Enjoy the 55th IBMD Celebrations

I hope you are all enjoying the 55th International Bruce McNaughton Day Celebrations, wherever you may be.

See the Flicks with the Sultry Chicks

Don't forget Sultry are running a fundraising and (perhaps more importantly) social event this Friday night (3 April) from 6.45pm with movie at 7.15pm.

Sultry are hosting a showing of the ace new movie, Bottleshock, at the Portside Dendy (right next to the Hamilton Citycat stop). Its got heavy drinking and frickin' Alan Rickman in it - what more could you want?

If you are wise, you will pick up a ticket beforehand from your local Sultry lass.

Spirited Sultry

Despite a lot of tough love, the ladies of Sultry managed to bring home the Spirit prize from the Into the Wild Tournament, held in Sydney over the weekend.

As the gang recovers, we'll hopefully get more reports through the week.

BPL Draw - Round 7

Mark Your Calendar - the Fight the Phat Hat is Back!

Fight the Phat - Brisbane's premier May hat tournament, is locked in for Sunday 24 May at JF O'Grady Fields, Fairfield (site of Regionals 2009).

More details to come, but you can register here..

Late Get Your Disc Out .... In the Air Up There

Just to finish our Friday off, we got this email:

Hi Jason,

I took this picture the last day of February on my way to the Canberra Invitational. It was on Emma’s camera so I just got around to getting back the picture! I know it’s too late but I tried! Do I win $5?

Stephanie.

Sorry Steph, we're all out of cash. But thanks for GETTING YOUR DISC OUT!

BPL Results and Table after Round 6

The Messy Bugs avenge their first round loss to the massively numbers Lovers, while Dojo manages to remember to win the game, after establishing a big early lead over Passion. Tough week for the students.

Good turnout to the Bowls Club too. Remember to park over there when you arrive!

Get Your Arse to Townsville!

So Townsville has two tournaments coming up.

And Virgin is advertising a sale on tonight (7pm-10pm) that feature $19 fares Townsville-

Brisbane after 6 April. Jetstar also regularly advertises $65 fares.

Townsville people are also HUGELY welcoming on the billet front. They would totally love to have you. This could make for an excellent value tournament away.

Why not get out of your comfort zone and head on up to TSV for some Ultimate?

Townsville Hat - 9 May 2009 (if enough folks rego to fly in, this will be turned into a 2-dayer). This will be a big one, and you've got plenty of time to get organised.

Mission Impossible - Mission Beach Tournament - 12 April 2009. This event might be a bit more challenging for someone outside North Queensland - as its 3 hours drive from Townsville or 2 hours drive from Cairns. But totally worth your consideration. You'll be meeting 20+ Cairns Ultimate players that you've probably never met before. And you'll be surely able to get a lift from either end. And Mission Beach is GORGEOUS. Rego.

BPL Round 6 - 26 March 2009

BPL Experimental Rules

Maintaining its status as the premier Open Ultimate League in the country, the Brisbane Premier League has been invited by no less than one of the key members of the WFDF Rules Committee to trial an experimental pick rule for the remainder of this season, and head honcho Stu has made the call and agreed to testing it out.

The experimental rule is:

"After a pick is called, play continues.

If the defender catches up to the player they were covering they should call "play on" and the pick is nullified.

If the player they were covering catches the disc before the defender can make up the ground, then play stops and the disc is returned to the thrower.

If an incomplete pass is thrown, the turnover stands and play continues."

Don't forget, BPL is now being played under the 2009 WFDF Rules (call us early-adopters). Make sure you're familiar before you get on the field this week.

BPL Table - Halfway Through the Season

Northern Regionals 2009 - Extra Info

Photos from the weekend are available at http://trent. smugmug.com/ Sports/736853/

We'll look to get a select few shots up here for those too lazy to go look.

Well done Carol Hunter and Eric Wescott who were named Most Valuable Players.

Congrats to Firestorm D+ and Buff Breaka Bond Misfits who claimed Spirit.

Northern Regionals 2009 - Quick Results

We're pretty shagged here at the mansion after an awesome Northern Regionals weekend (thanks to Stephanie and Molly and the crew for a great weekend!).

Quick results:

Open
1. Firestorm Orgasmic
2. Firestorm Deviants
3. Brisbane Barbarians
4. Thor of Townsville
5. Slamtown Flatball Club

Women's
1. Buff Breaka Bond Misfits
2. Sultry Blue
3. Sultry Red
4. QUTies

Give Sport a Chance

If you've got some spare discs, sports equipment and shoes laying around, maybe you can donate them to a good cause.

If you can't make it to the event yourself, pass your stuff on John McNaughton and he will take it in for you.

OxfamUQ needs your help!

We are collecting new and used sports equipment and footwear to donate to
Queensland ’s Indigenous Sports Academies.

We need you to rally the enthusiasm of your sporting club, familyfriends
and fellow students.

Help us collect as much sporting equipment as we can. Any sporting
goods will do! Balls, nets, bats, hoops, shoes,gloves, stands, we don’t care,
bring it all! If everyone pitches in, we can raise enough gear to
provide several indigenous communities with thesame sporting opportunities that
we take for granted.

Bring your stuff to:

WHEN: 10am-12pm 18th March 2009

WHERE: Grassy Knoll (near the Markets on Market Day), St Lucia Campus of
the University of Queensland.

PRIZES: The first 200 people to donate will receive a Complimentary
Venue pass to access one UQ SPORT Venue of their choice for FREE

Donations will be accepted at UQ Sport & Fitness Centre Reception Area
from 2pm Wed 18th March - 5pm Sun 22nd March 2009

TO DONATE ONLINE:
Message Ref: Sports Equipment Drive
Account Name: Oxfam Australia
UQBSB: 064 158
Account #: 10597827
Note: Non-tax-deductible receipts for any donations can be given on
request.

Zone Quote

From the UK's Si Moore:

"Teams confronted by a zone should see it as an opportunity to relax and
enjoy! There will always be a free pass against the zone (even if
occasionally this means breaking a straight up mark!) so there is no need to get
flustered, after all this is what the zone is trying to bully you in to
doing."

Northern Regionals Tops, Taps and Tips

Well, we've been flat out like lizards under several tonnes of steel drinking a liquid with no discernable surface tension here at the Brisbane Ultimate Blog mansion these last few days. Young Wetnose has been busy building his own internet access system from a box of paperclips, while even younger Will-i-am is probably waking up just now, 150km from civilisation, and wondering what happened during O-Week. And you're truly has been solid with AFDA, QUDA and a bunch of other things that aren't frisbee-related at all (can you believe it?)

So after muggin'ing the Slamtown Flatball Club, we haven't gotten around to looking at the other teams in the lead up to this year's Northern Regionals tournament aka the Ides of March.

The tournament is on at JF O'Grady Park at Fairfield (not at Ashgrove as previously advertised). The move to JF is because it is massively cheaper, and also closer to Bruce's house (and further from Mr Flanagan's). The neighbourhood should be familiar to everyone who plays BUML and BPL. Doors open at 8am Saturday for the Open competition, and 8.30am, Sunday for the ladies.

Anyway, we welcome everyone's tips for the results of the weekend - stick them in the comments section.

In the Open division, there are five large teams - Firestorm O, Firestorm D, Slamtown Flatball Club, Thor of Townsville, and the Brisbane Barbarians - and the possibility that anyone can win?

In the Women's division there are four teams - Sultry Red, Sultry Blue, QUTies and Buff Breaka Bond Girls. This is an outstanding effort from the various ladies involved!

If You Have 5 Minutes of Internet Time To Spare Today

There's a few mentions of Ultimate over at a blog on badboys in League at the Brisbane Times website - http://blogs.brisbanetimes.com.au/bluntinstrument/archives/2009/03/post_17.html

Maybe you might like to add a few cents? It's always good for Ultimate when our sport is drawn to the attention of the mainstream folks.

Host JB is a nice guy.

It is Strange That It Feels Totally Normal to Say "$%^&@* Hamish!" in the Leadup to Regionals

Most Ultimate folks in Brisbane are getting used to it.

The drought has broken (at least in terms of rainfall on Brisbane), so the golden years of uninterupted Ultimate now seem to be behind us. How we miss them already!

These days, every other week there's a negotiation with a field owner about playing before, after or during the rain.

And this week, in the leadup to the first big tournament of the year, we're staring down the barrel of a cyclone.

Sure the media got over excited hoping for catastrophe, and then calmed down a bit.

But the forecast is for showers all week.

Fingers crossed that everything can go ahead this weekend.

Even without a certain Hamish, who has now moved to Perth, and will no doubt billet any Townsville player who makes it there for Nationals.

Defining the Hat Tournament Player

Hopefully you're familiar with the idea of a Hat Tournament.

Fairly unique to Ultimate and part of its friendly and spirited atmosphere, hat tournaments involve everyone registering as an individual, and a Tournament Director and cohorts pulling names 'from a hat' to form teams

In reality, because tournaments a more fun and challenging when teams are relatively even looking, most hat TDs will do at least some tweaking of their random results.

This tweaking can be a challenge if you don't know a lot about the players (or alternatively, aren't really confident in making these decisions). So most hat tournaments ask players to make a self-assessment of their ability when they register.

Typically, this involves putting yourself on a scale of say 1-5, 1-7 or 1-10, with some descriptors on the side, ranging from "1- I'm a complete newbie" to "10 - I play for Australia".

A common problem though is people being too humble (or too ego driven, or too inexperienced) and getting the estimate wildly wrong - leading to TDs pulling out their hair as stacked (or unstacked) teams suddenly appear before them.

Without wanting to make things too complicated for organisers though (because really, they've got enough to worry about), I think it would be more useful to, rather than just ask for a simple estimate on a scale, provide two pieces of information - throws and fitness.

So the options for self classification are something like:

Throws
a) I've got all the throws, complete reliability and can hit most parts of the field
b) I've got all the throws and complete reliability
c) I've got all the throws
d) I've got a good backhand and a working forehand
e) I've got a backhand or will have one by the end of the tournament

Fitness
i) I'm uber-fit and fast - can play all day at high speed
ii) I'm pretty fit - can play a few games without much of a break
iii) I'm ok - can play a few games but need a good rest after (or lots of subbing through a day)
iv) I'm not real fit and/or somewhat slow and/or carrying injury - can hold up my end but may cut the day short or take it easy
v) I intend to spend the tournament mostly on the sideline drinking beer/sleeping

This gives TD's something they can work with if they want to have 8 teams but have 13 gun a-i players to spread around - patch up the other teams with an extra a-iv and a d-i to cover a missing a-i, and so forth.

Ides of March - Slamtown Flatball Club Preview

So the Ides of March aka Northern Regionals is on next weekend - lets see if we can get through previewing the teams, starting with the only gang to have properly sorted out their roster and registration, the Gold Coast's Slamtown Flatball Club.


Many of these players won't be familiar to our Brisbane readers. Fortunately, due to Wetnose's inside contacts at the Southport Watchouse, we've been able to obtain some pictures.

Tip of the hat to Muggin, OUR NEW FAVOURITE TIME-FILLER

SFC expect to make it to the final, but there were tripped up during a physical warm up match against the soft hippies from Byron Bay last weekend. Expectations seem to thusly be all over the place. We'll see what happens (and try not to drop the soap).

Ultimate Guide to AJSC Fields

So every once in a while there's some confusion between League Directors, teams and our hosts at Annerley Junior Soccer Club about field locations and parking info. There's talk about dark fields, light fields, drains, clubhouses, dud fields, middle fields, left fields, etc etc etc.

As the Brisbane Ultimate Blog is the font of all orthodoxy, we therefore introduce the Ultimate Guide to AJSC Fields.

We encourage everyone to start using this standard 'frisbee field' numbering. The numbers themselves are the ones that the soccer club uses - so if you're talking to a soccer player you're on the same page.

Also note that there are four different carparks around the field, in addition to people's traditional 'park on the street outside the clubhouse' method.

Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March!

So Northern Regionals is next weekend - 14-15 March 2009.

Its the first big tournament of the year here in Queensland, and the only one where we play in a two division Open/Women's format.

Lots of our brothers and sisters in Ultimate leagues have never played a tournament (or an Open/Women's one). For many, its a bit of a leap - and a tournament that's about qualifying for the National championships can sound a bit scary!

So its up to 'the regulars' to get out there and invite people and tell them about how much fun a tournament is, and how much anyone can improve their play by playing a few games in a row.

Here's the gin from Stephanie 'Caesar' Levasseur herself:

The “Ides of March tournament”, aka “Northern Regionals” is almost here - 14th and 15th of March (only the 15th for women). It’s not too late to register, there are still a few teams who are short on players. If you’d like to play just sign up on “I need a team”: http://www.afda.com/rego/showcompetition.php?competitioni d=603 and we’ll gladly find you a team. Register before Monday 9th of March so we know how much food to buy. For rego after Monday 5pm e-mail s.levasseur@uq.edu.au

Food: Meals provided during the tournament will be lunch on both days + fruit and water. Breakfast and dinner will not be provided. If you have any special dietary requirements (eg: vegetarian) please send an e-mail to molly: piggysweetheart@ yahoo.com. au before Monday 5pm.

Billeting: If you are able to billet 1 or more of our friends from Townsville, Byron and the Gold Coast on the Friday and / or Saturday night please sign here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=ps2UiEV97U2aEM03 jSGfw. Your help is very much appreciated. If you would like to be billeted please sign here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p3BrZHaIHB3GAvoPfhMA&hl=en.

Fields: The tournament was to be held at Dorrington Park but there is a possibility of field change! I will send out the confirmed field location and how to get there ASAP.

Cost: Very dependent on the fields, TBA. Sorry for the late decision but it might work out in everyone’s favour.

Party: Should be legendary! The theme is ancient Rome, dress code: sandals and
toga! It will be held on the Saturday night and the venue is still TBC.

Other events during the week-end: There will be an Open showcase game on the Saturday afternoon after the last game. The selected Firestorm guys will be playing a demo game against other super hot players. All are invited to heckle on the sideline. On the Sunday during lunch time, there will be the annual QUDA AGM for all to attend. The Sunday afternoon coaching clinic is cancelled unless a strong desire to organize it and/or see it is shown very soon.

Services: There will be sports massage and tournament photography available on both days!!! No, I’m not kidding!

Get Your Disc Out ... THE WINNER!

2009's Get Your Disc Out competition, run throughout February, has produced a winner!

After a split decision, the judges panel are awarding the $100 to big Ben Hutchinson and the QUT kids, for their crazy efforts at the Chinchilla Melon Festival!

Ben - see us at the fields or send us your bank details. We hope you will spend the money on some sort of QUT disc, rather than continuing with your UQ one.

While we were a little surprised at not getting more of a response, we at the Brisbane Ultimate Blog are proud to have run this little competition and gotten people to GET THEIR DISCS OUT, and look forward to running it again later in the year (perhaps with more $cash$ or *prizes* on offer).

Thanks again to all the participants, and those who said "That's a bloody great idea!" or "Man, if I get through that Wipeout audition, I'm hoping they call me "Frisboo the Frisbee Man!"

BPL Round 4 - 5 March 2009

Don't forget to park at the Bowls Club so you can say g'day after the games.

Wild Johnny Mac and the Rough Riders

So John McN is planning to break some steads at this year's Ultimate Stampede, and he wants to round up a posse to go with him!

Here's the deal (the last paragraph is the most important):

"Frisbee folk,

The Ultimate Stampede is a tournament that's been held in Bathurst for the last two years. It won Party of the Year (at the Australian Ultimate Awards) in 2007, and has been nominated for Tournament of the Year both times. It's not a competitive tourney as such - it's very much about having a fun time playing some frisbee. The first day is a teams tournament (i.e. you register with a team and play with them), the second is a hat tournament (i.e. teams are drawn "from a hat").

This year, it's happening on May 23-24. You can't fly to Bathurst direct, as far as I'm aware, but you can get $65 each way at the moment on QANTAS to Sydney. It's about a 3 hour drive - you'd be able to find a lift with a Sydney-sider. Note that because of the drive, it's probably best to get down Fri night (not Sat morn), and leave either as late as possible Sun night, or early Mon. Either that, or make a road-trip of it (if you've got the available time).

Travelling to tournaments is one of the most fun things about Ultimate, so I'd definitely encourage some others to join me. I'm just about to book my tickets. Hope some other Qlders can make it.

John"

WTF - He's Not Even 21?

So Tomsteve has announced plans for his 21st birthday - mark 4 April in your diary, Tomsteveloversand fans.

Its amazing that he is giving one month's notice!

I for one though was shocked to discover Tomsteve isn't even 21 yet. How about you?

The Fire is turned on for 2009

We just received a telegram from the big sasquatch Mike Neild regarding the players that have been selected for Brisbane's 2009 open representative team, Firestorm, that will attempt to qualify for Nationals in Perth in a few weeks. They are as follows:

Stuart Austin
Adam Beu
Chris Burwell
Al Don
Liam Gillions
Gref Goranson
Vinko Grgic
James Larkin
Nathan Litzow
Finn McCarthy-Adams
John McNaughton
Mike Neild
Julian Sacre
George Salisbury
Reece Stewart
Dean Vlahaki
Dan Young

A very strong team and, more importantly, a very good looking team. We, at the manor, wish them all the best in their attempts to rule the world.

Learn to Play - Ultimate Returns to St Lucia

In the lead-up to the new Semester League kicking off at the University of Queensland in St Lucia, there will be pick up games two weeks of FREE Learn to Play sessions - open to everyone (students, non-students, lost souls) on Wednesday nights on Oval 7 from 6pm-ish for a 6.15 start.

Bring a light shirt and a dark shirt and a water bottle, and any friends who want to have a go at Ultimate Frisbee.