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UOIN Div 2 Captain’s Report

With only one training session between regionals and nationals, and a few player drop outs we were a little unsure what to expect at Uni Open Indoor Nationals Division 2. Here’s how it went:

(Almost all scores are estimates, apologies for any mistakes)
 
Group game 1: Warwick 7 – 8 Cardiff
This was the first game we had played in a while and it kinda showed. The floors were really slippy making our handler cuts very difficult and neither team played particularly well. We were a couple of points up near the end but a couple of unfortunate mishaps and sloppy play meant we lost in sudden death. Not a great start.
 
Group game 2: Warwick 9 – 4 Leeds
Started to get used to playing frisbee indoors during this game. Offence was still not as clinical as it could have been but our man d was creating plenty of opportunities to score. Traded the first few points then pulled away for a fairly comfortable win.
 
Group game 3: Warwick 6 – 7 Strathclyde
We started really well in this game, going up by a few. They put more pressure on our handler cuts than either of the other teams we had played and we weren’t holding on to the disc well enough, allowing Strathclyde to go ahead. When we got a bit more intensity on d we got more turnovers and came back to force sudden death, but Strathclyde played a really calm point and put the goal in to top the group.
 
So we were initially seeded 4th but after the group games we were down in 11th seed going into a ‘bottom 8’ power pool knowing we needed lots of wins to get back into the top half.
 
Power Pool game 1: Warwick 7 – 5 Surrey
This was a much tougher game than we were expecting. Our man d was slowing down Surrey’s offence significantly but not getting many turns. Our offence was good enough to stay ahead by one or two through the whole game.
 
Power Pool game 2: Warwick 9 – 5 Plymouth (don’t remember this score)
We started to play a bit better in this game. Their offence centred around one guy and we managed to force them to throw difficult stuff that didn’t come off consistently. We were ahead the whole game I think and got a little ragged at the end, largely just through tiredness.
 
Finished Saturday in 9th seed, with a crossover against Liverpool coming up on Sunday morning to get into the top 8.
 
Crossover: Warwick 10 – 5 Liverpool
This was the biggest game of the weekend so far, with the winner guaranteed to finish in top 8 and the loser dropping to the bottom half. We played really well and got lots of D’s on their iso throws. Our offence was pretty slick, didn’t turnover much. This was probably the first game of the weekend where we played as well as we knew we should.
 
Quarterfinal: Warwick 9 – 2 Strathclyde
Having already narrowly lost to Strathclyde on Saturday we came into this game with a more purposeful game plan. We worked much harder to stop our man getting the disc under and got a few turns at the start of the game. On offence we took safer options until near enough to give the disc to Andy ‘always free in the endzone’ Hillman. A great way to overturn the previous day’s defeat.
 
Semifinal: Warwick 11 – 8 Cardiff
Another rematch and another improved performance. Both teams played much better in this game than in the group stage. We (I) struggled to shut down their main handler but everyone else was sticking to their man and making it really difficult for Cardiff to score. Offence was really calm, especially when Cardiff tried to do a poachy thing on our handlers and again we went a few points up and didn’t let the opposition come back.
 
FINAL: Warwick 13 – 7 Leicester
It’s great to play other Midlands teams at Nationals (especially when it’s not until the final 😀 ) and we were able to come out with a specific game plan to prevent Leicester using their strengths and to make the most of ours. Kris Kerswell did a great job of keeping Medic (mostly) quiet and everyone did their job brilliantly, knowing when to poach off and when to be tight.  It was a really fun game played at a frenetic pace, I think the first 12 points only took about 8 minutes, with Bears doing most of the scoring. Pretty much traded for the last 10 minutes but we had made a fairly big lead to finish the weekend as Div 2 champions!
 
Congratulations to everyone on the team, you’re all awesome. Romit has only been playing with us a few weeks and got loads of great grabs especially in the final. Pmoney so reliable making big catches and throws under pressure. Robbie and Frig safe hands and took good options all of Sunday. Kris so handy in and out of the endzone, had an excellent final. Andy our token endzone monkey, thrived on the space and easily scored more than half of our goals. Huge thank you to everyone who played at regionals but couldn’t make it this weekend and to those who came to training last week.
 
That’s (almost) it for the indoor season. Let’s train hard and take that Div 1 outdoors spot.

Samuel Hawkins

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