Frisby Teams Look Strange In All the Same Outfits

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There's nothing quite like a Frisbee game. I remember how exciting it was to go down to a field with a bunch of guys and girls, all with their own "thing" and all that. We'd run around and throw a Frisbee to each other, and that, boy I'll tell you, is when those different outfits would all merge together in a kaleidoscope of colour. It was really really cool. And that, my friends, was some really Ultimate Frisbee.

But it just couldn't last. The kind of disorganised coordination those pink/purple/grey shirted, boardshort-wearing, leggings clad, floppy hatted, upsidedownandbackwards-visored dudes brought into our lives was a flame that burned too brightly. Gone are the days of the Sons of Yoda, Bongorilla, Craddock's Dog, the BUDs, the Fluid Druids and the like, when you'd be lucky to see clothes on these people.

Remember when Omo Erectus all grew different moustaches? That was the stuff, man! But in their place have come clones all wearing the same outfits and the same LukeAA-smooth faces (and I mean, laxative smooth!).

I wouldn't be surprised if these so-called modern 'Ultimate Clubs', with their identical team shirts (imported from overseas no less!), aren't actually good friends who spend their time together laughing, singing, smiling and pulling innocent pranks, for crying out loud!

The last time I tried to go to what now passes for a "frisbee tournament," I was just plain confused. Had I joined the army or something? These people seem to be wearing weapons-grade sports fabrics and stuff.

Having the same shirt on for each team member is not only disorienting — it's completely bugluging insane. I used to know everyone's face, the backs of their heads (they're all run long once I got the disc), their running style, all that.

But now – now I see that Alex Whan has set everything up so he just throws when he sees Yellow! Hey, next thing you know, Steve Cameron will be throwing to a particular team-mate, in black with a number 6 on him, rather than just chucking a bomb to the endzone to see how big a leaping pack he can generate!

We need to get back to the days of being unable to distinguish, by outfit alone, who is a hardcore frisbee player, and who is just a normal person going about his evening. This is how we used to get more people playing frisbee. Just walking around outside the lab or in the Great Court, throwing frisbees to people!

Sure, there were some teams in the 1990s who tried to have the same hairstyle — I think it was one of T-Ross's teams — but they were still all over the place with the different colours and curly versus not curly, and then it all thinned out. Usually, I'd be hesitant to call anything without a full head of hair a frisbee team at all, but I'm grasping at straws here.

The real tragedy is, the kids today don't know what they're missing. My daughter goes crazy for this team, the Dyspnoeics, who she claims are the best team ever. But there's nothing frisbee-like about them! They ALL have the same blue shirts – they even look identical to the other teams with blue shirts on. No daughter of mine is going to support some pack of effort-clones who can't just pick up something off the floor of the squat before they wander down to the park.

Why, just about the only thing that maintains their individuality is their wide range of perverse sexual practices.

Times sure have changed, for the worse, I guess. Hopefully the "same shirts" fad of these last few years of frisbee will fade, and we'll return to the glory days of Ultimate, when a team's handler was not only distinguished by lazy ass and tricky throws, but by his pink tutu, single kneepad, fluro zinc, Dr Phil leather gear, and most importantly by the trademark headband he wore to disguise his identity while eluding mobs of screaming girls who would chase him down the street, forcing him to duck into an old-fashioned phone booth and pretend to make a telephone call.

Remember, if you see people dressed in matching Bugger or Minx or Rawhide or Cougar shirts, they're really just either thugby-ites looking for beer, or worse, agents of THE MAN, trying to keep you DOWN.