Strange Blue Tournament Report

Tour 1 - SB1

Hi all,

Here's a gist of what happened this weekend at Tour 1, in London. This is mainly related with the Open firsts. There were so many games (e.g. the firsts played 9 hours during the weekend) that the seconds and the women will have to write their own account of the events.

So, the firsts had a very successful weekend. In a line: we played as a team (18-man strong), we own 5 of our 7 matches, most of them against A-Tour-type teams, and we got the promotion to the A-Tour.

The scores were:

SB 8 - 13 Brighton

After a sensational start, trading points to 7 all, Brighton's experience was a deciding factor and took the game away from us. No shame, though. Brighton came 4th overall, loosing the 3rd place in a very close match to Fire.

SB 13 - 6 Bristol

We were seeded 22nd (3rd in our group) and Bristol was 17th (1st). Well... they never really had a chance. We were just too fast and too focused. The D line closed their game down with some very effective clam-D and that was it.

SB - Burro Electrico (win by 3 or so: 11 - 8)

They ended up taking the second spot in the group. This was a very unfortunate game, as Alan got injured making a bid on a disc and having a gigantic jackass (both in size and "jackassidness") running into his back. He is feeling better now, and recovering from a collarbone fracture.

SB - Sheffield Steal (win by 3 or so: 13 - 10)

We had already secured the top spot in our group, but that didn't affect the way we played and we quickly took the lead, that we never relinquished again.

Sunday

SB 13 - 8 Fusion West

This was the big game. A win would mean promotion to the A tour for Tour 2 and 2 last games against strong teams (such as ours - eheh). A loss would mean playing in Birmingham (instead of Brighton), in the B tour, and facing the same teams from the previous day, most likely). We were phenomenal. We got to the pitches in a timely fashion... not drunk... and we warmed up as team, we focused, and before Fusion could say "stalling", they were 3-0 down, asking for a time-out. There were some awesome layout Ds (Hammad had the first of the day, that got us the first break), some layout endzone grabs (Crow had an awesome one, for a full-length huck from our very own hucking machine, Shannon). And that was it. A-tour. No contest.

SB 11 - 13 Limited Release

This was not exactly what we had planned, but hey... they were a good team. And, we could have done a better job... after all... we took the half 7-3. Yup. We were 7-3 up. In what turned out to be a pretty flawless weekend, this turn of events was not significant. We'll play them in a month's time. Then we'll see what's what.

SB 15 - 13 Vision

At Tour 0 they had won by 2, after a good comeback from our boys, from 2-6 down. That helped to shatter our A-tour aspirations. This time we knew that we had to start strong. In fact, we started strong all of our games, generally we initial leads of 2 or 3 points. We did it again. And this time we weren't surprised by their insanely fast players and their long scores. We took the lead. They then adjusted to our D and started putting up some hammers for about 5 scores. They took the lead at 9-8. We then gave it all! Absolutely everything. This was basically a survival test. Last man standing would win. After 9 hour of ultimate, this was all about legs and a steady mind. Magic's shouting played its role. He managed to get the last two lines to play it safely and win us the game.

So... SB is in the A tour, seeded 15th. More than that, we are now a true menace. Teams respect us and we are aiming to stay in the A tour and make up a few more spots.

None of this would have been possible without our core group of about 40 players, who have been showing up week in and week out to practices. Keep it up. We are all in it together.

See you all on a pitch,

Pedro