| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Report: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This weekend saw teams from across the UK and
Ireland meeting in Cardiff for Division 1 National Outdoor Finals. Pools were topped on the first day by Haze, Picnic, Ro Sham Bo and Mythago. Haze overcame NoFrills, Flatball and UCL in a pool in which the points difference between the teams was less than 5 across the board and resulted in providing three quarter finalists, two semifinalists and one plate finalist. Picnic beat Ow! in what I hear was an epic game to take their pool title. RoSham swept their pool clean and Mythago beat DUF and Trinity (two regional first seeds) to secure their top seed for quarters. Crossovers saw that everything went with seeding apart from Flatball removing Trinity from 6th seeds. Sunday saw a change in the weather to overcast with slightly more wind but not enough to warrant zone on many pitches. Bottom 8: Quarters went with seeding apart from UCL replacing Brunel, after their defeats on Saturday in the 'pool of death' left them underseeded in 15th. Seeding then remained the same for the rest of the day with Trinity holding on to 9th against UCL. Top 8: Two onesided quarters saw a rejuvenated Nofrills take out regional rivals Picnic and RoShamBo take out regional rivals Flatball. (However, Flatball managed the highest score against RoShamBo of the whole weekend and scared them into sorting themselves out for their run to the final.) The other quarters were slightly more interesting. Ow!, favourites to top their pool on Saturday, came out hard in another regional match up against Haze seeing them take a comfortable lead, only to be closed out in sudden death by some impressive defence and safe offence from Haze. Mythago took a comfortable lead against Strange Blue but a late game wobble saw Strange Blue fight their way back into the game only for Mythago to snatch it away for an 11-9 win. Semi's saw the same teams from indoor nationals but in different match ups. NoFrills got the same uncompromising defeat from RoShamBo they received at indoors, and Mythago edged out Haze in a rematch of last years semi finals. NoFrills went on to reverse the result of their earlier defeat to Haze in the 3rd/4th playoff and OW! set out to consolidate 5th. Flatball fashionably dressed finished 8th and some aggressive but fair play saw them take spirit. The Final saw Mythago gambling heavily on their deep game and relying on playing ultimate in their oppositions half, while their tactics succeeded they failed to stop the fast offence and relentless defence of RoShamBo. Final score 15-4. Special mention goes to Danny Hoyle who played a near flawless game of ultimate, only to be squeezed out of the MVP prize by Matt Beavan of Mythago who's impressive defensive plays kept Mythago in the game from start to finish. My personal thoughts of the weekend are that University Ultimate has developed a stronger depth of teams at the top with tighter groups and quarters. In the past three years the teams that have won have concentrated on a depth of players, and trained hard for the entire year. The days of reliance on star players for national success seems to be over and the mix of star players coupled with the development of your whole squad appears to be the winning combination. Regional averages SW: 2,3,6 = 3.67 M: 4,5,11 = 6.67 Sc: 1, 8, 15 = 8 I: 9 = 9 SE: 7,10,14 = 10.3 N:16, 12, 13 = 13.67 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Iain | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Videos: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Mythago Offence Beavans Layout D Mythago Nationals 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to Results. |