From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Mon Jun 14 09:48:57 1999 Received: by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA11210 for britdisc-outgoing; Mon, 14 Jun 1999 09:47:52 +0100 (BST) Received: from snowdrop.csv.warwick.ac.uk (snowdrop [137.205.192.31]) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA11205 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Mon, 14 Jun 1999 09:47:50 +0100 (BST) From: Mullinger_Stuart/ec@na1.stratus.com Received: from mailhub.stratus.com (mailhub.stratus.com [134.111.1.14]) by snowdrop.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA12865 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Mon, 14 Jun 1999 09:47:49 +0100 (BST) Received: from na1.stratus.com (na1.stratus.com [134.111.200.94]) by mailhub.stratus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id EAA02568; Mon, 14 Jun 1999 04:48:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (root@localhost) by na1.stratus.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id EAA27727; Mon, 14 Jun 1999 04:47:39 -0400 (EDT) X-OpenMail-Hops: 2 Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 09:42:35 +0100 Message-Id: <H00000b305da8603@MHS> Subject: Tour III Report MIME-Version: 1.0 TO: britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk CC: scotdisc@egroups.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; name="Tour" Content-Disposition: inline; filename="Tour" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Many thanks to 'Kiwi' David Coleman for the following report. Stuart. Tournament Report: Edinburgh 1999 Welcome to Scotland. The expected welcome was made to all the teams that made the journey north. Yeah, it was raining. A freak occurrence I swear. When the sun rolled up on Saturday morning, it didn't hold the promise of a cracker of a day. I woke up bleary eyed to find my room was subjected to a Red attack. Red everywhere, but they did offer me a lift. The venue for the Edinburgh tourney was the Jack Kane Centre, which is located in an interesting part of town. The suprise of this tournament was that the new drop pull rule wasn't in use, except by agreement of the captains. Sneeeky's wasn't due to start until 10:30 so I managed to go around and glimpse some of the teams involved. Strange to Edinburgh, the rain came down in time to check out the first game. The first game I caught was First Touch Vs Catch-22. Midway through Catch was slightly more organised and went on to win it 17-4. Scary was the fact that one of FT was playing with a broken collarbone. Now that's dedication. In the local derby between Soup and Smudge, Soup went out winners comfortably in the end. On local derbys, a feature of this tournament was the number of Scottish teams involved. In the end there was 6 teams from Alba, many of them with players who had never been involved in a tour event. Overall it was quite a learning experience for some, whilst for others enough of a taste to want more. In the big matches, the morning suprise was the tight game between Chevron AF and Dough Boy, two of the teams that are causing problems for UTI and Co. My loyalties tend towards Dough Boys as I'm another Kiwi, so I was glad to see that Dough Boys went on to win. Another crunch game was Red Vs Druids. When I caught the game Red was playing well at midway and went on to win. Another game I quite enjoyed watching was Bliss Vs Nightfever. Nightfever made the initial running, but Bliss started to get over the first game blues, and were starting to pull it back. Perhaps a little too late as Nightfever won 15-8. Another of the top 8 games was Red Vs Chevron. From the looks of the game, Red appeared to be on something of a backlash from Chevron AF, with a stronger performance by Chevy. The afternoon brought with it the promise of sun, and it delivered. Yay, heat. A hot game running at that time was Phat 'eds Vs Bliss, with some good close quarter stuff with the occasional flash of pace, 8-7 at half time. In the second half Phat 'eds came out just that little bit stronger , and won 15-12. Druids Vs Dough Boy had the boys continuing to show their good form, and they went out winners 17-10. This was the form that was eventually to take Dough Boy to the final. As far as pool play went Twin Peaks had to be the unluckiest team. The E pool was a very tight pool, with two Scottish teams and two from south of the border. The first saw Sneeeky's go down 9-15 to Skunks, whilst Gael Force won 15-13 over Twin Peaks. Second round and Skunks won 15-13 over Twin Peaks, with Gael Force winning the local derby 15-13 over Sneeeky's. The final round saw Sneeeky's win 15-13 over Twin Peaks, whilst Skunks won one of the tightest games I've seen, coming from behind to win 15-14 against Gael Force. In other games Smudge were having a hard time of it, but when I caught part of their game, they scored a good upwind point into the strong breeze Vs Janitors. Magic. The game between UTI and Catch was another in the great rivalry between the two teams. Great Ultimate, big D, and passion ran throughout the game. But UTI seems to be on something of a high at the moment, and in this game they just seemed to have the edge. And so the result bore this out, 16-11. Another important game was Strange Blue Vs Soup. When I was watching, Soup seemed to be in control, and getting stronger. Then Strange Blue started its momentum and won the game 13-12. End of day one, except it wasn't. Party de Blind Poet was next on the cards. Good venue, although it was a bit of a maze to find the bar. Most teams were out in force and boogieing away. Special mention must be made of the Wyld Stallyns. My lasting image of the night was the Stallyns boogieing down, and looking like tomorrow was gonna be a hard hard day. All in all it was a great night. Memo: Dancing makes day two difficult. Day Two Play off morning: Sunday is always guaranteed to create a few suprises, due to hangovers and the dissappeared. Tour 3 was no exception, with teams turning up very late, or just in time to miss their game. The morning was bright and the heavy rain during the night created good layout conditions. Soup (we're thick, we're creamy) Vs BAF was the first game affected by the Sunday morning, BAF were late fielding seven players and Soup counted the points. Soup went on to take the 6th spot, with a higher score even if the penalty points were ignored. Another crossover was Wyld Stallyns Vs Gael Force with the Stallyns playing semi Iron Man. Hangovers aside, Stallyns took the game reasonably comfortably. Comment of the morning was from an observer of the Phat 'eds Vs Druids game, "close game, bit slow". The semi-finals were big games with Dough Boy up against Catch and UTI Vs Chevron AF. Both were reasonably tight games, but Dough Boy prevailed in the morning encounter, as did UTI. By this stage the afternoon was turning to the worst, and yours truly was involved in a mammoth encounter with Fingers 6, a game which swung all over the place. At capping Sneeeky's was up at 12-11, but in the events that followed, Fingers 6 managed to survive a massive attack and won the game 14-13. By this stage the weather had improved; not. It started bucketing down, which impacted on all games from the big final down to the playoffs for 23rd and 24th. Only really gutsy spectators defied the weather to watch the big games. Most others were hiding in the Cafe. In the final Dough Boy took on UTI. Dough Boy started out with guns blazing , stretching UTI to the limit, and went ahead. Midway through the boys were leading 13-10. But then UTI started to pick up the tempo, perhaps in concert with the storm. Storm was the word here, as UTI really turned it on in the rain and eventually won 21-14. One of the Dough Boys was heard to say, and I quote "Dough never rises in the cold". The Chevron AF Vs Catch-22 was a closer affair, as both teams alternately performed brilliantly and then struggled in the wet. However, due to the gluelike handling, Chevron won the 3rd/4th playoff. Overall the tournament was a lotta fun, although the weather sometimes played its role. Thanks to Stuart and Co who put in the hard yards to ensure its success.