Southampton Worlds warm-up report
On Sunday a few of us went down to Southampton to play a couple of mixed games against teams going to Worlds, here’s how it went down.
Sunday morning and the phone goes, its never a good sign, when it goes twice you’ve got to worry. The absentees were Dougie (dodgy finger from EUCF) and Mel (Bufty Bufty Lightweight and too hungover to play)
Eventually 5 of us set off to Southampton all in my car after some last minute condensing of the transport plan because of our reduced numbers.
Just before we were due to arrive Ala gets the third phonecall of the day, this time its from Jason (Nominated captain for the day, although he doesnt know it yet) who’s stuck on the M3 and is going to be late, we begin to worry that the twins are going to be stuck in the same traffic, things arent looking good for the first game.
On arrival we’re pleased to see that the rest of our team Rob, Nathan, Vicky P and May are ready and waiting for us and after some begging we agree to let Loz (Who just happens to have his kit with him) play for us in his first competitive game for about a year.
Our first game is against Bristol and when our team of 10 turn up to see they’ve got about 25 standing on the sideline its not going to be an easy game. Despite Jason heroically turning up about 3 points from the end we succumbed about 15-4. The fact that a lot of us had never played together before and Bristol had been training hard and playing hard together for a while clearly showed through, them flowing past us up the pitch and playing some strong zone which saw us trapped on the line. While we were ‘lacking synergy’, we did play some good stuff but couldnt keep the consistency and when we hit them with some zone straight after the half we turned them twice on their own endzone line and led to one of our scores.
The other game of the day saw Ltd Release beaten by Discuits (With all 11 of their women!) in a tight game so our ‘final’ would be against Ltd. Like Bristol Ltd had about 20 players ready to line up, fortunately for us they didn’t want them all so lent us 4 to even the numbers up, added to the Brighton line were Chav, Shaun (Pitch length dump pass at Mixed Tour), Polly and Caroline, thanks to them for playing! The final score was something similar to our first game, but it was really enjoyable with lots of heckling (Loz knew how to get in their heads), a few excellent drops from Fudge which the sideline enjoyed counting and in places some good play. The last point saw Brighton with the disc just over halfway up the pitch, Loz has it and is looking long down the line. At which point he throws something wobbly and sideways, that probably summed up the day!
All in all it was a fun couple of games to play, I don’t think we ever thought we were going to match any of the worlds teams but they were grateful to have us make up the numbers and give them a second game. The day saw notable Brighton debuts for Inese and for our perennial mad visitor May and we’re glad to have helped Loz in his return to the game (even if he got told off for laying out).
Spike