. The Longest Day

164. Share the Love

165. Eastern Regionals 2015

166. Bare Bones

This was a one day tournament on the Sunday, and I did a bike pub crawl the day before with Glenn, Ian, and a bunch of others who weren’t playing. We rode about 50km from Waterfall to Wollongong, taking our time and stopping at all the pubs along the way. It was a good day, ending with a late night out with Alex Pentony Vran who’s place we crashed at.

We also met Rosie Dawson at the pub who we asked to play with us, knowing we’d be low on numbers. She was a good fit for the team and was able to match it against the men, so that was awesome.

167. Division 2 Australian Ultimate Championships

Having committed to Div 2 instead of Div 1, Magnum hadn’t prepared as well as we normally would, with both team training and with individual fitness. We were really there for a bit of fun, and it showed both in our on field performance, which was under par. It was fun though.

We all stayed in a dodgy hotel in Newtown. Even though it wasn’t far from home, it really made it to be all staying together anyway.

We lost to DUFF in a super windy semi final that went to serve, with two upwinders in the game. We tried to forfeit the third place playoff, but WAnchors weren’t having any of it, so we played a half hour game and didn’t take it very seriously.

I was TD for this tournament, along with Richard. I did a lot of work in the lead up, but was playing so he did all the work on the ground during the tournament. It was raining heavily in the week leading up to the tournament, and we didn’t know the fields would be open until about 2pm on the Friday. That was stressful. In the end I was proud of the tournament - the fields were a bit dodgy, but the tournament went without any major hitches and the party was the only ever worthwhile Div II party.

168. Sydney Winter Series 1

169. Australian Beach Ultimate Championships

We beat a team of players going to WCBU in the third place playoff. That felt good. I really enjoyed playing some good beach ultimate, and everyone (the whole tournament, not just my team) still getting pretty loose. As always, it was a great tournament at Coolangatta.

170. DUFF Winter Series 2

We lost all games apart from against another Inner West team.

171. XEUCR-N

My achilles was in a bad way and running was a struggle. That only really disappointed me because I felt I could have contributed to the team quite well if I had been fit. The team had good athletes but was a bit disorganised. They had not been doing any outdoors training yet.

We came second last, but we didn\'t even play the last place playoff because the opposition forfeited.

172. Melbourne Hat

Tequila shots in mugs with avocado and chilli instead of lemon. Good times.

173. The Longest Day

174. Newcastle Gold Cup

A really well organised tournament, for the most part, with a solid party at Jim Garvey’s brew pub.

DUFF’s first tournament for the season was a success. We beat Clench Fist in a great two point game, and an understaffed Ironbark a bit easier.

175. Sydney/Melbourne Open

176. Eastern Regionals

Likely the most enjoyable and entertaining kangaroo court session with DUFF Men.

177. Bare Bones II

Pottsy and I did the Waterfall to Wollongong pub ride on Saturday, with Sara Cargill. We ended up drinking with the Barramundis who had their training camp that weekend. It was good to see the team bonding well and having fun. We stayed at Shayna’s parents place, although I never actually got to meet them because we got home late and I left early.

The tournament itself was OK, but the high winds were an equaliser in the games. No spirit scores were handed in, but DUFF were the only non Wollongong team who hung around for the awards ceremony, so the bottle of bourbon or something spirit prize was awarded to us. It gave us something to drink on the train ride home. It’s actually a pretty well organised one day tournament, with lined fields and beers at the end. Hopefully it grows over time.

178. Division 2 Australian Ultimate Championships

DUFF played very well. Our quarter was against Slamtown who played solid offence, and it took us a long time to get a turn off them. I don’t think we got any breaks. We still only lost by a few.

We beat Mammoth earlier in the tournament, then lost to them in universe in the 5/6 playoff. We started off 4 down then came back strong. It was an amazing game, and even though we lost we did ourselves proud.

The team had a good time on Saturday, but everyone went home after kangaroo court, and the party was pretty dull.

179. Sydney Golden Sands

This was BUFF’s only hit out before Beach Nationals the weekend after. Mostly it was about meeting the other players and getting some playing time in together. It was a lazy tournament that started at midday, which left time for a nice cafe breakfast beforehand.

BUFF won all their pool games, but a couple were closer than they should have been. Lazy mistakes and brainfarts were pretty common. Inner West had three teams at the tournament, and they combined into an all stars team for the final. They came out hard and were on top 4 - 2 before we started playing seriously. Some solid defence got us back to 7 - 4, which was about the final score. The day showed we could play well, but only if we concentrated on it.

We finished with a barbecue and a few beers, which was a great way to finish the day. It was a fun tournament that I hope would get more interest if it weren’t on the same weekend as Bathurst Stampede.

180. Australian Beach Ultimate Championships

The highlights:

- The team hitting the high note of Take On Me at the café at lunchtime on Sunday. Nailed it.

- Attempted layout D. I missed it, but it was an early read of the play and a good bid.

- Layout grab on a huck. It just felt good.

We started out terribly and came last in our pool of three, after being seeded top. We were playing pretty abysmally. One of those losses was in universe point, with a drop in the end zone (not by me). Having an easy third game of the day was good for our spirits.

The second day we did much better, and destroyed Dusty’s team in our pre quarter, then beat Glenn and Neil’s team by a few after losing to one of the strong Sydney teams. Our final game was against one of the Adelaide teams, and they really had us for speed all day.

I had a coffee on Saturday and the party got a bit too epic. There was a lot of time spent drinking in the spa. I ended up losing my phone in Tweed Heads, and used Richard’s phone and Find My Phone to find it in the morning. I’d left it on a bench somewhere, and it was still there. Good times.

Sunday night was quite relaxing as well. I crashed at the penthouse. Such a good tournament.

181. The Gong Classic

I rode my bike down after work on Friday, which was actually pretty pleasant. I slept in a random hidden patch of grass somewhere. It got a bit cold, but was totally fine.

There were two full Tarmac teams there. My team, based on the defensive squad, performed quite well. We lost our first game to Hills very closely, then had a few wins, including a close win over DUFF and a convincing win over the other Tarmac team. The win over DUFF was the highlight as we went 5-0 down, then scored the next 5 and went on to win 9-8. Otherwise, there was only one game where the result was genuinely disappointing for us, and that was against Krank where they destroyed us

The tournament was relatively uneventful, but great fun. We stayed at Shayna’s parents’ place on Saturday night, and the party was a good night. It was Tarmac’s first tournament, and it proved we had a great group of people and high potential for the season.

182. Halibut

I was playing a role of main handler and had way too many huck turnovers, and was a bit slow and unfit. It was still a lot of fun though.

We had a few injuries (Sep, Daryl, and Richard), so the guys were exhausted by the last game against DUFF, and we didn\'t seem to have the heart to put in effort. We lost by a solid margin. That was about the only disappointment.

The party was great. Lots of silly games to play. We brought pantyhose bowling which went down well. Lots of people ended up very drunk, which was great. The highlight was a guy almost making it to the exit with a girl before she was saved from a bad mistake by a friend. The intercept was amazingly well executed. He stood there looking lost and confused for about ten minutes.

183. DUFF Winter Series 4

184. NSW Mixed Ultimate Championships

An awesome tournament for Tarmac. We only had five games all weekend, but the interesting draw meant they were generally close fought apart from the first game against Friskee. We went in seeded about 9th, but knowing were an outside chance at getting 7th, which would qualify for Nats.

When we beat DUFF comfortably in our second pool game everyone felt pretty good, but the next win against Kaf was the surprise that had everyone smiling that night. A universe point win against Hills on Sunday morning put us in the 5/6 playoff against Krank, and earned us a place at Nationals. Krank beat us handily, but we felt super stoked to have exceeded expectations.

It wasn\'t just the result that made us all happy, but the knowledge we had played some good ultimate. Our pommy defence was particularly effective, as well as our deep game.

Dubbo was a long drive away, but an enjoyable road trip was had both ways in Steve\'s car with Hoff and Jorge. The party was mostly taken up by the UFNSW AGM which we were forced to go to, and was quite boring and long. Most of the team had gone by then or not long after, and I followed suit. Everyone was kind of super happy and excited about playing the next day, so it didn\'t really matter.

185. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships

It rained heavily on Friday night, closing some of the fields on Saturday. We came fifth in our pool of sixth, then had a prequarter against VLS who had come fourth. They cancelled prequarters because of the rained out fields, so we automatically registered a loss and went down to play a crossover against Hills. They beat us pretty soundly, leaving us in semis and final of the bottom four (which included a bye). We won those games very easily to come 21st. The way the bye fell in the draw meant we never go to play Lounge Lizards and Kaf who were probably our closest competition, given that the team we beat closely in the pools ended amongst them.

I was the only person keen to stay out at St Mary’s and not commute every day. I stayed at Richard Maligalig’s parents place nearby on Friday night, but got a lift back home from the part on Saturday, so took the offer up. Tournaments are never as good when you’re not staying together as a team. That and nobody from my team attending the party are probably my only complaints about the tournament.

186. NZ Mixed Ultimate Championships

This time none of my friends played for Ballarat in NZ, and I was the only person from Sydney. It was the first time it had felt like a Ballarat team and not a pickup team. It was mostly youngsters, with the average age being 21 (including me and Aaron) and people mostly ranging from the ages of 16 to 24.

I flew in Thursday afternoon and hired a car with Sean, Damon, and Gabby. I was the only driver, which is a rarity for me.

Hamilton is a pretty quiet city, but we were staying about 10km out of town anyway in some camp. We had the whole place to ourselves the first night, which was cool.

There were nine games in total, three each day. We played hard, but just weren’t at the level of the teams in all our early games. We lost all five of our pool games, but then won the next three reasonably strongly to make it to the 19th playoff. We put up a fight in all of our games though, getting breaks in every game. We also had to play hard to win when we did. There was a very strong side wind by the last game, and the opposition just did a bit better with their long throws. We went down 8 - 6 after some very long points.

The highlight, apart from the party, was probably a point that went on for about 20 minutes in a game we lost in a close one on the second day. Our offence wasn’t great and we kept giving up the disc, but our straight up defence was too much for the opposition to handle. We scored that point, and it felt great.

This was the first time a party at an NZ nats has been a really good time. The live band, cheap drinks, and more Australians than usual to hit up the dance floor, made it all worthwhile.

187. Melbourne Hat 28

Stayed with Ian, Richard, Neil, Amy Barnes, Millerine, Gabi, Thang, Leungie, Mrinal, Glenn and Scotty in some apartments. The golf was fun, and the party was great even though there weren\'t as many people as usual (or maybe was better because of that).

Two Ducks was a solid team just because everyone could play. There were no annoying players who held the disc too long or anything like that, and we shredded zone with fast movement. A really good bunch of people, too.

We drew our first game with Millerine, Andy Plummer, and Wazza\'s team, then won all the other games in our pool. They did the same with the same for and against to tie to top the pool. The play off was a throw off for closest to the opposite brick. Our rep, Shaun, beat Wazza with a hammer and a very happy crowd of fans.

The quarter was our only loss for the tournament.

Millerine and I stayed Sunday night and flew to Helsinki on the Monday.

188. Newcastle Gold Cup

189. Eastern Ultimate Championships 2017

We had two Combine teams for Regionals, split A/B. I was playing with the first team.

We stayed in the usual caravan park, and with about 30 people made a pretty good time of it. On Saturday after kangaroo court I went to a few bars with some of the boys, resulting in good times.

We had a lot of tough games. It took a long time to get a break against Fyshwick Unit, and we ended up winning by a few points. Fyshwick United and I-Beam both beat us comfortably, but the highlight of the early games was against Colony Plunder, who we took half against, I think 9-7. They ended up beating us by a couple in the end, but it was a fantastic battle and a really great performance from Combine.

The other tough game was our final matchup against The Rum Corp - Colony’s B team. We won in universe, but it was a very tough game.

190. Australian Ultimate Championships Division II 2017

Our result at Regionals gave us the first seed for Div II from the East, and the first seed for the tournament. We had a pretty easy pool on paper, but Ballarat gave us a real competition. We won 14-11 after being down two breaks early in the game. The youngsters I was used to playing with in NZ played great, and everyone else on their team was fairly solid. Other than that we won all of our pool games easily, including against Bench.

We skipped our prequarter and went straight to a quarter, which was again OK on paper as it was against 2nd or 3rd from another pool, but the defending champions Fyshwick Unit played smarter in the strong winds and beat us soundly. We had the first break, but they went on a run of five or six to get an unassailable lead. We lost 11-5, leaving us in the 5-8 bracket. Fyshwick won the tournament, which was a small consolation.

We won our semi easily, but the final, for 5th place, was against Townsville. We had a comfortable lead at half, but let them get three in a row to tie it up at the end. A universe point win left me with a feeling of relief rather than ecstatic for it.

I came into the tournament with all sorts of injuries. For the most part I was either able to find a suitable matchup, or we played zone, and was able to force a bunch of turns, including a layout D. Whenever we were playing man D against a quality O line I was in trouble though, so although I was happy with how I played, I wasn’t really up for playing high level games.

The party was good fun (apart from injuries causing me troubles on the dance floor), and the team did a good job of staying up and enjoying themselves. Tempest also had a good time, and backed up by taking silver in the women’s competition.

191. Terrigal Towel

We stayed in a super cheap old haunted house, with a fireplace. It was scary and awesome. I was too injured to play, but the party was good, and I helped out a little bit on the Saturday. Going and not playing wasn't all that bad.

Richard bought the team shirts through J-Mo, and they weren't delivered in time. Hilarious.

192. Golden Sands

We started off very rusty, against not very good opposition, but found ourselves as the day went on and the opposition improved. We didn’t expect to make the final, but we found it easy going until the semi against The Incredible Hucks. They had very high quality guys (Ben Sutas, Italy, James Lam, Lucas, Thang - a solid lineup). We used our women to poach the understanding on particular players, and also played three women as often as possible, and that was effective in shutting down their big plays.

The final was fairly one sided, with BUFF pulling away about half way through the game. We played quite well, but they were a very strong team.

There was a lot of rain in the middle and that was very shit, but it cleared and quickly became a distant memory. With pan galactic gargle blasters on the sideline throughout the day, and a barbecue and beers at the end, it was a pretty good day.

193. Australian Beach Ultimate Championships

I put this team together to be an experienced team where everyone could play reasonably good ultimate, as well as be great fun off the field. It succeeded on the off field fun for sure, with a solid bit of partying and banter. On field we had heaps of cold drops, but also had some great plays and a pretty good structure. Silent George was unknown to most of the players on the team, but he earned respect early with an awesome high grab. Our first game was a win and captured on video, which was nice.

I was only really disappointed with our play in the last game against Paradigm. It looked as though tiredness from the party had really set in by then, and I (and others) made more silly mistakes.

Shayna won tournament MVP, which was exciting.

Yet again, Beach Nats was a strong candidate for tournament of the year.

194. The Gong Classic

Staying at Shayna's parents place was again a highlight. It was cold, but they lit a fire in the backyard, and it was a great pre party. Mat was injured and took stats for all the games, which was awesome.

195. Sydney Winter Series 3

This was a weaker Tarmac team amongst a pretty strong field for a winter series. We only beat the DUFF B team, but had mostly close games. The standout was playing well above expectations to lose in universe to a very strong DUFF A. I caught a fouled huck from Hoff over Chirlin (it was awesome) and we subsequently scored a goal, but it was called back to me due to a misunderstanding of the play on rule and miscommunication from DUFF. I argued it a bit but it wasn't worth it in a small tournament, and I also expected us to score the point anyway. But it wasn't to be and they ended up with that goal. It wasn't the last point, but it was key. A win over DUFF A would have been amazing for the inexperienced players on the team, but it was still a good day and a good performance from an inexperienced team.

196. NSW Mixed Ultimate Championships

Goulburn was supposed to be ridiculously cold that weekend, but we had a late start on Saturday and missed the worst of it. I played with some Bunnings gardening gloves in the first game and liked them, so kept them for the rest of the tournament.

We were seeded 11th, but I think we did well to come 12th, and at times played well above expectations. With our four wins and four losses, two wins and one loss were in universe, and against Manly we lost by one point at hard cap, having scored the last few points. That was disappointing, but the win against Hills Youth (who are going to Div 1) was great. Our 11th place playoff was against Incredible Hucks. They got a lead early, but we learned how to defend against them and eventually lost in universe.

I had a couple of grabs over people, which is unusual for me. One was over Alex Shepherd which was celebration worthy, and one was over a pack including a tall dude, I think against Hills Youth.

The party was completely dead so we went home to drink. We had a good team for it, so it was a fun night.

197. Hong Kong Pan Asia Tournament

Will MK and his friend Aaron were going to be in Hong Kong for a wedding, so put together this pickup team. It was full of strong players who were there to have fun, so it was bound to be a good time. I arrived on Thursday and meet up with a couple of the players for drinks, then on Friday met more for a bushwalk along Dragon's Back. I did another bushwalk after the tournament - the tracks in Hong Kong are great. By dinner Friday night I had met most of the team, who seemed about half from the US or Canada, and half from Asia, but a lot of whom had played together at some stage.

The Saturday games were a long slog between 8am and 6pm, with 5 full length games. We played the top seed first up, and went down a couple of breaks early, but after learning to play together and calling a few lines, managed to win by 3. It wasn't easy, but our team was strong and playing well. The rest of the games were not too hard (including a 13-0 whitewash) until we played Junk. They went up two breaks immediately, and it was a real battle to bring it back, but again we won by 3. That was the hardest game of the day, as their defence put on a lot of pressure. This put us as top seed going into the quarters.

I was happy with how I played. I handled all day and didn't make many mistakes, and threw a bunch of assists. It was fun playing with such a strong team.

Lunch and dinner was delicious dim sum, and then a bunch of us had a foot and shoulder massage before the party. It was so amazing we had another one the next day. The party was epic, and great fun - Beer Kitty owned it.

The Sunday games were called off because of a typhoon. It was incredibly disappointing as we'd traveled so far and were doing so well. It feels like unfinished business, and I loved the team, so I hope we get the opportunity to have another crack at the title.

198. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships Division 2

Tarmac was weaker than at Regionals, having lost key handlers (Will and Jorge). We were comfortably in the bottom 8, and then won our last two games in universe to come 17th. That was fun and very rewarding, particularly as some of us played a lot of points, and were exhausted by the end. It took me days to recover.

The team was a lot of fun. We had ample good times back at the motel, and rocked the party along with Manly. The highlight was probably Nat Mormer getting a nose bleed from trying to flip a couch on the street, and smacking herself in the face.

199. Melbourne Hat 29 - The Fez Hat

Stayed with Millerine, Ian, Gabi, Glenn, Neil, Amy, Laura and Sam House, and Taryn in some Mantra apartments. This was the smallest Melbourne Hat I'd played, with only 16 teams, but it was still great fun.

Our team seemed weak, but so did the others, so we won a couple of games in our pool to make the top 8, and even had a close game for the 5-8 semi final. I really enjoyed playing with Mel Gangemi.

200. The Longest Day

We were of a small team because a few people pulled out, and Jorge slept in and then just didn't show up. Nearly all of our games were within a few points apart from one, including a draw and a couple of one point games.

Fun day at the beach.

201. Newcastle Gold Cup

Combine split evenly as X and Y for the season, but this was before selections and just whoever could come along. We had a small team but picked up a couple of Irish u24 Worlds players. They were good players and were out to have fun, so they fit in well.

We won all our first day games against U Beam, Ironbark, and Bench B, then lost all our second day games against Bench A, Krank, and the other Combine team.

The highlight was the win against Ironbark. We started off a bit rusty and were down about 8-6 at half. Then we just collapsed and it blew out to 13-6. They were coming down with long shots whatever D we tried, and even if we had them covered they would still either beat us in the air or get a bit lucky. Our O was not happening, with a lot of weak drops and throwaways. We finally scored a point and put on a 2-3-2, which just worked against their lack of experience. They never managed to adapt on O, and we were shutting them down and getting turns pretty easily, then our O found its feet and we didn’t turn it for 8 defensive points to be up 14-13. In game point we had about 5 turns, but we still managed to stick it in for a 15-13 win, off a 9 point comeback. Glorious.

202. Eastern Regional Ultimate Championships 2018

We had a tough pool with a tight matchup against Bench 2 to make it through to the power pools, and we lost in a tight one. So Saturday we lost all three pool games, putting us in a 13 - 17 bracket against relatively weak teams.

Saturday night we let loose a bit, having failed to give ourselves a chance at many competitive games. It was a late night at Bent Spoke then Mooseheads, and a lot of fun.

The early start was definitely not fun. We had four games scheduled of which one, against Manly, was very competitive. It was one of our better games, which was good because it was the filmed game. We won it fairly convincingly in the end, then had no competition from the other teams in the pool. The last game was against a beginner team, and they were happy to concede so everyone could go home early.

A pretty weak showing as far as competitive ultimate goes, but a fun Saturday nonetheless.

203. Sydney-Melbourne Open

This time we had a great draw. We had a very short roster of 11, but a bye in our first pool. Although we got thrashed (15-0, 15-2, 15-6), the bye meant a free ride through to the 9-16 quarters.

In Sunday a few strong players turned up, and we had the tight games. The second game against Mammoth was our only win, which we took in universe with my hammer to Alan. That felt good.

About halfway through the third game my legs decided they'd had enough, but I was in pretty good condition to play most points all weekend until then.

204. Australian Ultimate Championships Division 2

Stout had a tough pool of 6, but a universe point win against Sublime and an easy win against Nomads, and no real blowouts against us. The Sublime game was filmed.

Our cross over was sadly against the other Combine team, Sprout. It was a great game in a strong cross wind, but we won in a tight contest. This put us into the middle 9 - 16 quarters and them into the bottom 17-24 quarters - nice to win, but not good for them to go down that way. The quarter was against Bench (Free Lunch) in a strong up/down wind. Scoring upwind was hard, but they struggled to score downwind more, and the score blew out to 9-2 our way before the best part of the tournament.

About 20 minutes into that point, more than 10 minutes after time cap, Sacha threw a callahan on purpose. Nobody was anywhere nearby apart from his mark, and he just floated the disc out into space for his mark to catch. We were struggling to score upwind in this point, and they seemed incapable of scoring downwind despite having it on the line with a 4 - 1 player advantage a few times. It was both hilarious and painful, and eventually Sacha snapped and threw a callahan. It was amazing. 3 minutes later we scored the downwinder to win 10-3. Quite a few people on Bench, including coach Ash, were particularly unhappy about the event.

The next day sucked. Crazy strong up/down wind (apparently 70+ km/hr), and we lost the toss both times to lose (although we did let an upwind score both times, albeit more from a lack of interest in playing in shit conditions than anything). The final was cancelled, and our game against Ballarat was the only placing game played. It was unpleasant, and a disappointing end to a fun tournament.

205. Terrigal Towel XX

We stayed in the haunted house again, which is great. Apart from the dust it's the ideal accommodation - a few minutes walk from the fields, loads of space and beds, a fireplace, verandah, and ghosts. The party was nothing outrageous, but it was fun - dinner at the club, then dancing at a nightclub in Terrigal, then back to drink in front of the fireplace at home.

The games were most notable for how even the teams were. No teams went through undefeated or without wins, there were a lot of draws, and the bottom ranked team beat the top ranked team in the quarters. Our team Kale Mary had 3 wins, 2 losses, and 2 draws in the pools, then ended up coming 7th. The final ended up going to universe.

206. Australian Beach Ultimate Championships

The same team as last year (Don't Panic) renamed to Beer Kitty, and stealing the jersey design from Hong Kong Beer Kitty, who stole the name from us before we used it. Beer Kitty has become a bit of a franchise already, with a Beer Kitty team also going to Canadian Nationals this year.

The team was different to last year, with some solid replacements for those who couldn't make it. It was half Inner West players and half Manly, with a couple of solid pickups. All fitting under the general banner of "fun people who know how to play ultimate". We came together really well in the first game, convincingly beating Brew from SA who were seeded well above us, and from then on the results were all pretty much as expected. Our deep game was effective from the start.

We pretty quickly adapted the same "meow" cheer as in Hong Kong, and had fun annoying the opposition with that for the rest of the tournament.

The party was reasonable - lots of dancing but no after party except with the team back at our hotel. There was creme de menthe. Glenn ended up in a real mess the next morning and couldn't play the first game.

The draw was a bit dull, with a round robin then a placing game. We were a clear 4th in our pool, and got to play our only really close game in the 7/8 playoff against Sandstorm (Dusty, Tamara, Al Don, Silent George the traitor et al - a solid experienced team). We took it in universe with a layout catch from Shayna. 11-10 after being up 10-5.

EJ, our Christchurch import, won our team MVP, and took our mascot Beer Kitty back to NZ.

Awesome team. Awesome tournament.

207. DUFF Sydney Winter Series

208. World Masters Ultimate Club Championships

We won our first game of the tournament 15-11 against a Singapore team, which settled our nerves and gave us some confidence we could win games.

We were beaten convincingly (15-5 or so) by every other team in our pool.

The draw put us in a bottom 5 round robin, for 17th to 21st. All games were tough. We were beaten by Wolpertinger about 15-9, then had a cracker 15-14 win against the French team Raging Bananas. We got up early with long shots (long shots to Al Murray being our speciality), before they adjusted by bracketing with a very deep poach. It was my ideal offence conditions - just letting everyone else run around and find the unmarked under space - but we still managed to fuck up and let them back into the game. It was a relief to win that one, as it pretty much assured us not coming last.

Against Team Mexico we played much better. They had a small roster, and the advice we were given was "play man D, and they'll get tired". So of course we played zone defence for most of the first half, and it was pretty even. Eventually we played man D and 100% focused on stopping unders, as their deep shots weren't working. For once everyone on the team got the message and our D was great. On offence it was similar to the France game - they bracketed ineffectively and gave us easy unders. We won that game convincingly in the end.

The highlight (lowlight?) was a major spirit issue, with one of our players calling injury when he was obviously not injured. He was more just about to explode in anger after a run of travel calls and revenge calls in a very long point, so called injury to come off the field.

The final game against Singapore decided 18th place. We were up 14-11 and lost 14-15. We made easily avoidable strategic mistakes, but that's the fate of a mid level team with no coach.

I had two turns in the tournament. The first was a leading throw to Chirlin in the end zone that was a terrible option, and the second was a hilariously terrible layout attempt to collect a wayward handblocked forehand from Neil. My hamstring went in the push off for the half arsed dive, and I dropped it. I had three separate hamstring injuries, and one day off playing on the second day, but felt great by the end of the tournament.

Fun wise, we were loose enough, and everyone got along great - there wasn't a single person on the team who I would have preferred not be there. Joe Leung probably provided the most entertainment value, but Darron had his moments as well. Good times.

209. NSW Regional Mixed Ultimate Championships

The first time I've ever travelled to a tournament as a coach. It was great. I did the Bathurst Park Run on Saturday morning then spent the rest of the time watching games and helping the team out.

210. Australian Mixed Ultimate Championships Division 2

211. Melbourne Hat XXX - Hatrick

Got to play with Millerine for the first time ever, and also with Shayna. We had a not particularly experienced team, but we were surprisingly good at looking for a dump and completing basic resets, so we won a bunch of games.

We stayed at a shit but cheap place next door to the party. The party was incredibly poor for a Melbourne Hat. There were almost no locals, but the 20 or so people that were there hit the dance floor properly, so that was fun.

It looks like Melbourne Hat is not ever going to be back to its former glory, but it was still a good weekend away.

212. Longest Day

Another nice day at the beach. Busted Starfish didn’t perform as well as usual because we didn’t have the usual experience, but it was still fun.

213. Newcastle Gold Cup

We had low numbers all tournament - between 11 and 14 at various stages. The Saturday especially was a real struggle. We beat Bench and another team easily, but were convincingly beaten by the rest. Defence against DUFF Stout was fun, picking off a couple of deep shots and getting an endzone D.

The party was the best in ages, just because the pub we were in was fun. Good live band and dance floor.

214. Australian Ultimate Championships Division 2

We didn't win a game which was disappointing, but we also didn't come last because of the weird draw. Our best game was universe point against Manly.

Even though we didn't win a game, it was still fairly fun because the team was able to keep their spirits up and play their hardest.

215. Terrigal Towel XXI

This year was really fun. I took the train to Gosford and rode my bike to Wamberal. Friday night at the haunted house was a great time playing liars dice. We had 13 people staying at the house, so it was a reasonable party.

We lost two and won three on the first day. Our team was good, but there wasn't much between the teams. Our team seemed to have more depth than most because our least experienced players were still pretty handy and didn’t throw it away.

The party was awesome. Sam Howard hosted it at his house in Avoca, with a live band, DJ, a variety of paella being served, and a spa. Great fun.

We ended the pool games with 4 wins, 2 losses, and a draw, which was enough to rank us first. The quarter was against last place who were one of the teams that beat us on Saturday, but we dominated the game 11-2. It was Glenn and Richard's team.

The semi was against a stacked team of Sep, Shayna, Chirlin, Paul, and Marty Laird. It was a hard game, but we won 7-5.

The final was against Greenie's team. We had beaten them 8-2 in the pool, but this was much harder. We were up 8-6, but they brought it back to universe. I threw a forehand huck to Pottsy and it went out the back, but Alice got it back straight away and scored for the win.

Gabi and Ian drove me and Glenn back to Sydney, as they had the bike rack on the car, and we were lazy.