Voice's View EUC 2007 Firstly, apologies for the lack of speed in sending this report. I usually pride myself on being first with the story, but if you haven't heard all the results already here's what I saw.
Junior Women GB, having beaten the Swedes twice already this week were perhaps expecting an easier game than they got on Friday morning. The stands were by no means packed but there were enough people watching to lend a sense of occasion. The two teams both played hard with GB taking a lead early in the game only to see it reduced as the Swedes recovered from their poor start. At this level, skill will only get you so far. Heart is more important and GB dug deep. At 13-13 the cap went on, at 14-14 the coaches on the side line were beside themselves, after two potentially scoring drops in the endzone for GB the tension couldn't build any more. Finally they put away the winning disc to take the game, a huge pile on and much emotion later the GB Junior women had put the first GOLD on the Board. Credit to all the young ladies who played so well, there's lots of potential there. Also many thanks to the coaches and "responsible adults", Lindsay Cuthbertson??? ;-) for their support and encouragement. Under 17 Open The lads (and Jo Hannah from the Junior women) had dominated the games they'd played so far. But that might have been down to the Finns keeping something in reserve. The final was actually quite a one sided affair with GB always playing catch-up as the diminutive key handlers for the Finns made great cut and solid pass time and again. GB can still be proud of their performance from the week, bagelling Sweden earlier, and playing a hard fought but mature game of ultimate in the final. 15-10 to the Finns. GB take home SILVER. Credit to Andy Vaughan for his hard work and leadership. Masters UK Ultimate's older generation have got much to be proud of, they dominated every game they played, including the final. Great work between Merrick and Duncan, hard layouts from Lars and Jaison, flawless play by Ben Mitchell, solid cuts from Nic Glynn the list goes on. The whole team was so much better than anyone else at the tournament. GOLD. The Finns gave a good show of themselves in the final but the game was always going GB's way. 17-11 the final score. Mixed Perhaps the greatest blessing the mixed team had this week was being beaten in pool play by the same team they would eventually face in the Final. The Czech Republic had brought a strong side, featuring Clapham favourite Tomas "the Iceman" Vesely. GB came out of the blocks hard and had a good lead as the game neared it's conclusion. The Czechs never gave up and pressed GB into some errors scoring a fantastic Callaghan after GB nervously failed to catch the pull and the Czech D line had just enough time to make the yards and cut out the first pass. With GB only needing one point to take the game Jamie Cross received the pull, threw to Rob Whitehouse, and set off like a glory hunting train for the far endzone, Rob said he would have sent it too if he hadn't been laughing so much. In the end GB put the game to bed with a nice score for Kathy Walker. GOLD. Junior How the Juniors got to the final is the subject of another email and hopefully a thorough debate, there are certainly lessons that can be learnt. Any way, once there, the GB lads didn't seem to be in the right place mentally, the emotional rollercoaster they'd been on over the previous 24 hours probably didn't help, neither did the stomach bug which had affected many of the squad in the week. The Germans however were is great form and obviously keen to make up for losing the GB game earlier in the week having been so far ahead. The GB juniors show level heads while discussing calls, but not when selecting throws, too many over cooked discs flew out of bounds or into the Southampton turf. Their German counterparts were fired up and clinical when required. In the end an easy win for Germany. SILVER for GB. Both Nick Sampson and Kevin Lowe deserve credit for their work from the sideline. Women Finland are a tough team and this was never going to be an easy game, that said the GB women had it in them to win the game, or at least they did when they shortened the line and relied on key players, then scoring seemed to come quite easily. Having said that the pressure was intense and some uncharacteristic errors early on were a worrying hint of what was to follow. The problem with relying on key players is that they get tied and then they make mistakes, some of the GB Women's squad barely saw the pitch as others were called on to deliver time and again, on the O line and then on the D line. Discs became wayward and then they became out of reach, handling errors creeping in, hand in hand with exhaustion. The D effort was brave as the GB Ladies repeatedly got the disc back following each error, but with the Finns as opposition you can only do that so many times before they score. And score they did. The final point for Finland was an emergency disc into the endzone on a high stall count which floated just long enough to be caught by a Finn. Sally Fraser had a flawless week, never stopped running and was a real inspiration. SILVER for GB, building the squad strength and trusting it at tough times must be priorities ahead of Vancouver in 2008. Open GB suffered in the heat. They hadn't been pushed this hard all week. The game ebbed and flowed the Swedes opening up a 3 point margin just after the half only for GB to close it again with some hot D. The strict divisions between the O line and D line were respected, though the O line did play significantly more D than they had done in the 6 days leading up to the final. The Swedish team all run hard and made GB do the same. As the game neared it conclusion and the cap went on it was the Swedes who had the advantage, with GB 13-14 down and needing to score twice. The first score arrived to level it up, then GB made perhaps the most significant tactical decision ever, they let Wigsy onto the D line. I don't like talking about individuals changing a game, Ultimate is a team sport, when ever I draw attention to one player I'm always not giving credit to the other 24 members of the squad. However here I'll make an exception, for the 8 minutes the final point took to score Christian Wigsy Nistri was the difference between winning and losing. My memory of the order of events is a little weak but during the point Wigsy got a layout D on David Wesley, Sebastian Sporrong the Swedish superstar limp off, GB making the tactical switch of bringing on another of the O line in Stu Mitchell, Danny Hoyle making way having done his bit. Wigsy got huge again and almost scored a game winning Callaghan, but the swedes called a strip, the dispute took too long to resolve, but when play did restart after being sent back GB got another turn and Wigsy was called on to rescue a dying disc before it got to the grass, I've never seen quite such a spectacular layout in all my Ultimate watching days. The grab was so unbelievable that many of the Swedish line thought it was down, it took one of their own side line (Tehler, injured earlier in the game) to persuade them that the disc did indeed stay above the ground. A dump back to Stu and a flick through a crowd of players to a Rodders in space was all that was needed to finish the game off. GOLD for GB, Happy birthday to Si Hill and Dave Sealy. Tournament Review EUC 2007 Southampton was a fantastic tournament. Andy Kayley and his team can be justifiably proud of the way in which the tournament ran. Many new ideas and concepts were being tried out and some of those fell foul of technical gremlins and tremendous website traffic. The website scoring system was 80% genius and some of it's functionality will be copied at future tournaments. It's downfall was that it was trying to do a little too much clever stuff, which worked fine for a couple of users but not for the 40000 hits a day that the site received. Unfortunately the website is the face of the tournament for anyone that wasn't there so its unavailability will not have helped conveyed the appearance of success the tournament so richly deserved. The Media team I was part of were all very dedicated and worked long long hours purely for the love of it. Games, were shot edited and screened in the bars in the space of a few hours, Surge Radio lent the event a different spin and hopefully provided a few of you that couldn't make it chance to enjoy the games. It you heard the commentary let me know. Hussy and Joy emailed from OZ to say how much they enjoyed it. The newsletter was put together by one man Russ Scott who did a great job, oh yeah Lewis and Si did help a bit. :-) The scorers and other co-ordinators also worked flat out all week. If you are considering helping in Vancouver then go do it, big tournaments breed energy, rather than see the WUGC2008 through their website why not get over there and see it for yourself, volunteer, book a flight and have the time off your life. Lookfly news will be back doing good stuff and bringing you upto date GB news photos and podcasts. Cheers All Tom Styles Looking forward to Vancouver PS to those that didn't make it check out some photos of the Nivea Sun Beach Ultimate Challenge that I MC'ed on the Sunday after EUC http://www.scottwright.co.uk/ultimate/ Sponsorship laden it may be but it was great fun and an excellent showcase for the sport. I'll send another note to BD when I know what times it going to be shown on Sky sports. September probably. They are producing a 15min segment which will be shown 7 times in the UK and more all over Europe. __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://www.fysh.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/staying-informed
