Strange Blue Tournament Report

Evening All,

It wasn't just the firsts who made the epic journey to Wales this weekend, Strange Blue also fielded an enthusiastic second team to take on C Tour.

Dropped from 3rd seed to finish 7th in C Tour, with everyone playing through injury and unbelievable exhaustion to contribute to a fantastic weekend.

The team:
Token
Lassie
Spag
Babyface
Max
Niall
David A
Matt H
Natalie
Emily
Rich L

The games: (in not-so-brief)

SB2 15-6 Guildford : A pretty sandy start to the tournament against a solid team. In the end they just couldn't cope with our speed, height or Max's sweet endzone cutting. A lefty layout grab from David, chundering from Baby and fantastic man D just broke their spirit. A solid start from the whole team, and the tone was set for the weekend...

SB2 8-14 Red : A helpful sideline from the firsts meant we went 6-0 down at the start of this game before really turning on. Even though the wind was picking up, our man D was still much better than our unpracticed zone, especially against an experienced team. Red had plenty of handy pick-ups in their midsts and they had the legs to keep the 6 point gap even after we turned on the hot stuff with sweet continuation between Token, Lassie and Matt.

SB2 15-13 Fully Charged 2 : They may have only had 8 players, but these guys were pretty fired up after just winning their last game in sudden death. We frustrated them at the start, giving them little time on the disc, before our injuries started to add up and restrict our play. FC2 liked their long game, and showed no fear of jacking it long to try and score off our women, little did they know that Emily can read a disc better than any of them, and one of own super-hero guys was always there to lend a hand if needed. This was a hard fought game, with the final upwind point from us showing off the best of our fast offense.

SB2 finish second in pool - 6th

SB2 15-11 Lemmings 2

Sunday was skanky- rain and a touch of wind, not to mention aches, pains and general hangovers, meaning that SB2 were hurting in the first game. We abused Lassie's height a bit to score some easy points early on but this was another game where our D won it. There were point blocks, interceptions and layout D's (kudos Niall) everywhere and Lemmings couldn't find their long game. SB2 hold 6th.

SB2 9-14 (?) Trigger Happy

I don't remember much from this game other than pain. And the unbelievable amount of fake red bull. TH *did* find their long game and we started making little drops and poor throws as the weekend took its toll. I'm also fairly certain this is when some guy poached off Spag, only to get scored on long by her. Stupid men. Anyway, these guys knew their way around C Tour having finished highly in all the Tours, and we lost out to take 7th.

SB2 11-10 Limited Release 2

Well. We had nothing to play for in this game. It was only going to be the difference between 7th and 8th in C Tour, right? Oh how wrong we were. This was a pure blood and guts game with people dosing themselves up on drugs and chugging Strongbow on the sideline to numb the pain. We kept it close and narrowly lost the half 8-6 despite slick cutting from Rich and super-human layout D's from Lassie... Then we manned up. Bringing it back to 8-8, we let them trade with us for a while until 10-10, with time having gone before to make it a game to 11. They had the downwind, they had legs on us, they even had banterous sideline support from our own SB1, but like hell were we going to let them have the last point. A pressure D gave us the disc and we wasted no time in placing short, solid passes up the pitch before a break went out to Lassie on the endzone line for the win. It was SWEEEET.

SB2 finish 7th in C Tour.

It was amazing fun, many thanks to David for coming out of retirement, Matt for staying for the sunday, Matt's dad for tirelessly bringing us water all weekend, and Token for leading by example as co-captain. I've never enjoyed ultimate so much!

Natalie