Force Sideline

Stories from Worlds: Terra Day 2

Submitted by dan on Wed, 2012-08-15 09:04

Day 2 kicked off with a few nervous girls and the entire team pumped to take on the USA, one of the top three teams at Worlds. The nerves showed early with the USA punching in a couple of goals straight away. Terra called a timeout to sort things out and talk things over.
 

Stories from Worlds: Terra Day 1

Submitted by dan on Tue, 2012-08-14 08:48

Southern Terra are off to a flying start at worlds, winning their first two matches.
 
Terra's first game of the tournament was against Russia. Terra was nervous but managed to rely on their training and maintained good offensive flow throughout the game. The Russian team hadn't played in the Worlds tournament before, this was their first game ever. On the last point of the match, Sam Iyer was on D for Terra and managed to score a Callahan to seal Terra's first victory of this World's Campaign.
 

Spirit, Can We Be Trusted?

Submitted by dan on Wed, 2012-08-08 15:58

For a yes or no question, the answer is so incredibly difficult.

 

Here is an example. At Worlds there were several games across multiple divisions that had questionable spirit. It wasn't confined to just one country or one division. Whilst being a minority, only a handful of games out of the hundreds that were played, there were situations where teams forgot rule # 1 in Ultimate in their quest to win. This game here, was caught on film and released for free by Ulti.tv, so we'll use it as our "example" match.

 

Getting to know your Barramundis

Submitted by force_sideline on Mon, 2012-06-25 20:19

On Thrusday, June 28 the Australian Mixed Ultimate Team, the Barramundis (Mundis) will meet in Seattle, USA for the start of their World Ultimate and Guts Championships (WUGC) 2012 pretour. The Mundis will play at Potlatch that weekend before flying to Sakai, Japan where WUGC2012 are taking place.

 

2012 AUC Preview - Part 3

Submitted by force_sideline on Fri, 2012-04-20 12:29

This year FS went with a different approach to our usual AUC preview, in that we went through the draw and simulated the results in order to formulate our predictions of the final standings. Seemed great in theory, but as we pointed out yesterday the obvious flaw in the final part of our predictions is the assumption, that up until now (the quarter final phase), we have correctly picked the winner of 88 games of ultimate. Massive call, given our hit rate last year was around 80%. Nevertheless, we will push on with our model today as we look at what will (may) happen on days three and four.

2012 AUC Preview - Part 2

Submitted by force_sideline on Thu, 2012-04-19 16:22

Every year we say it, but this year we truly mean it – this is the most competitive field the Open division at AUC has ever seen. It might only be the subconscious desire to never see a Colony v Colony final, but our brains tell us you could throw a blanket over the top six based on the season’s form and on-paper analysis. You could then rustle up another blanket or tarpaulin and cover the next five or six teams with that in the case for the last quarter final places. One thing we do know for certain – if it’s a Pillage/Plunder final, we’re going to the sports bar at Newcastle Airport to watch Essendon versus Collingwood instead.

2012 AUC Preview - Part 1

Submitted by force_sideline on Wed, 2012-04-18 13:14

In recent days, other ultimate “journalists” have posted their predictions of this year’s Australian Ultimate Championships, beating FS to the punch. So why should you bother with ours, especially when considering how hilariously wrong our Div II predictions were? We go far more in depth with our analysis, using the draw to consider factors such as game order, potential weather conditions, potential for fatigue and injuries, and key matchups. Ultimately it is an educated guess as to who wins each match, because once you’re at the top flight, things can go either way on the day. In the first part of our 2012 AUC preview, we have a look at the women’s pool round.

2012 AFDA Division II Nationals preview

Submitted by force_sideline on Thu, 2012-04-12 15:13

Back in the day, everyone who wanted to attend Nationals could do so. They simply needed to either get in good with the senior players of the local team, or could band together and form their own outfit. In these modern times of the ‘Australian Ultimate Championships’ era, the star local teams remain with their poxy concepts of “fitness” and “training” but there is no room for the celebrated pickup-ish team. The team of up and comers, or has-beens, or both who would be the focus of a Mighty Ducks style documentary were they to make AUC proper. Division II Nationals has been created for those teams. There is now a place for teams to be formed with mismatched uniforms, rudimentary tactics and lack of proper cohesion in order to make a run at a national title that doesn’t have the word ‘mixed’ in it.

2012 Regionals Round-Up

Submitted by force_sideline on Fri, 2012-03-16 14:09

As of Monday March 12th we know who the 32 teams competing at AUC 2012 will be. And guess what – we predicted all of them! Admittedly many teams stood out as obvious candidates, and realistically there was only one match that could have gone either way. But still, the stats don’t lie! Today we have a look at what went down in each region.

2012 Southern Regionals Preview

Submitted by force_sideline on Wed, 2012-03-07 15:06

Southerns has been home to some heartbreaking games in qualification in the last couple of years. HoS White knocked Tassie out of contention in Ballarat in 2009 on the Saturday afternoon. Ultimate Evolution rolled Sweet Chilly in 2010 to get the top four finish, and Sweet Chilly went on to lose to a heavily undermanned Bad Apples. And last year Quoll beat Sweet Chilly on universe point in wet and windy conditions in Hobart last year while HoS White had to battle against an unfavourable draw to qualify. Meanwhile in the women’s draw Sporting Team Box Athletico United have rarely looked like losing the final in the last few years, with Safire and Honey fighting among themselves for second place. Are we going to see such battles this year?

Pages

Subscribe to Force Sideline