Brighton Mixed win London Winter League

Brighton Mixed beat Chichester in the final to win the last London Winter League event of the year, giving themselves enough points to secure first place in the entire winter league mixed division. Well done us! Who says London produces the best Ultimate teams in the UK?? ;)
Keep reading for a report from Mediocre.
Gaaaaahhhh! London Winter League and another 7am wake-up call … on a Sunday! What idiot puts these travel plans together?
But, what’s this? First game at 11.10? Pick-up at 9.30? Yippee!!!
(Thanks Nicole for sorting out the schedule) :)

Having said that, traffic nearly made us late for our first game but we must have been a bus-load of pent-up energy cos we roared past Imperial 13-0.
This was due to the windy but sunny conditions – Brighton loves wind (except Waggle’s) – and the fact that we had solid handlers like Dougie, Tom, Vicky and Nicole throwing to lightning-fast receivers like Gash, Nick and Spike (“fastest man in Brighton Ultimate”).

Suitably impressed by our performance we went on to play Fugazees who were “rubbish” according to Nicole. When we went 4-1 down, however, it was clear they were anything but! To be fair, we were all making mistakes in this game (even Dougie dropped 2 discs! 2!!!) and this got us fairly annoyed.
Fortunately, Brighton being annoyed often equals Brighton being picky… and with unclear side-lines and cones being blown about by the wind, there were frequent calls of “Check feet” and “Travel”. Spike, in particular, likes to spot a good travel and managed to so upset his opposing player that he threw the disc to the ground in disgust. “Turnover! Turnover!” comes the shout from Tom and we get an easy score from their own endzone line. Things got a bit heated but it helped to spur us on and we sneaked home to win 7-6 on the hooter.

We had a game off, so most of the team went to a café for a smoothie (Tequila decided to donate his to the table, the floor and someone’s coat) while Dougie and I stayed outside in the sunshine. Suddenly it started snowing and hailing – guess we made the wrong choice.

Our semi-final was against Thundering Herd who seemed mostly to consist of ex-Clapham players (or so I thought – better check with Dougie and Tom). Anyway, they duly scored a fairly easy first point and things looked a bit ominous. 15 minutes later, we were winning 7-1 and maintained a healthy cushion until the hooter.

Another break and a chance to find out who our opponents would be in the final. What? Chichester? Blimey, well done them.

So the final of the London Winter League was an all-South Coast affair. :)
But it was scheduled on the only upwind-downwind pitch. :(
Chichester played very well and managed an upwind point (one of only about 5 all day). Fortunately, we managed two and won the game 7-5 (-ish).

Well done, Brighton – Dougie, Tom, Gash, Nick, Tequila, Spike, Mediocre, Miles, Vicky, Cat and Nicole.

As Tom said, winning LWL 5 gave us enough points to win the entire league so congratulations to everyone who has taken part over the last 5 months.

Mediocre