All-Ireland Mixed Championships Preview

With the Mixed season in the UK in full swing, Mark Earley tells us about the upcoming All-Ireland Mixed Champsionships.

Mixed Ultimate in Ireland is not something that the majority of Irish club teams focus on; in fact there is only one club that were set up with the aim of playing Mixed all year round – the Dublin-based Jabba the Huck. There are lots of reasons for this – perhaps the most obvious being a historically small playerbase and the way the sport grew in the country – through universities, where the number of male members always outnumbered the number of female sign ups. This has always been replicated at international level, where Mixed Ultimate wasn’t a preferred option until 2011 when a young and well-oiled Ireland Mixed squad surpassed the achievements of both the much-fancied Open and Women’s teams to make quarters of EUC.

Jabba the Huck, current Irish Mixed Champions

Despite Mixed being less popular, the competition for the All-Ireland Championships title each year is a heated one. In a fortnight’s time 9 teams from around the country will descend on Maynooth (Kildare) for the eagerly anticipated event. Jabba the Huck are current champions, having won their first title last year at the 5^th time of asking, and will enter 3 teams into the tournament. Their first team have been training hard for a while now and recently took part in the UK Mixed Tour. They will be hoping to retain their trophy and will head in to the weekend quietly confident. Last year’s runner up was Mixed Veg, a team originally made up of Broccoli and LMS players. They lost the final last year in a very close game that many of them felt they should have won. Perhaps a lack of practice together will work against them, but with a lot of experience across the team expect Veg to challenge for a final spot. Similarly Binge? is a team full of talent but who rarely train. They travel a lot to Europe, recently attending Lake Como, and regularly making the trip to Monkey Foo’s tournament in the autumn. Their girls are traditionally very strong and the team will pose a threat to anyone they meet.

David Ferguson of Mixed Veg catches a trailing edge

Rebel Ultimate won back-to-back titles, and convincingly too, back in 2010 & 2011. Last year they split their squad into two even teams hoping for both to reach the final but it didn’t work out. This year a lot of their players are rumoured to be at a wedding so it’s hard to tell what type of team they will bring. Regardless of personnel they will be a well-trained, focused and intelligent outfit. Expect to see them in the semi-finals. Outside of those four teams, it’s hard to see another team capable of winning the title. Pelt are still a young team and their women will struggle against the depth of the other squads. Juice are very unpredictable and it’s hard to tell what type of team they will bring up to Dublin. Hammertime are the last team in the tournament and despite being enthusiastic and very well spirited, they don’t play at the same level as the top four teams discussed above.

Ireland Mixed U-23 Squad

The tournament will be run by the Ireland U23 Mixed Team who are gearing up for the big trip to Toronto in July. They will hope to raise some much needed funds to help with the many costs associated with a trans-Atlantic championships. Further details on the team can be found on their website: http://irelandmixedu23.blogspot.ie/

Tournament Website: http://aimc2013.blogspot.ie/

Tournament Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/373392032774504/

All-Ireland Mixed Championships Winners

2012 - Jabba the Huck

2011 - Rebel Ultimate

2010 - Rebel Ultimate

2009 - Throwin' Shapes

2008 - Throwin' Shapes

Photos courtesy of: Jabba the Huck, Martin Kelly, Ireland U23 Mixed Team

Awesome! Remember, tweet, like, share and contribute! #theShowGame

The Grapevine - 10/05

The Grapevine covers almost every UK blog and a mention to our European partners Get Horizontal! 

Mark Earley interviews the Shiok Ultimate player Nick See on Ultimate Interviews.

Our European friends Get Horizontal review the Belgian mixed tournament G-SPOT, where Cambridge came out Spirit winners! Also go read a preview of Tom's Tourney where some UK teams will party and play over in Brugges as of yesterday.

Barry O'Kane talks to Lauren Bryant and David Pryce on his unedited UTalkRaw Episode 18 about GB Beach Mixed, part of the GB squad series.

An amazing slo mo video of a recent MLU game shows us how Ultimate should be filmed.

Glastonbury has opened its registration for the weekend of 7/8th September, go register here. 

A great piece on why children should be their own referees in sports and in particular play Ultimate.

Donate towards the GB World Games cause, it's not a cheap trip to Columbia!

Benji Heywood talks about cutting and in particularly getting separation on a new post in the Understanding Ultimate blog.

Finally, go see who we are and what we are all about!

The UKU works alongside Matalan and Steve Redgrave to get school children into Ultimate. Photo Courtesy of Carl Fox.

A quick request: anyone want to write more on the Women's division?! We are in need of such a writer, please contact us! Also remember to share, like and tweet :). 

The Alumni Cup - where do we go from here?

Sean Colfer of Phat ed's and EMO fame brings us his views on The Alumni Cup and its future.

After last year’s relatively successful debut in Manchester, the Alumni Cup returned to run alongside the UKU University Open National Championships in Nottingham. Leeds mounted an impressive defence of their title but in the end ceded the crown to Bangor, who used a large squad and strong team chemistry to overcome some of Leeds’ more impressive individual players. So, with a second year of this event in the books, what does the future hold for the Alumni Cup?

The key issue with the Alumni Cup concept is what people want from the event. Is this intended to be a competitive tournament to truly find the best alumni team in the UK? Is it an event to keep graduates who have no interest in intense club competition engaged with Ultimate? Is it an attempt to forge links between alumni and current students? Is it an excuse for a reunion, a glorified catch-up and drinking opportunity?

Last season there were 16 teams in the competition – this year that shrunk to 12. This season also lacked some of the depth that was evident in Manchester, with previous finalists Cambridge and semi-finalists Manchester and Loughborough all missing from the field in Nottingham. The field still contained some quality: Bangor’s squad of recent graduates were well drilled and were clearly the best team present, Leeds brought players covering an impressive time span and maintained their competitiveness well and teams such as Bath, UCL, Liverpool and Sussex contained stand out players giving good accounts of themselves over the course of the weekend. Despite that, it was evident that there had been a steep drop off from the first year of the tournament to the second in terms of overall quality of teams.

Lancaster vs UCL, Alumni Cup 2013. Courtesy of Blockstack Photography.

What were the reasons for this drop off? For one, pressure has been put on the calendar this year by the presence of GB teams and the importance of the coming season, with WUCC 2014 qualification depending on Tour positions. Players on the under-23 squads will have had three tournaments and one weekend session in April had they competed in Nottingham and so may have chosen to take a much needed rest while teams such as Fire had training weekends which took their players away from alumni teams who sorely missed their abilities.

Another, more worrying, possibility is that the tournament was perceived as a novelty event last season: the first event to crown the champion of all alumni teams, effectively the champion of all university teams prior to that point. It brought together the best players from a wide range of eras for several universities and led to a tournament of impressive quality. This year that novelty diminished slightly, possibly keeping away those who are no longer regular players or those who decided that the weekend would be better spent resting their bodies for the season to come.

Speaking from personal experience, the way my team-mates and I approached the Cup has not changed. We assembled a team of whoever we could think of that wanted to play and was free that weekend – no mean feat, believe me – and took the approach that as long as everyone played and everyone had fun results didn't matter a great deal. Phat Eds very much took the reunion view of the tournament, which not surprisingly led to underwhelming results – 8^th this season bettered the 16^th placed finish of 2012 but two wins in two years is hardly a stellar record – but I have certainly enjoyed both years and I've been proud of the effort put in by all of my former university team-mates and those other Phat Eds who have taken part. 

So what does the future hold for the Alumni Cup? It’s difficult to predict trends after two seasons, but next year will go a long way towards determining what it is that this event will be. If the tournament expands back to 16 teams and some of the talent that was not present in the second iteration of the tournament returns, it could make for an exciting, competitive and deep tournament which would be more like the alumni version of the university tournament it runs alongside (the fact that some current students have never known a Nationals without the Alumni Cup might mean that more current students stick around and help arrest that problem). However, if the tournament sees no further expansion or quality re-enforcement it could become a simple excuse to meet old friends and support your old university in their quest for BUCS glory.

In last year’s issue of Ultimatum, Rich Hims suggested that when the tournament becomes suitably established it might be worthwhile to find an opportunity for the alumni champions and the university champions to determine a ‘champion of champions’. Hopefully the slight downturn this year can be arrested come 2014 and the Alumni Cup can become suitably established for such a consideration in the coming years. As a concept it’s well worthy of a place in the Ultimate calendar – the hope now must be that the concept tangibly realises the clear potential it has in the near future. 

Keep on reading, sharing, liking and tweeting!

Fog Lane Cup Preview

Josh Coxon Kelly brings us a preview for this weekends first A tour warm up.

This weekend many of the top open teams in the UK will be heading to Chippenham to compete at the second ever Fog Lane Cup. Hosted by Chevron Action Flash, and named in honour of their perennial training ground in Didsbury, the tournament is once again hoping to provide a high level tournament for UK club teams to flex their muscles at before the long tour season.

Notable absentees from A tour regulars Clapham and Brighton could be put down in part to the attendance of Cobra Kai to Tom's Tourney in Brugge, but nonetheless the tournament brings together plenty of heavyweight competition, including (once again) two Fire squads, a fanatically hyped new Kapow! roster, as well as the GB u23 open squad looking to take scalps in the first tournament of their campaign for gold in Toronto this summer.

Last season's Inaugural cup wasn't without drama, with Fire 2 surprising many teams including the hosts. Will this year see the avenging of this loss, or with so many refreshed squads a similar upset? Or will a young and hungry GB squad dominate?

The u23s have a gruelling schedule with 3 games followed by an evening showgame against a 'Barbarian team' built from players of the other teams in attendance. Whilst a fair share of sledging is inevitable between friends, this exhibition match will be undeniably important for the young internationals: not only in forging their team chemistry, but also as a chance to start their journey with a win in front of a crowd - an act that they will very much hope to turn into a habit.

Enjoyed reading that? Want to contribute? Drop us a line at showgameblog@gmail.com with possible ideas. Don't forget to like, share and tweet also!