28 August 2014

UKU Nationals Results

UKU Nationals were held in Southampton this weekend just past. Here's how it went...


Qualifying for EUCF 2014 held in Frankfurt are:

OPEN
1. Clapham (Elite Division)
 2. Chevron Action Flash (Elite Division)
3. EMO
4. Fire of London
5. Brighton 
6. Cambridge

WOMEN'S
1. Iceni 
2. SYC

MIXED
1. Birmingham Mixed
2. Pingu Jam  
3. Thundering Herd


Spirit of the Game winners were Flump,  Iceni and Brighton Breezy - congratulations! Full results including spirit can be found here.

Mark 'Fandango' Simpson goes all out for the D against EMO in the semi-finals. Photo courtesy of Andrew Moss.

Congratulations to Iceni and Clapham Ultimate for retaining the title in their respective divisions, and to the new Mixed Champions: Birmingham Mixed!

Watch Open semi-finals and finals for all divisions with commentary by David Pichler here.

You can also but footage VOD from PushPass, who have also published a Drama post following the possibility of Pingu Jam fielding a ineligible player.

For those who took part the results of the fantasy Ultimate can be found here



Look out for our EUCF preview coming soon...

22 August 2014

Club or Country: An Irish Perspective

New contributor Brian 'Boyler' Boyle discusses Club or Country from an Irish perspective...
EUCR-S is happening in Nantes, France, this weekend and for the second year in a row, Ireland will only be represented by one club after two years previously of not being represented at all. Despite this, there is interest in Ireland next year not only to send an Open, Women’s and Mixed team to EUC, but also an Open and Women’s team to U23 Worlds. This begs a very important question that I think all Irish Ultimate players need to start asking themselves: why as a country are we willing to spend so much time, effort, and money to play for Ireland, when we are not willing to spend a fraction as much to play for our clubs?
The Case for Tour
Irish players are incredibly lucky to be so close to the UK and have the opportunity to play Tour for such a small cost in comparison to other European tournaments. The competition is of a high standard, and the chance for teams to improve on their final position from the year before will always be there as an incentive for clubs to compete year after year. There is also the thrill of playing against a team that you’ve never played before or never beaten before, and starting new rivalries outside of Ireland. If the spirit circles after matches are anything to go by, British teams are always happy to play Irish teams and I’m sure they would welcome more Irish competition at Tour. A player can also play all three Tours with an additional European tournament (be that EUCR, Windmill Windup, Cologne, etc.) for less money than an entire season with an Ireland National Team. Perhaps this is something to consider with trials coming up soon.
Ranelagh were the only Irish club to compete at all three UK Tours this year. The team sent two squads to Tour 2 and London Calling (Pictured). Photo courtesy of Mark Earley.

Open
Irish national teams are supposed to have as little effect on club Ultimate as possible, but this is never the case. The biggest hindrance to clubs during national team years is using Tour 1 and Tour 2 as warm up tournaments for EUC or WU23. If this continues next year one of two things will happen: either the club teams that go to Tour will under-perform because their key players are playing for Ireland, or the club teams that would normally go (or might want to go) won’t be able to because they don’t have enough players. Ireland is too small of a nation to sustain a Senior Open and U23 Open team as well as a competitive club scene.
There is something to be said for younger players playing for a National Team and becoming better players, and then making their club teams stronger in the future. I would argue that there is just as much to be said for a younger player joining a highly competitive team and playing club Ultimate in the UK and Europe. This also benefits more players directly and exposes more players to a higher level of Ultimate than one national team could ever do. Ireland teams are one-off and only last a year. Club teams (hopefully) last for years and years. Is it worth putting a club team on hold for an entire year just to benefit a few players? As a small nation our goals should be for more players playing more Ultimate, not fewer.

Women’s
Women’s Ultimate in Ireland has been growing stronger and stronger over the last few years, but Irish women’s teams are still under-represented at Tour. Most annoyingly, an Irish women’s club has still yet to compete in EUCR (UK Nationals). Despite this, our clubs have proved that they are able to compete at a high level, whether it be LMS winning several games at WUCC and going undefeated at Tour 2 (kept out of the top 4 since they didn’t compete at Tour 1), or Rebel Ultimate competing strongly at Tour 3. If these two clubs put the effort in next year they could both attend all three Tours and EUCR for less money than it would cost to represent Ireland at EUC in Copenhagen. In contrast, if there is an Irish women’s team next year the likelihood of a club going to all 3 Tours is slim to none, and Ireland will once again go unrepresented at EUCR in the Women’s division.

Claire Pugh competes for a disc against Rogue form Australia in WUCC, one of LMS’s three victories of the week. Photo courtesy of Mark Earley.

Solution


I can think of three possible solutions to the problem of National Teams damaging club teams in Ireland. I’m sure all three will be seen as dramatic by most Irish players, but I only pose them so people can start to discuss this issue which I feel has been going unnoticed. The first is to not send an Irish Open or Women’s team to EUC next year and to concentrate entirely on Club Ultimate. However, this would need the backing of the entire community as well as a concentrated effort to get as many teams to Tour next year as possible, which I see as fairly unlikely at present. The second is to allow National Teams as normal next year, but to ban them from competing at Tour for their warm-up tournaments. Personally I like this option, but with a lack of other affordable and high-standard tournaments available I don’t see it as very viable.
The third is to send club teams to represent Ireland in EUC. This would obviously have the least effect on club Ultimate in Ireland next year, though it is not without its drawbacks. To counteract these drawbacks, whichever club team gets chosen to represent Ireland could pick up a small number of players from other clubs who get the chance to play for Ireland without damaging their own clubs by losing too many members. Club teams already compete and train regularly, and players would not be forced to choose between their club and their national team. Most importantly, the national teams would be able to compete at Tour without preventing other club teams from also competing.


The Cost of an Ireland Jersey
Representing your country in sport is indisputably a great honour, but I think Irish Ultimate players need to ask themselves an important question: is it a great accomplishment? With such a small player base the best players in the country already know they will make the team before trying out. Until there are over a dozen highly competitive clubs in Ireland, playing for Ireland can arguably be seen as more of an ego-boost and selfish, especially when you’re playing Tour for Ireland and leaving your club-mates at home. When Ultimate in Ireland was much smaller, Irish national teams contributed immeasurably to make Irish Ultimate what it is today, but now by choosing to represent Ireland instead of your club you may be indirectly harming Irish Ultimate rather than helping it. As someone who has played for Ireland myself I won’t deny that it is an incredible experience, but think about this: if you consider the people who have played for Ireland more than once, there are currently more Ireland jerseys in Ireland than there are IFDA members.

Conclusions
If you’ve read this far than you have might have found a major flaw in my argument. The players who are willing to spend so much time and effort to play for Ireland are most likely already willing to put that effort into their clubs. It’s the less eager players who are not willing to travel to Tour. After all, there were no senior Ireland teams this year and numbers at Tour were still low. This is an inherent problem and we need some sort of system to incentivise or reward players for going to Tour. Until then, as this club season comes to an end and you start working on plans for next year I would urge any player who wants to get better or see their club get better to convince your teammates to compete for their club at Tour next year. If your club has an AGM at the end of the year, raise the question of what your team will do in order to make it to all three Tours next year. The costs of going may be minimal compared to the costs of not going.


Author's Note: I chose not to focus on Mixed Ultimate as I feel Irish mixed clubs and Mixed Tour is a separate issue worthy of a separate article. Also, while I am President of the Irish Flying Disc Association, the opinions expressed in this article are my own and not those of the IFDA as a whole.
Brian will be continuing to write for The Showgame as Irish correspondent - welcome on board! Do you have an opinion about Club or Country that you want to be heard? We are looking for more contributors to this popular discussion, so get in touch!

The Question of Regionalisation

Josh CK looks at some concerns voiced about the 2014 UKU Regionals...

[Edit - this post contains views expressed by writers that are not necessarily that of The Showgame. Our aim here is to generate a fair and intelligent discussion - please see and add to the comments below for continued discussion as well as a further elucidation of many, if not all of the points brought up. JCK]

This year's Regionals and Nationals were not without their share of controversy. Nationals was a formerly an event that looked very much like a final tour event, held in order to find a national champion on an annual basis as well as acting as qualifiers for the European championships. The regional qualification process for the Open division was debuted in 2010 to 'a mostly positive response'. With a lighter 16 team knockout, the new Nationals also featured a permanent site in Southampton, featuring a show pitch with live streaming. With broad changes made with long-term plans in mind (increase in competition at Regionals and Nationals, the creation of 'the UKU's primary "showcase" event'*), a certain amount of adaptation is arguably to be expected. However, certain decisions (specifically in the London region) have both caused confusion and incited some strongly voiced concerns. Matt Dathan writes:

Nationals comes on the back of a controversial Regionals this year, with Clapham given a bye at London qualifiers and only having to play two games to decide their seed. This meant they rocked up at 2pm in the afternoon to play their two games, in contrast to their eventual opponents, Ka-pow and Fire of London, who both had to turn up five hours earlier and play three games before playing a fresh Clapham team.


Fire and Ka-pow understandably issued a complaint to the UKU about this baffling contradiction of fair play. In response the UKU justified the decision in terms of logistics, claiming a 9-team tournament would have been too complicated to organise.


Even without going into the duller arguments of the many ways a 9-team qualifying tournament could work, to sacrifice fair play for the sake of logistics is a very dangerous road to go down. UKU said they were “utterly confident that clapham wouldn't finish lower than fifth”. Yes - you heard it - a governing body deciding where teams will finish before a disc has been thrown. This undermines the very nature of sport, not just fair play, that the outcome, however predictable it may be, is not known beforehand.


It also emerged that UKU were actually “more worried” that Clapham would send a weakened team and therefore not take first seed at Nationals (in the Midlands region, Cambridge sent a weakened team, but were they given a bye to Nationals? No.)


Proof, if ever we needed it, that UK ultimate is organised to suit the interests of the top teams. If a team does badly at qualifiers - regardless of who they are - they must take the consequences, otherwise there is absolutely no point in holding qualifying and the UKU may as well use seeding and qualifying from tour (which would be a huge shame).


This happened of course last year when Manchester beat a weakened Chevron team, but the UKU still decided that they had to meddle to ensure the top teams are given their familiar route to the final.


Maybe that’s why this year they’ve changed the seeding format (without telling us why). Traditionally, Nationals seedings are based on the previous year’s tournament, but this year they’ve changed the format and an (unelected) body has decided themselves where teams should be seeded, again undermining the credibility of having a clearly defined, automatic system of deciding seeds (as mainstream sports do). It has led to a few strange seedings at Nationals, but rest-assured, the top two haven’t been tinkered with.


The decision to give Clapham a bye not only does it compromise the principle of fair play, but it also further distances the sport’s grassroots from its elite. Regionals is the only time amateur players get the chance to test themselves against the best - ultimate’s equivalent to the FA Cup - and the only time elite players will have to put up with playing amateur teams.


Another new invention for this year’s Nationals is the decision to charge player fees rather than team fees. With each individual having to pay £20 each, and considering the average team size in the Open division is around 17 players, the revenue for hosting the tournament has risen significantly on last year. Unless costs have jumped equally as high, it means more money going into the pockets of a few at the expense of the many in the ultimate community.


The sport already struggles to attract a diverse proportion of society, but the ballooning cost of playing the sport (and it’s not only Nationals) will make it even more of a white, middle class hobby than it already is.


It is a shame that the sport seems to be floating away from principles that it has always regarded very highly. Greater accountability must be imposed on decisions and a greater say must be given to the players (and payers) of the sport. There will be much more written on this subject in the coming months.

Dale Walker also took issue with the London Regionals schedule, and writes of a sense of the lacklustre at this year's Northern Regionals.

In principle, the UKU move to a regional/national/Euros structure is a smart move. It is a far more relatable structure to the US system of many years of Sectionals / Regionals / Nationals and allows for tournaments to be played on a local scale with weighted bids from each region reflecting that region’s strength (based on Tour). In theory, it should provide a tournament that isn’t too far of a commute to make and replaces the need to schedule in a round earlier in the Tour for lower ranked teams to play their more illustrious contemporaries. However, something still isn’t quite right.

Northern Regionals saw a predictable finish with Chevron meeting Manchester in the final after both teams eased past the remaining field. However, in a theme that appears to be translated across the country, Northern Regionals saw a relative lack of engagement from many teams who saw little point in attending a tournament with no realistic opportunity to progress to the Open division. This must be considered a real area of concern for the UKU – with the shift to a regional structure, the UKU aimed to provide an opportunity for lower ranked teams to play the country’s best but this hasn’t translated into attendance yet. In the Northern region, even established powers like LeedsLeedsLeeds and The Brown didn’t attend despite having a very realistic shot of taking the #3 bid from the region. In some cases, the scheduling doesn’t even allow for the lower ranked teams to play some of the biggest draws the format is supposed to provide – Clapham qualified for Nationals before the first disc was even thrown, which seems almost an admission that some teams are too good to play against lower ranked opposition. The UKU surely cannot promote the tournament as an opportunity to play against the best then double back on themselves through scheduling?

To further illustrate the issues at hand, Sheffield Steal ended up taking the third bid from the region ahead of Liverpool’s Vision after a convincing win in the 3v4 game to go. Steal featured a large number of LLL & Relentless players who even as a loose pickup team ended up qualifying for Open Nationals. If the regional format is to continue, these events need to become more than just a qualifier as at present too many clubs omit them from their calendar entirely. Perhaps as part of the event the UKU can arrange for the Elite team(s) in each region to provide skills clinics or something similar to create an event that is more than just a qualifier.

The UKU website presents Regionals as development focused, promoting 'a one-day tournament, hopefully a couple of hours from home' which also creates a chance to 'play against a really top team'. However, it seems there is growing pains as top teams are reluctant to accept Regionals as an important date in their busy diaries, and Regionals is not necessarily providing as much development as it could for the teams and players of UK Ultimate. There is clearly some disagreement with the handling of this year's events - but is this a turn in the wrong direction or an overreaction to a blip in an otherwise strong transition to a new Nationals structure? Is this an issue with our tournament organising, or one that's grown out of our player base's attitudes towards development? Do we, and should we care more about fostering strength on a regional level, even at the expense of our own club? Would strength at a regional level arguably not always lead to longer term club benefits, whether for the elite or grassroots? As always there is no simple answer to a complex issue, but it seems one that is ripe for debate as more and more are concerned with the structuring and development of our sport. Discuss...

*http://www.ukultimate.com/system/files/UK%20National%20Championships%20-%20Updated%202013_0.pdf

What do you think? Did you and your team have a good experience at regionals, or choose not to play for any reason? Comment below or get in touch if you want to contribute!

UKU Nationals 2014 - Preview

With the drama of Lecco now over the focus returns to domestic competition in Southampton at the UKU National Championships. 


Bristol will once again be looking for a long-wanted win over domestic rivals Iceni. Photo courtesy of Andrew Moss

Women's

This year the women's division grows by two teams to 8, allowing a group into knockout format in which the top two head straight to semi finals. Group A looks less likely to present any upsets as Iceni and Bristol will be hardened returning from the international competition of their WUCC campaigns. Relentless and Manchester will be hoping that tiredness and the dreaded 'double peak' seasons of their opposition will give them a look into the top 4. In Group B the qualifying teams seem are less easily predicted. Punt will be favourites to take the top spot, but have had close games this season against both SYC and Leeds, who will be scrapping hard with Dragon Knights and each other for the semi final spot. As well as a National title, teams are also competing for 2 coveted European qualification spots. That there are no further qualification chances after the final, the semis will come with an extra added dose of pressure for all teams involved.


Chevron will once again be looking to end Clapham's reign. Photo courtesy of Andrew Moss


Open

The Open bracket once again features 16 regional qualifiers in a straight to knockout format. The top 6 teams will head to Europe, with the top 2 spots starting in the 'Elite' division. The final winner takes the first spot, but the second is open to poaching if the winner of the 3v4 and the loser of the final have not yet played, in which case an extra fixture will be played to determine who takes the final Elite division European qualification spot.

Clapham exceeded expectations in Lecco with their exhilarating yet crushing quarter-final loss in sudden death to eventual and repeating World Champions, Revolver. Southampton is familiar ground for domination for this team, and they will look to carry their good form into a 14th consecutive title. They are favourites but with every successive victory comes more pressure to maintain this record. Their route will likely see them face either Brighton or Fire, both teams who will be more than keen to exploit any pressure cracks in the Clapham game. Emo and Chevron are on course to meet on the other side of the bracket, with Devon or Manchester and CUlt looking to trip up the Northern division champions after their 17th place Worlds finish. Up and coming EMO will only have swelled in confidence after a taste of la dolce vita breaking into the top 16, scoring big wins against Freespeed and Melbourne Juggernaut, who knocked Chevron out of the championship bracket. If it happens, this semi is set to be a crowd-pleaser. The 5v6 will not be a 'game-to-go' to Europe, as both teams qualify, but this will in turn hike up the pressure on the preceding two games.


Herd and JR will be battling once again for European qualification. Photo Courtesy of Andrew Moss


Mixed

The 8 team Mixed Nationals tournament offers 3 qualification spots for Europeans, and a notable lack of all of the four british WUCC contenders with Bear Cavalry, Black Eagles, CUlt, and RGS. Thundering Herd are a longstanding committed mixed team and will be looking to take this opportunity to rise back to the top of the mixed pile, but they won't get there easily. Brighton boast one of the largest Ultimate communities outside of London as well as years of pedigree at mixed, and teams such as Pingu Jam, JR and Birmingham will all be bringing young and tight-knit rosters. Curve, ABH and Flyght Club are all longstanding clubs with new talent as well as experienced regulars to draw from, and will also be looking to sneak the wins needed to make the semis bracket. The movement of personnel to the Open and Women's divisions makes it tough to predict any of the games in this division, but all teams will be excited by the open field as well as the relatively high number of European qualification spots.    

Keep an eye on the schedule links for results from the weekend, as well as live streaming provided for the Open semis, and Open and Women's finals.  UTC have created a fantasy ultimate - check it out here! Finally, this tournament will feature a trial of non-anonymous Spirit voting for each team.

As always, best of luck from The Showgame to all teams competing this weekend!




Stay tuned for some more Nationals coverage addressing some of the controversies surrounding this year's event...