Worlds in Review Part 1 - Dingoes

As many of you may be aware the World Ultimate and Guts Championships was recently held in Sakai, Japan. The BUB manor had 24/7 coverage rolling of ultimate coverage from nexgen and ultitv (with some little cycling race to break it up). I thought I would get some insights into the teams and the tournament from some of the players who were lucky/good enough to attend. So queue the first guest to the BUB mansion our resident dingo Chris Cunliffe. 

Welcome Chris and first of all congrats on making the team.

To start with I'd like you to give our readers an idea of your Ultimate back ground. When did you start playing? 

I started playing ultimate in 2005. Basically I had been playing soccer for 15 years, and I just finished my last season of u19s and the clubs/teams I was considering playing for in the open division wanted me to play/train like 4 times a week which didn't fit my "uni lifestyle" at the time. So I was temporarily looking for something more social and just by coincidence two friends of mine had been to a come and try frisbee event and were planning to play in the upcoming Yeronga beginners league and they talked me into coming along and playing with their team. 

At that point I had never heard of ultimate frisbee so it was all pretty novel to me, and to say I was "raw" would be an understatement - but I remember after a few weeks of playing that it dawned on me that it was the first time in a long time that I had played a sport were at the end of every game I didn't even know what the score was - I was just too busy having fun. So I kept coming back…

When did you start competing at the elite level? 

Well I guess that depends on what the definition of 'elite level' is…

So my frisbee story basically goes like this, Maylin Chuah was the captain/coach of my beginners league team, after playing on her team for a few weeks she invited me to come play BPL. I turned up that Thursday in the middle of the BPL season, was thrown on a team and proceeded to have my "holy sh#t this is actually a sport" moment. 

: ))

Not long after that someone invited me to come play Halibut that year, then Uni Games and then Mixed Nationals later that year. 

Then in 2006 I got my first taste of mens Nationals and then later that year I got to play at World Club Championships with the Brisbane mixed team. So I guess you'd say I started competing at the elite level some time in 2005 or 2006 depending on your definition.   

Long enough. So fill us in on your thoughts of the selection process and then the overall selection of the Dingoes team? 

For those readers of BUB that don't know, the process basically kicked off on in January 2011, where players were required to make an expressions of interest  to play for an Australian representative team. Then everyone was told their performance at Regionals, BCI and Nationals in 2011 were being taken into consideration to select 55 guys to attend a weekend training camp down in Sydney, from which the selectors chose 37 guys to attend three trainings camps in Canberra. Then after these training camps they selected 24 guys to travel over to Seattle in September of 2011 to compete in a tournament called Emerald City Classic after which they selected 24 guys from the 37 to go to Worlds. 

So the first thoughts that come to mind about the selection process are words like, long, expensive, competitive…

: ))

… but that's just the whinger in me coming out. 

In all seriousness, I honestly thought it was about as comprehensive a process as could be expected from an amateur sport.  For the most part I felt that the process gave everyone as much of a chance to shine in front of the selectors as could be afforded and I felt they put in a lot of consideration into selecting the bunch of guys they felt would best represent the country. 

That said, no selection process is ever perfect, but there is no doubt in my mind that the guys in charge were doing their very best, and I'm confident that any hiccups in the process this time around will be improved on for next time around just as the process this time was more comprehensive than the last. 

On the non playing side of selections, I thought the process was pretty awesome. For the Canberra training camps the squad were all bunking in a big church hall which was great fun and good for team bonding, and I was also lucky enough to be selected to go to Seattle for ECC which was loads of fun. Getting to travel overseas with a bunch of likeminded frisbee players to compete against the top teams in the world was loads of fun.

Post tournament is they anyone you think would have been handy to have on the team who wasn’t there? **Mike** Cough

Definitely.

I think there are a number of guys who would have been very handy, including Mike, but like any team, be it a Uni Games team or the Australian Dingoes, you can only field the guys who are "ready, willing and able" - and the stars rarely align perfectly on such things so the focus has always got to be on playing with what you got, not spending too much time wishing you had more or if things had been different.  

Plus, I'm sure every team we played against at Worlds also had some very handy players of their own who were not in attendance for any number of reasons, be it injury, financial, life, couldn't get visas, loss of desire, etc.

It's the nature of amateur sport.

Very diplomatic and I am sure there are a number of guys who would like to be there next time. Leading up to the tournament you were injured so often did you train and what sort of training did you do to prepare? 

So that basic Dingo training program consisted of 7 sessions a week split between a strength session, a running session, 2 frisbee specific exercise sessions and 3 throwing sessions. playing league was considered extra. 

As you mentioned I was injured in the leads up to worlds, which meant I substituted rehab exercises into the exercises I wasn't allowed to do.

I am sure you had some Tony Robbins audio books on during those sessions to keep you entertained. Moving on what are your thoughts on the pretour? Was it a help for the team? Was America a good choice of destination? 

Yeah I thought the pretour was great. 

Getting to play against Sockeye in front of a packed grandstand in what turned out to be a cracking game has to go down as one of my top frisbee career highlights which was topped off by a bunch of kids coming up to us after the game asking for our autographs. It was really cool.

As for if it was helpful or not, I think it was a massive help. 

Before the tour I had some real reservations about if we would have the offensive cohesion required to consistently score against the best in the world (particularly on the D team), and whilst we started slow, I think there was a marked improvement from the start of the tour to the end of the tour, and I think our team cohesion improved further over the course of the Worlds tournament as well. 

Being a team that is comprised of players from all over the country means getting some high level game time together prior to Worlds is critical. 

As for whether America is a good choice, if getting good quality competition prior to Worlds is your priority, then I think it's pretty much the only option. 

Despite coming 7th, I think the Australian Dingoes are in the top 5 National teams in the World. That said, if the US were allowed to submit more than 1 team to Worlds, I'd be surprised if they didn't take out 5 or 6 of the top 10 spots. And so from this perspective, the US offers you the best opportunity to get competitive games against different oppositions.

So watching back here in Australia and seeing photos popping up on facebook of all the tour shenanigans it looked like Japan was a welcoming host country.  How was the tournament received locally and did anything surprise you? 

The Japanese were great hosts. As for how the tournament was received locally, it's hard to say really.

I think the FAR more surprising thing was all the game footage that was being streamed online and all the interest and support from back in Australia that that created. I just thought it was really cool and I think is a really awesome step for the sport itself.

The Japanese have a reputation for running large events well, comparatively to nats how did you find the tournament was run? 

I thought they put on a good tournament. There were a couple of issues relating to lack of field space for warming up, and I personally wasn't the biggest fan of the fact half the field were Astroturf, but by and large it was a quite well run tournament. 

So the tournament itself, The dingoes had an interesting pool being seeded second to the swedes, I am not sure how this was worked out but seemed odd. What were the thoughts about the pool play games and were the boys worried about making it to the next round?

To be honest I never even looked at the draw or the different pools (my general philosophy towards tournament draws is if you just win all your pool games you always set yourself up for the best chance to win so there is rarely much to learn from draws), but if I was to have a guess I would assume us being seeded second to the Swedes would have had something to do with the fact that at the last Worlds we finished 5th and Great Britain finished 4th, but given that Sweden beat GB at the recent European Championships that might have meant that Sweden took GB's 4th seeding, which meant they were first seeds in our pool - but this is just me speculating. Someone might like to confirm in the comments.

As for the pool games, I thought we played well and comfortably beat most teams and I think this is largely reflected in the score lines. 

As for concerns about progressing, I can't speak for the other boys, but I didn't have any, and I didn't hear any of the other guys mention their concerns about any of the pool games or anything. Even when we went down a break early in our pool game against Germany I'm certain I never felt "worried" that we might lose the game, there was always a feeling of quiet confidence that as soon as we stopped the simple errors and got back to playing to our regular standard we were always going to get back on top and it was just a matter of time. 

I imagine that comes across as really arrogant, but I think the confidence just came from having at that point played with guys enough at ECC and on the pre tour to know what we were capable of as a team. 

For me personally, Worlds just felt like a continuation of the pre tour, where if I just went and did my job, and everyone else went out and did there's, there weren't any teams in our initial pool who were of higher (or even of comparable) calibre than the teams we played in the US so I felt it was always going to be difficult for them to stop us from winning. So it was just a case of turning up to each of those pool games and doing our jobs.

Actually the only point in the tournament where I found myself thinking about "the next round" was probably about three quarters of the way through the USA game when it was clear we were on the verge of going through our power pools as first seed into the quarter final (but even at that point I don't think I was aware of who we'd play if we won or lost that game) I just knew it was a game we really wanted to win to give ourselves the best chance of winning the whole tournament.   

Obviously the biggest game of the next round was the USA game. There is plenty on the USA perspective on the game at skyd. What are your thoughts on what could have gone down in history as a big upset game? 

Ahh… the USA game. The one that got away. 

I don't know about it "going down in history as a big upset" - I think the only ones who would have felt that it was a super big deal didn't know much about us nor saw us play on the pretour (but of course being from Australia most oppositions are always going to see us as a bit of an unknown quantity). 

I'm sure none of the Sockeye guys who narrowly scraped a win against us 16 v 15 (once again we had two chances to win starting on offense) would have been at all shocked if we beat the USA. I'm sure they wouldn't have "expected" it, but it wouldn't have been a "shocking" outcome.

It's also worth remembering that going into that game we had just beat the tournament's 4th seed, Sweden, to 9. So I think we had every right to be walking on the field planning to win and feeling we had a reasonable shot.

During and the game itself I know all I was thinking about was how much I wanted to win top seed in our half of the draw to give us the easiest match up in the quarter final, it didn't really register with me at the time that beating the USA in itself would be a big deal…

As for the game itself - here's my perspective - we played quite well to get ourselves into a great position. And I say "quite well" because I don't even think we played "great". No doubt a lot of credit needs to be given to the USA for putting enough pressure on us to force tougher shots and poor decisions (it was pretty windy as well), but by and large, I just thought we only played well.

Of course "well" was good enough to get us to 16 v 15 with disc in hand and it took what I consider four uncharacteristic poor decisions or errors from some of Australia's best players in those final two points for us to lose that game. 

So maybe it was just a case of the pressure got the best of us, I don't know, but all credit to the USA they hung in there and it took something a little special to get them across the line in that final point as well. So you can't take anything away from their win.

That said, prior to that game it was definitely the first time I felt that the team was a bit nervous, but I guess that was the first game we were going into as underdogs and I felt that after our match against Revolver (team USA) at ECC the previous year there were still a few linger questions as to if we could match it with such a high calibre team that had beat us reasonably comfortably 9 months ago…

… Of course most of those doubts were alleviated when we got the first break of the game. 

Of course we gave up a couple breaks just prior to half time, which a lot of guys found extremely disappointing, but I personally thought a 9 v 8 score line at half time was reflective of what was a good first half and positioned us well to have a real crack at winning and I think once this fact sank in with most guys it allowed us to come out after half time pretty excited with a lot of self belief. 

I am sure Mike is sitting at home thinking how you guys let the GB team get the better of you guys for the second time in the finals at worlds. What were your thoughts on the game and how did it affect the team? 

Firstly, all credit to GB. In a game that was played in incredibly windy conditions I honestly think they deserved to win and they also played the game with great spirit. In my opinion they just played much smarter than us. I felt like they sized up the condition, changed their game plan accordingly and got the result.

I think we on the other hand lacked experience in those conditions. And I don't mean that in the sense that as individual players we hadn't played in those conditions before, we all obviously had, I mean that in the sense that "as a team" we had never played in those conditions before and as a result we didn't have any specific strategies of how we as a team would play in such conditions. So from my perspective we by default tried to stick with the team strategies we had developed over the last 12 months that had served us so well, but the conditions probably warranted that we change our game plan. Of course that's just my opinion.

As for how it affected the team - it's hard to explain,  one minute the dream you have been working towards for years is still alive, the next minute it's all over, and it all happens so quick. I think it affected a lot of people differently. 

For me personally I was only called on to play two points in that game so I was left feeling like a huge dream had just been ripped away from me and yet at the same time I had so little personal control over the outcome of that game that I didn't know how to feel about it all. To be honest, I still don't… 

USA v GB final was a bit of a one sided affair from a spectators point of view. What were your thoughts on both teams and the blow out result? 

Well my "view" of the final probably wasn't the greatest given I was nursing an almighty hangover from the Worlds party the night prior. 

Firstly the conditions were once again windy and GB just came out dropped a couple of frisbees and threw a few turns early in the game (probably nerves), the USA didn't return the favour, and that was pretty much all she wrote. 

Giving a strong favourite an early lead in any game of ultimate, let alone a Worlds finals, tends to work out very badly for the underdog who is generally relying on keeping the game close in the hope that the favourite will panic a little under the unexpected pressure.

As for the blow out result, it just made me feel like it was a bit of a missed opportunity, and I'm sure the other pre tournament favourites, Canada and Japan, feel the same. That said, I'm sure GB aren't too worried they lost 17 v 5 - a silver medal is a silver medal no matter what the final score was. So congrats to them.

4 years until next worlds, will you make a play for the Aussie team in 2016? 

Good question... 

And at this stage I honestly don't know. I'm still processing the fact that it's all over…

I really don't know, there's a lot of variables to consider and I don't know where I will be with life and frisbee in two years time. That said, with full realisation of the massive physical, financial and emotional commitment required, which wasn't as obvious to me 18 months ago, it definitely makes you realise that you have REALLY got want it bad and you got to know that all the guys around you want  it just as bad if you want to have a real chance of winning at that level.

I tell you what though, I'll be FAR more likely to try out again if there are at least a couple of Brisbanites who are likely to make the team. Committing that amount of time, energy and money to the campaign would be far easier if I knew I'd get to enjoy  with a few more Brisbane team mates...

Thanks so much Chris and good luck with your recovery