World Games Preview: Australia

James Burbidge takes a look down under at Team Australia in the third installment of his World Games series.

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Team Australia

The Lineup

Danielle Alexander
Stephanie Malcher
Lisi Moore
Cat Phillips
Michelle Phillips
Sarah Wentworth

Seb Barr
Peter Blakeley
Jonno Holmes
Tim Lavis
Gavin Moore
Joel Pillar
Tom Rogacki

Team Australia.

About the Team

Known as the Crocs, Australia look to be a good balance of experience (two players attended the 2005 World Games), and youth (5 players were at the u23 championships in Florence in 2010). They’ve also got great team spirit, and a winning social media campaign, as evidenced by their website, twitter, facebook and youtube accounts. Plus, they're getting in the news.

Without a doubt, the biggest name on the list is Tom ‘The Gak’ Rogacki. The most dominant player in Australia for the last 15 years, his name is known around the (Ultimate) world. He brings experience from the 2005 World Games to the team and first represented Australia in 1998. He played in the Masters division at the last WUCC where he lead the division in total stats (goals + assists). A possibly controversial selection, he will undoubtedly make an impact on the field.

Whilst most of the team have a similar wealth of experience representing their country, one player will be putting green and gold on her shoulders for the first time – Danielle Alexander. Making the jump from club to World Games team is a significant step and should indicate a hot new talent.

At the other end of the spectrum is Peter Blakeley who, having come up through the Autralian junior programme, has played for every Australian team possible (without being a woman or a master).  He caught twice as many goals as any other Austalian player in the Open division in Japan, and is a receiver to be reckoned with.

Peter will be reunited with four teammates from that campaign: Joel Pillar, Seb Barr (who threw the highest number of goals on the Australian Open team in Japan), Jonno Holmes (who has played both previous World Games) and Tim Lavis, the Captain of the Crocs. It is unknown how much sleep Jonno and Tim have had since that hammer.

Coming from the extremely successful (silver medal) and well-coached Mixed team in Japan are husband and wife pairing Gavin and Lisi Moore who should bring chemistry to the field as well as a deeper understanding of the mixed game.

Another pairing of note on the team is that of the Phillips sisters. Both won gold with the u23 Women’s team in Florence and both were dominant players in same division at WUGC. Michelle, the older sister, scored the 3rd most goals for the Australian team, and Cat was 4th in total stats in the whole division. She is also still eligible for the u23 tournament taking place in Toronto this year but opted for World Games instead.

Tom Rogacki throws past a Finnish force. Photo courtesy of Paul Hurt.

Coaches and expected playing style

The team is coached by Anna Rogacki, wife of Tom. She coached Cat, Michelle and Steph to a gold medal in the u23 Womens team in 2010 and coached the Club team Honey to a National Championships in 2012. This year she coached the Men’s team Chilly to 3rd place at the Australian National Championships.

Assistant coach Mike Neild was originally a reserve for the team and so presumably brings a close relationship with the players. He has a wealth of playing experience where he dominated the air as a downfield receiver. Having played at World Games in 2009 he knows what’s involved and will be able to share his experience and knowledge with the team.

The Australians have been known for a strong deep game, usually from a vertical stack, and backed up by tenacious man defense. I wouldn’t expect them to move away from what has made them successful in the past, but since they feel like they’ve been knocking on the door for a while, perhaps they’ll look for something new to muscle their way into the final?

Expected finishing place

Australia has been on the 2nd tier of world Ultimate for a long time, and I don’t see this competition being any different. Their strong Mixed results will stand them in good stead over some of the competition, but I don’t see them breaking into the final.

4th.

Remember to donate towards the ulti.tv WG coverage page! Like, share and comment in any way you can. DP @ tSG. 

The Grapevine - 12/07

This weeks super sized The Grapevine has everything from Juniors to U23 to xEUCF 2013.

Last weekend the UKU held the Junior Championships and an inaugural UKU Schools Championships in Birmingham. Airbadgers (Exeter) defended their junior title and Flux (Twycross House School, Leicester) took the schools number one spot, congratulations to them and keep up the great work! Full results here.

Benji gets a little riled (as do many others: see the comments section) discussing incidental contact on his blog Understanding Ultimate.

Tour 3 will be in Cardiff this weekend see how everyone fared in Nottingham with our coverage of Tour 2. All details for this final part of the regular season can be found here. Will anyone challenge Clapham or Iceni? Who will finish in that top 16 and in what order? Who is the fastest man in UK Ultimate? Keep your eyes on twitter with the hashtag #ukut3 for results and more!

Barry O'Kane talks to Tim Morrill on speed and agility training for ultimate, a must listen on UTalkRaw! 

The Australian Flying Disc Association have released the WFDF preliminary U23 World Championship seedings. A huge good luck to all our U23 athletes, let's go GB! 

The Secret Frizzer gives us more insight into the Tour 2 success of EMO through coach Joe Wynder and for Devon through their coach Sam Luxa. [UPDATED: interview with Alex Cragg by tSF here.]

The TD's of xEUCF need you! Volunteers make large tournaments run smoothly, think you got what it takes? Fancy visiting Bordeaux in September and getting the highest level ultimate in Europe too? Apply here.

Finally, the Australian U23 Mixed squad have some quirky little videos on their YouTube channel. Check them out, what do you think about them?

Logo courtesy of A.F.D.A.

Remember: like, share and contribute. JCK or I will tweet small tit bits from Cardiff with #ukut3. DP @ tSG.

Tour 2 Review - A Tour (ft. Alex Cragg)

Josh Coxon Kelly tells us the tale of A tour at Nottingham including the inside story from one of the Fire 1 captains Alex Cragg.

Players and teams came to Nottingham expecting stormy weather and were not disappointed. A stiff wind all weekend and rushes of rain ensured that Tour 2 was a test of throwing skill and team strategy where patience and discipline would pay dividends. Such conditions are also ripe for upset - particularly on pitches with clear up/down wind orientation - and in this category the A tour didn’t disappoint.

Pool A saw Clapham and GB u23 looking to hold onto the top two seeds in a straight to semis schedule. The meeting of these two teams was closer than at Tour 1, but despite an early lead due to an excellent start by GB, clapham showed their consistency and improved steadily throughout the game to come out victorious once again. Neither Ranelagh or KaPow managed to break into the top 2 of the pool, and a 10-9 loss in their match-up to Ranelagh saw the bottom two in the pool switch seeds.

Michael Speer (GB U23) bids on Matt Dathan (KaPow) in the pool stages. Photo courtesy of Graham Bailey.

In Pool B a reduced Chevron squad make light work of opposition including an opening grudge match against Fire (in recent seasons a frequent matchup, this was the first time the squads had met since Fire’s victory in the 2012 Nationals semi-final). Chevron came out strong and didn’t let up, winning 15-6 in a game that was to be ominous of Fire’s weekend to come. EMO held seed in a dramatic win against a stuttering Fire squad, confirming their place in the top 4 for a second tour running, a win that could turn out to have serious implications in terms of tour rankings for WUCC 2014...

Chevron stayed clinical despite the wind and repeated their tour 1 quarter final victory over the u23s on Sunday, this time for a place in the final to play Clapham. However Chevron’s high retention performances would not continue into the last game of the weekend. Clapham brought a smart game that capitalised early and played through the Chevron zone in both directions. Down early, Chevron were unable to recover and didn’t manage to adapt their more conservative playing style to the worsening conditions as well as their London rivals, who emerged comfortable winners.

Fire veteran Lewis Glover does just enough to beat David Ray (Leeds).
Photo Courtesy of Graham Bailey.

Movement from the second 8 was to create arguably the most dramatic storylines of this tour however, as a Devon squad bolstered by returning players (including Chevron D-line star Ben Hall) completed a dramatic victory over Fire 1 on Sunday morning in the crossover for top 8. Players arriving early at the food and physio tents were treated to a sudden death comeback victory for Devon featuring a completed world’s greatest and the most emphatic of celebrations as Fire’s weekend took a further turn for the worse.

Manchester converted their qualification, avoiding the relegation fate shared by BAF, Cambridge and Glasgow. The highest climber from the second 8 was Fire 2, who after beating KaPow found themselves in the top 8, eventually finishing one place above their first team. 
Fire 1 have long been a firm top 4 team, and have been no stranger to finals at Tour, Nationals and even European championships in the last 5 years. Dropping out of the top 8 is the first significant movement of one the top 3 teams of recent A-tour history - tSG spoke to captain Alex Cragg to gain some insight into the weekend’s events...

Quite a few of the results at tour 2 were obviously disappointing for you and your team. What do you think happened to cause the upsets?

We'd had a slightly lower finish than we'd hoped for at Tour 1, even given the international teams, but we knew we had the ability to play at the top; taking a strong Bad Skid to sudden death proved that.

Unfortunately, that confidence backfired and we presumed our games were foregone conclusions. We failed to take the Chevron game as enough of a sign that wasn't going to be the case. People wanted to beat us more than we wanted to beat them; our heads weren't in the right place and we lacked focus causing too many individual errors, which crippled any tactical adjustments.

Another problem was that we tried to play Ultimate... Some people might scoff at that, but we undervalued territory in those conditions. We know how to play through a zone, but it was only half way through the Devon game, 6 points down, that we started to play to our real strengths.

What actions did you take to turn around the team’s mentality after these losses?

We made sure that our pre-game preparation consisted of much more throwing, getting people's self belief back. We needed to salvage something from the weekend, and putting the prospect of losing all our games into context helped bring back some desire to win.

We'd probably placed too much focus on the bigger picture of World's qualification, so we brought things back to focus on one game at a time.

Unexpected losses are undeniably difficult to take, but they can give an opportunity to learn about your team - what lessons did you take from tour 2?

The main thing I think we learnt is that we probably haven't been exploiting our individual strengths enough, instead focussing on a team ethos that has seen some people's roles mutate.

Every single player was hugely disappointed with the weeked, and I think everyone's taking a bit more personal responsibility since then. We all know we can do better. We'll be a very different team at Tour 3 and Nationals.

The second team’s squad has been strong at all showings this year and performed very well to qualify for the top 8 in Nottingham - will this see much change in players between the teams for Tour 3?

Fire 2 have been brilliant this year. A lot of people wrote them off after last year, but they've proven that to have been a blip in a very strong history for a second team. They're definitely on track for their season goal of taking one of the 6 Euro's spots.

One of our ideas for the year was to allow each team to have its own identity, which has included playing and drilling in those teams at training sessions. This builds up the relationships players need to do well.

However, there has been a small amount of movement, with 2 players coming up from Fire 2. We've also moved a couple of Fire 1 players into the seconds to give them more experience playing against top 4 competition (with Fire 1 being locked out).

Outside of players will there be any significant shift in Fire’s approach to Tour 3 and the rest of the season?

Absolutely. After quite a few roster changes from last year, it's taken some time for everyone to find their role and for us to play in the best way to exploit our strengths. I think our experience at Tour 2 has brought us together more, and our passion and desire to win has only grown. We've also restructured how we call lines, which has lead to much better performances in training.

What are your team goals for Nationals and Europeans?

Barring a huge upset at Tour 3, we've now missed out on our first shot at World's qualification. There's enough time before Nationals to put everything we've learnt about ourselves into practice, and, like last year, our target is to make the final of Nationals and win. After that we'll have to see about Europeans. We've learnt to not look too far in the future!

Fire of London.

There is all to play for in the final tour of the season. Fire 1 will be looking to turn their season around in the lead up to Nationals. Clapham will be missing stars with the absence of World Games squad players, and Chevron, U23 and EMO will be looking to capitalise on this to hand them their first loss of the season. Ranelagh found the form they were looking for in Nottingham rising to 5th, but with the recent events at Tour 2 all A tour teams will be fighting hard for that giant killing that will send them up the rankings.

A Tour movers. Courtesy of Wayne Retter.

All ready for a heatwave in Cardiff? Don't forget your suncream and hats! Like, share, contribute and tweet! DP @ tSG.

Tour 2 Review - C Tour

Bradley Andrews brings us the Kent Ultimate perspective on T2 and the C Tour.

After the excitement of Tour 1, the second C tour of the season at Tour 2 in Nottingham presented an opportunity to be victorious against old and new rivals alike. Teams had to step up their game just to hold their seeding, let alone potentially move up the rankings and even make B tour: every team brought intensity and determination, making C tour as competitive as ever.

All players, both experienced and new to the game, from C tour up to A tour, were finding the weather conditions difficult to play in. There was a strong wind on the first day as well as torrential rain (and some hail). It meant that most set plays that teams had practiced became difficult to run, as discs were harder to grip and muddy fields made cutting much more difficult. This was Ultimate at its most gruelling.

The future of UK ultimate battling in C tour - Devon 3 vs GB U17s. Photo Courtesy of Andrew Moss.

Conditions limited the play, especially on ‘up wind, down wind’ pitches. Everyone was using similar plays, using the wind to send a huck to a deep cut and taking advantage of the space underneath when defending teams sent extra men to prevent the deep shot. This ‘huck and d’ strategy was common practice for many teams as scoring an upwind point was extremely difficult in the conditions. There was a lot of zone defence on show, using the wind to limit opponents and force them to complete a lot of passes.

 Due to conditions Tour 2 was a real test of throwing and catching ability, as well as how well teams co-operated and worked together to score points and keep their zone defence working effectively. While Saints, Ireland U20 and Flyght Club 1 all progressed to B tour, all of the teams in C tour played competitive Ultimate to a good level, showing the increase in the quality of Ultimate in recent times. Sneeekys and Curve also finished high in C tour, capitalising on the weaknesses of other teams and playing hard defence as well as well co-ordinated offense. 

Lemmings player going for the high grab in Nottingham. Photo courtesy of Graham Bailey.

All teams in C tour played with their hearts on their sleeves, enduring the miserable weather and playing conditions. Brighton Pier Pressure, for example, started the weekend with only eight players and were down to six players by midday Sunday but never gave in to the fatigue and weather, showing their determination to win no matter what. During the game they played against Kent Ultimate they lost yet another player to injury but showed their class and continued to play when many teams in their position would be all too happy to throw in the towel. 
On Sunday the time cap was changed from an hour and a half to an hour, meaning that the point cap was also changed, with teams taking the half at seven points rather than eight. The shorter format changed the games dramatically as many teams were finishing matches and reaching tie breaks before the half. Shorter games also made an upwind score a larger asset as teams would have less time to take back the upwind point than on the first day.

C Tour movers. Courtesy of Wayne Retter.

Though the weather was almost unbearable and everyone was soaked the weekend ended in good spirits. The atmosphere of the Ultimate community could not be dampened by the rain, with friends and rivals coming together to create an unforgettable weekend.

Almost there and only 3 days until #ukut3!! First things first; comment, like and share. DP @ tSG.