And One Rule to Ring Them

It is fantastic that both the AFDA and WFDF have recently made announcements about activities to improve the rule knowledge of players.

All Ultimate players are referees.

Imagine if you were watching some other sport, and the referee didn't know the rules or got them wrong. There'd be a furor!

AFDA have recently appointed a National Rules Officer, the wonderful Jo Creswell, who's role is to promote rule knowledge amongst players. AFDA also hosted a Rules Forum at Nationals 2010 in Adelaide, which led to lively discussion. Check out Jo's introductory post.

Meanwhile, our own Rueben Berg, the very busy Chair of the WFDF Ultimate Rules Committee, recently launched the WFDF Rules Website. Go and have a look.

Is there someone reading this who'd nominate themselves or someone else as the BUDA or even just BPL Rules Promotion Officer? We here at the stately mansion would love to see a weekly email highlighting some rule or other, either drawn from AFDA and WFDF's work, or in response to a local query along the lines of "in a game at League the other night ..." We would faithfully reproduce your emails here on the Brisbane Ultimate Blog!

And some philosophy for you - the best way to understand the rules is to ask questions about them. To paraphrase Professor Sumner-Miller, to ask "Why is (this rule) so?" is the best way to learn and be able to explain to others.

Explaining a rule your own way, and hearing a rule explained differently by different people, helps you to grasp the platonic concept of the rule. So in the case of "what happens if the disc is thrown after a pick is called", my answer is "The moment when someone calls 'pick', play officially stops. Someone saying "Pick" is the same as a referee blowing a whistle in other sports. Anything that happens after that is irrelevant. The grief we have is that not everyone hears the call, and sometimes throws are thrown. Maybe we should all have whistles? But that doesn't change the fact that play has stopped."

Has Ultimate Blogging in Australia Jumped the Shark?

… assuming the phrase jumping the shark hasn’t actually jumped the shark.

After a booming 2008, Ultimate blogging in Australia seems to be in a bit of a decline. If you look at nothing but the numbers, you'd think that even the venerable Brisbane Ultimate Blog staff have been slacking off a bit (this is nothing to do with Hugh Hefner's efforts to purchase the stately mansion). But maybe instead of quantity we're moving towards quality?

Anyway, since its practically the end of the year, we figured we'd best get to saluting our comrades out in the blogosphere, or at least those amongst the big 4 (yes, there's a few other blogs out there that we haven't mentioned ... perhaps those quieter blogs are perhaps the best examples of shark jumping)

Sif
Tiger and Semfel had an uneven year on the blogging front. It could just be those hormones getting out of control again. But for the perspective of some dog-soldier buck-private Ultimate players facing up to the realities of injury and training for big events, this is the blog to read (leaving aside occasional divergences into poker and general chest beating). Posting was very quiet in 2009 relative to 2008, but still they kept them rolling.

Best Tiger Post: http://sifultimate.blogspot.com/2009/10/eiyuji.html
Best Semfel Post: http://sifultimate.blogspot.com/2009/06/diversification.html

This Things I Believe
Rubes had a third regular year of blogging – roughly a post a month, same as 2008 and 2007. 2009 on the page was dominated by events – Regionals/Nationals, World Games, and then the Tribe of Tiny Horses’ unfortunately dead-end path to World Clubs in Prague (sadly, the successful teams don't go much for blogging). Every post of Rueben’s is worth reading, so go read the lot, and like us, keep bugging him to post more.

Best Rueben Post – we’ll give the hype to this one, just because of the true history involved: http://rjhberg-disc.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-first-layout-callahan.html

Thinkulti
Owen’s adventures in Columbian Ultimate have dominated his blog this year, and for most ‘English-reading’ Ultimate players, this has been a bit of an eye opener for us. Remains essential reading.

Best Owen Post – we have to give it to this one for its insight: http://thinkulti.blogspot.com/2009/10/from-sidelines-unselected.html

Ballarat Ultimate
The annual AUGs build up and follow up and the annual Nationals build up and follow up continue to make Simmo essential reading, but its all the other thoughts and insights that make for the full blogging package. That Simmo does all this of course means that we here at the Brisbane Ultimate Blog can just snipe at the sidelines, or more accurately, from home because we didn’t get our lives together in a format that supports going to Nationals or attending Uni any more. Nonetheless, Ballarat Ultimate remains the gold standard for Australian Ultimate Blogging.

But we’ll have to suggest if you only read one post, you go for this one, just because of the long term service this will provide the Ultimate community: http://ballaratultimate.blogspot.com/2009/08/games-to-kill-time-at-tournaments.html


Hmm, so in sum, all this endeavour I think goes to show that there's still life in the old bloggers yet!

Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man Who Hucked the Frisbee

I think this is fantastic.

We have all grappled with not knowing what is going on when there's a call and a discussion that happens out of earshot.

Many have had the idea of using hand signals and such. But it has taken the sheer grit, gumption, intellect and general good looks of Rueben Berg to bring this not only to fruition, but to have them endorsed by the world-wide governing body WFDF.

This kind of stuff is also going to help those times when not everyone on the field is fluent in Ye Ulti-English, which is surprisingly often when playing both internationally and even at home against sub-human meatheads like the .

For a start, lets hope everyone in the BPL has a look at these, and starts to use them. Maybe we can even laminate a copy of this on the back of the scoreboards (Janlges?)

Check them out and start memorising here.

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.