Mixed Tour 2 Review

Matthew "Smatt" Hodgson gives us his perspective of Mixed Tour 2.

From start to finish the wind the typical Nottingham wind meant every point at Mixed Tour 2 was hard fought against the elements as well as the opponents, with very few games making it to the hard cap even amongst the teams at the top of the standings

Dominating Bagel news was Flux, who left it until their 3^rd game to get on the scoreboard before taking a dominating win of their own; 10-3 against Sheffield Steal 2. ABH B also took a 9-0 win over Bournemouth Heat, but once the pool stage was over the rankings worked themselves out with all teams getting points on the board.

ABH vs Pier Pressure at Mixed Tour 2. Photo courtesy of Graham Bailey.

The three teams finishing on the podium were Bear Cavalry, Cambridge and Brighton who all started in Pool A. Bear Cavalry and Cambridge proved themselves as the top two teams on tour this year with the Bears winning against everyone in the group once, and then repeating their wins against Brighton Breezy in the Semi Final and then putting on another show in the final against Cambridge in which Cult would not score an upwind goal and would only put in 1 point after the half. The final finished 13-6 and the Bears ground out their win with tireless effort on defence and the ability to generate yardage against the wind with powerful hucks hitting well timed deep cuts in stride. The first point was Bear Cavalry starting on offence and it was scored in less than 5 passes in the same upwind conditions that consistently howled throughout the weekend.

In pool B on the other side of the top 8, we saw teams falling down the rankings. Second seed Thundering Herd 1 started strong again, winning their group for the second tour in a row before their quarter final against Meeple, who had been energised by some big pickups. Meeple were able to dispatch BAF to enter the top 8 for the first time this season before making plenty of big plays and letting everyone know about them during their quarter final in which they deflated the Herd and broke the Top 4 for the first time. BAM ended up doing really well in the group, taking down RGS and Bristol to secure top 8 before losing out the rest of the way to teams on the ascendancy; Brighton Breezy in the quarter (who climbed from 5^th to 3^rd), Black Eagles in the 5 v 8 (who climbed from 9^th to 5^th) and Peeps in the 7 v 8 (who climbed from 13^th to 7^th). Each of the teams beating BAM down the stretch are interesting propositions for MT3. Brighton Breezy, as mentioned earlier, battled out of a tough Pool A before securing a 3^rd place finish with a very similar squad to the one they had at Tour 1, whilst Black Eagles and Peeps both added only one or two big playmakers and took down some big names in the crossovers to secure spots in the Top 8 (Bristol and RGS respectively). These teams should definitely feel good about their chances at the third and final event in Cheltenham.

Other big movers this weekend were ABH A and Pingu Jam. ABH A started slow, beating Deep Drillin’ and Brighton Early by only 2 points each in their group, before beating Brighton Pier Pressure to set up a semi against Pingu Jam. PJ’s offence at times seemed to be exclusively huck and hope/play defence based, but they managed to ride this strategy to a win over ABH A and ultimately an undefeated weekend and a climb from 19^th to 13^th. ABH A would finish the tour with another win, making it 5 from 6 and a climb from 23^rd to 15^th.

There was also a battle for second team supremacy in Nottingham. This has been a spot usually held by Thundering Herd 2, but at MT2 it was Brighton Pier Pressure (who I don’t think are technically a second team) who came out on top finishing 17^th, followed up by Cambridge 2 in 18^th and Herd 2 in 19^th who managed to hold off the challenge of Jabba the Huck (making their 2014 Mixed tour debut) in the 19 v 20.

Across the entire standings, the average number of places a team moved was 4.5 showing just how difficult seeding a 51 team tournament can be, even with one tournament’s results already in the books.

Cambridge only lost to the Bears all weekend and in their other games they were able to handle their business fairly easily, with their closest win finishing with a 9-6 score line against 3^rd place finishers Brighton Breezy in the pool stage. Brighton fought hard all weekend and were able to deal with the conditions better than most, in typical Brighton fashion, by sending up and consequently bringing down big hucks into and with the wind.

RGS had another tough weekend. Having only seen short parts of a limited sample of their games at the 2 tours so far, it’s difficult to say why they haven’t been challenging the top spots so far, and if I were to guess, I’d put it down to unfamiliarity with their teammates. Whilst they still have plenty of time before Worlds (4 months, MT3 and Golden Keg), they will be have been hoping the cohesion would have come quicker than this. Another problem appears to be giving up breaks to easily, with their offence not seeming able to get the disc back after a turn (based on my viewing a limited sample of points at MT1/2).

There was also plenty of movement in the lower brackets: The Saints rose 7 places culminating in a final game victory take down of Shakedown (who dropped 9 places), Glasgow “2” and Flux both dropping 11 places each and Black Sheep 2 earning a a win to take them up from 51^st to 50^th! 

Nice write up and hopefully more Smatt vs Matt next time round!