KCL Thrown Ultimate

cool.

(so im writing this from my office in the iop… love it…)

anyway
last night, thanks to harry and kaleigh, we were fortunate enough to
be able to play iceni, who are the top womens team in the country, in a
friendly match at battersea park. they won this years womens tour and
are travelling to paris at the end of the month to play in euros.
so theyre good. very good.

playing in a floodlit stadium was pretty cool. and whilst the weather
wasnt ideal, with heavy rain throughout, we were at least fortunate
there was no wind.

after a quick warm up and team talk we began the match.

we began on offence and passed it up the pitch quite nicly but
unfortunately turned over a little too easily, possibly due to not
being sharp enough. after a few breaks of force, iceni punished us and
drew first blood.
0-1…

after that we picked ourselves up and tightened up our force.
harry threw the first huck of the match, almost immediately off the
pull, just for tim to pluck it out the air and assist kyles endzone cut.
back level we stopped the breaks and started forcing turnovers and finding
ourselves 3-1 up

iceni went on to claw a few points back and bought it back level with
some great flow.
3-3

man d was working very well. people were running hard and our force
improved infinitely.
president nick in particular, with the unenviable task of marking
rowan, stopped a lot of breaks which really helped us stunt their flow.

with a 2 point lead at 5-3 we came up against a zone d for the first time…
we werent expecting it and to be honest i didnt even recognise which
type of zone it was, so we turned over in our own half and conceeded.

the next time we came across zone, jess and american nick helped out
at the back. we had some really decent dumping and swinging. jess
managed a great grab after i threw a rubbish disc at her and nick gave
us some really good width with his swing cuts. solid handling at the
back meant that it was only a matter of time before we broke through.

this was probably my favourite point of the match, as jon da beast
worked hard with second cut off the crash, busting the zone wide open,
for us to score a devastatingly slick point.

we didnt face a zone after that too much which was disappointing.
when we did we managed to get around it and score down the line.

we must have traded a few points after that, but whatever happened we
went into the half with an 8-5 lead.

we talked about our own zone and hit them hard with brownie zone and
junk zone in the second half.
jackie worked really hard as the junk force and we managed to contain
them quite effectively. they threw a couple of hammers and everynow
and again they worked it through. but i think the fact that we kept
alternating our zones really messed them up.

up against man d again, louis second cuts formed the basis of our flow.
we started to dump and swing, nicely spreading play.
and we started to have options all over the pitch.
alex was running really hard with long cuts and short cuts, getting
free and making it an easy throw everytime for the handler.

o was starting to look good in pieces, but it was our d which was most
impressive throughout.
taddie worked tirelessly and blocked off a lot of alena’s open cuts
forcing the handlers to go backwards again and again.

having worked so hard throughout the match, we started to earn our own luck.
mythago jon managed to layout and grab a score quite spectacularly.

final score was something like 15-8?

great result and really promising for the rest of the season.
especially with so many new players
and with so much of the returning first team being a little rusty since the
summer break.

dr j has been emphaising dumping and thats definitely an area id like
us to excel. offence in general just needs a little more structure.
well work on that in practices
defence was awesome. we need to go through zone soon.
perfect the brownie, junk and arrowhead.

awesome

like harry said please turn up to these.
a lot of effort goes into organising practices
its all done for you guys so make use of it.

adnan

So here it is a full tournament report from plymouth beginners.

N.B. From this point on the following freshers shall be referred to as:

Hannah : The NOID (Winner of THE BAG)
James : Choker
Sora : Miss Swiss
William : Captain Asian (MVP)

Friday 17th.
Having had a few phone calls and frantic emails we finally decided to catch the
6:03 train to plymouth from paddington. After meeting everyone at the station
and collecting some free food (in the way of a raw potato and a free krispy
kreme) It dawned on us that we were one short. with 10 minutes untill train left
we received a text from Cpt. Asian explaining he had fallen asleep and may be a
little bit late. We watched our train pull off into the distance and disgruntle
waited for Cpt. Asian to arrrive. Turns out that the next train wasn’t for
another hour so we only had one choice. PERUDO!!! After a very laboured few
rounds explaining the rules and half a game we got on the train to find not one
free unreserved seat. We marked out territory where we could, stealing seats and
camping in the aisle and passed the time with some ridiculous group therapies
(which seriously shocked those we shared the train with) and even more perudo. I
also gave a thrilling captains pep talk and explanation of some advanced rules
and tactics that had fellow travelers enthralled. We arrive at the station at
10:30 to be met by Afro Peat (guess where he gets his name from), Greg Simon and
George the bitch (she is in fact a female dog). We dump our stuff and head into
town for some takeaway before confiding ourselves to our rooms and getting a
good nights kip at around about 1am.

Saturday 18th.
Our first day, our first games. fortunately games don’t start untill 10:40 for
us so we have plenty of time to do a warm up and a forcing drill. We get into
our kit to find that Choker had no t shirts and the NOID hadn’t brought a green
top. hmmmmmmm. Fortunately El Presidente Ward rocks up with an old thrown top
and by handing over the t-shirt i planned to wear home to choker we are all set.

Uriel 3 (The Angry Werewolves):
Here we go, first game of the tournament and it’s the people we will be sharing
our house with later that night. They were a fairly big team with two complete
lines so they came at us hard. We Settled in for a battle of points trading upto
2-2. Everyone was running really hard, possibly too hard, when fatigue got the
better of us. There stack got tighter and ours got sloppier and they took two
points against us. We pinched another point but they took a final two. Everyone
ran hard and worked well but in they end there play was a little bit more
refined then ours and we end up behind.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 3 – Angry Werewolves 6

Picnic 2 (Pirelli’s Players):
Not to be disheartened we entered out second pool game, this time against two of
the experienced players who hosted us. This was a tough team who eventually came
3rd overall from the entire weekend. They had good long cuts and some very
active experienced players. Miss Swiss and Cpt. Asian were both putting in very
dependable firstcuts and we looked really promising. they took the early lead
but we brought it back to 2-1. The last point you could really tell they felt
pressured. Some strong forcing by all was forcing the experienced players to put
up very risky discs and it looked like we could bring it back. Unfortunately a
bit of panicking in the when were on O lead to us never quite completing a point
and we were eventually beaten by the clock. A shame as I felt if the game had
lasted longer we could have had it. Though spirits were high after the game and
during a cool based on eating brioche as fast as possible (during which we first
encountered Cpt. Asian’s excuse of “but i’m a small asian kid” which would
become a recurring theme throughout the tournament) both teams shook off the
incredible tension that had filled the last two points of a game which really
could have gone either way.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 1 – Pirelli’s Players 3

Jesters:
We were going to be moved to a bigger pitch for this game and Taddie, Nick and I
all tried to encourage the team to cut long, whilest we chowed down on some
pasties nick had brought us from his local bakery. The Jesters didn’t start
strong and we took advantage of that. We got our first point with some beautiful
up the line flow. they came back hard and really put the D on us only to match
us with a very similar style of O to how we played. The points went back and
forth and the NOID really started to shine as a very dependable first cut. We
started to put more long discs up and it was working for us, Choker also gained
more confidence and started to pick up the disc to handle. Just after they took
a point against us to put them in the lead at 4-3 a call from the sideline came
of one minute. The match stepped up at least three notches in intensity and as
neither team who was on the pitch really new the score other then to say it was
close hammers and hucks became the staples. some great long cuts by Choker and
Cpt. Asian looked to get that last point but the frantic atmosphere on both
teams meant neither managed to complete their long discs. The game went and we
all slid off the pitch (I was honestly that sweaty) for the speeches. The Jester
captain and I both agreed that it really could have gone either way and it was a
ridiculously close game. Nick finally got to play Ninja which he had been
hounding us for all morning and predictably he won.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 3 – Jesters 4

Disco 1:
We entered this game with plans to use our long threat a lot more and at the
same time continue to work hard on our first cut. This game started off with two
mammoth points, exhausting our team which continued to run hard the entire time,
it was ridiculous. We caught up later in the game and had some great first cuts
from both Miss Swiss and the NOID who even look for the swing, a skill which
helped us out a lot. The Ward family turned up to cheer us on, and inspired Nick
who with true skill and grace put a beautiful Hammer into the far corner of the
endzone that curled around the defender for a fantastic point. We evened up the
score to 2-2 but unfortunately the intensity of the game had worn us down which
allowed discos to take a last minute game winning point.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 2 – Disco (one) 3

Ugly Ducklings:
This was a BIG team, not in quantity but in size. They also wore green which
meant nick got to play in a white button up shirt. There experienced had some
really good hammers and hucks and so our D was really put under pressure.
Fortunately we stood strong with the NOID putting on an incredible force; Miss
Swiss and Choker marking out their men tirelessly; and Cpt. Asian pulling off
run through Ds all over the place. We realised our long game was never going to
work against them so we used our undercuts to great affect. Unfortunately the
pure persistence of their long threat got through our D by sheer quantity of
discs. Though the team lost this one, they should be really proud of their D, it
was ridiculously strong.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 4 – Ugly Ducklings 5

Saturday evening:
After some shopping for the THE BAG, THE BAG, THE BAG; we hit the weatherspoons
for some dinner and drinks. We played hands on the bushes for what seemed like
hours with some ridiculously speedy rounds. we also took a couple of stabs at 20
+ 1 which lead to some ridiculous rules as well as the interesting fact game.
After we were all full up we headed to the party. It was in an incredibly packed
little bar that was pretty dingy. However drinks were cheap and strong, and once
every one was a bit loosened up (and Cpt. Asian and Choker took a go on matilda
the “two-person-naked-mannequin-beer-bong-with-breasts-for-mouth-pieces”) we
busted out some frisbee dances. we even got a couple of dance offs going between
Cpt. Asian and Taddie. We decided to hit the SU and queued for ages, but
fortunately Taddie hit us with his “ill flow” to give us all some personalised
raps to pass the time, don’t worry i’ll get Miss Swiss to show you the videos
some time. After failing to get into the SU as the NOID had no ID (clever huh)
we tried out our party venue form last year the fresher and professor. We
managed to sneak the NOID but they wouldn’t take Taddie’s ID….. to be fair I
wouldn’t let him into my pub either. We headed back to the first and got some
real dance offs going with Cpt. Asian and Taddie taking on Afro Peat and a
couple of other freshers from other teams not worthy of a mention. We headed
home and crammed 6 players into a room the size of a double bed. Despite Choker
singing softly like a man possessed whilest trying to strangle Miss Swiss in her
sleep we managed to rest up for the next day.

Sunday
Air Badgers 2:
Whilest we were nursing hangovers and had slept on a hard floor all night the
air badgers (a team of 12 yr olds) had gone home and had their mummys tuck them
and kiss them goodnight. We entered the game incredibly cocky. We put up swill
with height because we knew would pull it down off them. Unfortunately their
experienced players are amazing (having played from the age of 12 and now 19,
they came 4th at club indoor nationals this year) would pull this crap down and
could pick out any of their own players. Some sloppy D by us (you try keeping
track of a kid half your height with a hangover) and the fact that they were
fast and really knew how to cut deep meant the game went to sudden death with us
eventually taking the final point. surprisingly the kids weren’t interested in
doing a cool.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 6 – Air Badgers (two) 5

Metro Magic:
This was a tough game, this guys play hard and are tall (much like the other
swansea team Ugly Ducklings). Like the Ugly Ducklings they had some tall deeps
and great hucks but unlike the Ugly Ducklings they also had a great short game.
They played hard, really hard and so did we. This was my favourite game of the
weekend purely because of the intensity both teams played with. Despite everyone
cutting incredibly strongly and the NOID and Cpt. Asian both pulling off some
really impressive Ds, we got trashed. After the game I had to make special
mention of how well spirited this team had been, in the proper sense of playing
hard despite how the game was going (most teams would have got lazy once they
took such a heavy lead over us) and the fairness of their calls. I hope that our
beginners learn a thing or two from these guys in terms of the attitude you
should be playing with.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 2 – Metro Magic 8

Air Badgers 3:
Our final game and we approached it with determination not to have the same
close call as last time. We were in the big hall once again and both teams
instantly put up the longs. This allowed the air badgers to get an early point
through us not sticking to a men, but having learnt from before everyone quickly
rectified this with Choker in particular swatting just about everything out of
the air and putting up a lot of long discs himself. we also used our beautiful
dump swing (which several teams had commented on before hand) to get around them
quickly for the breakside score when we were close to end zone.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 6 – Air Badgers (three) 1

Final Standings:
1. Surrey Scorpions 1 – MVP: T-Bo (I have no idea how to spell this,
sorry)
2. Cowie’s Chiefs (Picnic 1)
3. Pirelli’s Playas (Picnic 2)
4. Mythago 2 – Spirit Winners
5. Jesters
6. Uriel 2
7. Uriel 3
8. Uriel 1
9. Ugly Ducklings
10. Surrey Scorpions 2
11. Reading Dragons
12. Wootton’s Wonderers (Picnic 3)
13. Metro Magic – Plate Winners
14. Mythago 1
15. THROWN <——
16. AirBadgers 3
17. Disco 2
18. Disco 1
19. AirBadgers 2
20. Shrink 2 Fit (Picnic 4)
21. Reading Snogard
22. AirBadgers 1 – Spoon Winners
23. Puriel

The guys did extremely well and improved so much, with real improvements in D
long cuts and dump swinging. Almost every captain said they felt the game could
have gone both ways which shows how close we came for a lot of our games. This
was such a fun tournament and I was so proud of the team and I know they enjoyed
it as much as I did.

Hope to see you all at Lufbra
Dan

Thrown A Match Report

Beginners:
Sora
Hannah
James
Ian
with cameo appearances by:
William
Sanna

Experienced:
Taddie
Tim
John
Me

Pickup
Our daring freshmen played a whole extra game against Farnborough with the (not very much) help of a bunch of crazy french aeronautic engineers and two quite chubby englishmen (cranfield, btw). Overall a good game, our pickup team did win, and we learned that Cranfield were really not very good. They didn’t give our freshmen a huge opportunity to do much as they spent most of the time doing nothing. Interesting though.

Kent 2 (10-6)
We really picked it up in this one. The defense was hot with Sora getting in the way of one of their men, and we saw some great Ian/James action with huge sidearm hucks and great grabs. There was also a cameo by William at one point, Kent being much easier to score on than Tim, apparently. The stack was looking really good and the d was definately better than thrown1. Kent played well, but we played better.

LSE
We went into this game feeling full of confidence after winning against Kent, but we knew we were up against a totally different team. John and I managed to instill in everyone the desperate need to beat LSE (maybe not the best tactic), and we managed to keep our composure and seal another victory. Everyone stepped up their defense in this game, making it really tough for their more experienced handlers to throw anything except to eachother. We also saw some great action on offense, with our cutters moving the disc amongst each other all the way up the pitch. There were loads of sidearm hucks again and scores from both Hannah and Ian.

Cranfield
After playing with these guys in the pickup game, we knew they were lazy poachy bastards. Unfortunately we had to work really hard to move the disc around. After a couple of rather frantic points, however, we realised we needed to play an expert short game rather than huck against 6-ft tall men. Hannah and James worked the disc expertly amongst each other while Sora and Ian moved the defense around in the back, creating enough space for us to steam several points ahead, securing the win.

UCL
We made it to the final against UCL, and unfortunately the combo of height and exhaustion finally took its toll on the iron man freshmen. We lost Sora early on to a hip injury, and had an excellent sub in by both Sanna and William. Unfortunately UCL took the lead early on, but once we stopped hucking the disc away we began playing an exhausting, though effective, short game, gaining us points by the minute. Had we started on time or played for 10 more minutes, we may have taken the lead. Excellent play by everyone towards the end of the game.

Although we lost in the final, it was the only loss of an amazing day. Everyone played better and better as the day went on. There was real improvement on defense, especially from Hannah and Sora who were often matched up against men twice their size. The offense looked amazing, by the end of the day the handlers were barely needed, the disc was advancing up the pitch without our help. We also managed to keep Ian from deserting us for badminton. Overall, good day. Thanks a ton to all our new players and from all the help from Thrown.

Kaleigh

So here it is, after a long wait, the much sought after kcl beginners match
report.

So Thrown 1/Thrown dan played 4 games and consisted of:

Beginners:
Eileen (sp?)
Jenny
Sam
Sanna
William

Experienced:
Myself
Casbo
Ed English
Jess
Jon Da Beast

Surrey Scorpions:
A game of many firsts, first game of the day, first game i had captained and
most importantly our beginners first game against another team. So after a hasty
warm up and leading pass drill as well as some very frantic words from myself we
came across our first opponents. Surrey came out incredibly strong, which threw
us at first. We all felt a little daunted to start against a team who were
clearly very organised. That didn’t put us off however. After falling behind
early in the game we stepped up our game and started to trade points. Surrey
looked a little threatened to see us suddenly pull ourselves together and step
up to their game. At such an early stage in the day both Sam and William showed
promise with some strong undercuts, however with pew handling and some beginners
with no fear of going long Surrey kept us at arms length. However despite the
final score line I was proud to see how strongly my team had done against such a
strong team (evident by the fact that they went on to win this weekends Plymouth
Indoor tournament). The team left the game a bit stunned in part due to
experience of their first game and in part because nobody had explained to them
about cools before.
FINAL SCORE: Thrown 3 – Surrey Scorpions 7

HU?:
Looking slightly phased by our earlier defeat we walked over to our next match.
Despite attempts at encouragement our team entered the game with trepidation,
despite this however some excellent flow and cuts from the entire team, with
some fantastic first cuts from Jenny and some incredibly intelligent second cuts
from Sanna we were quick to take the first two points. having put HU? under
pressure we suddenly looked far more relaxed and ready to really play the game.
It was at this point that HU? really brought themselves together and pulled
together to give us a bit more challenge. However the entire team managed to
spread the opponents across the field giving us a lot of room to work with. This
allowed us Jenny and Eileen to continue to give us constant undercuts swiftly
followed up by both Sanna and Sam making some beautiful cuts upfield and William
provided a constant, if not mildly hyperactive, deep threat. This allowed for
some beautiful up the line flow as well as one frankly gorgeous cross pitch
hammer score (sorry couldn’t resist). To the surprise of at least one member of
the team (she knows who she is) we left the pitch the winners and with a lot of
promise for our future games.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 5 – Holloway Ultimate 3

Kent Touch This 1:
Kent our a strong team but having seen our thrown doppelgangers beat Kent 2 and
having come fresh from the battlefield with the smell of victory on our green
tops we felt confident playing this very large Kent team. We started the game
with the very same flow and strong cuts that we had put up against HU?. However
Kent consistently looked long a lot meaning that a lot of our good work would be
done by a huck deep back towards our own endzone. However not perturbed the team
continue to pick up the disc and battle it up field again and again. Sam showed
some real understanding of the swing role and looked to put a disc back upfield
to William and Eileen to allow us to gain ground. However some panicking when we
got close to the endzone caused a few too many turnovers. Not to worry though
for Sanna proved an invaluable D, plucking discs out of the may much to the
dismay of any who had the misfortune to be marked by her. Our strong D forced
Kent to throw more and more long discs. Which quickly tired our Iron Man team
which eventually became our downfall. However despite the final score both teams
agreed it was an incredibly close game.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 2 – Kent Touch This (one) 8

RUF:
Finally we come across another Iron Man team, but it’s our last game of the day.
We enter the game feeling tired yet hopeful. Little did our guys know this would
be a ridiculously mammoth game. The entire game last ONLY THREE POINTS. The
first point not being scored untill past halfway through the game. However The
day had got to our team and the trading of pitch position was really getting to
our team. Eileen continued to give us consistent undercuts as an option but we
were no longer cutting long or cutting as hard as earlier in the day. But
despite this our D really went up a level. Jenny started to put on some real
pressure with her forces and William traded all the energy he had put into going
long earlier in the day into grabbing every run through D he could. After an
injury to a RUF beginner it was established that each team would have an extra
experienced player on the field. However having the ability to sub was a little
too late and we ended this epic game the wrong side of a close scoreline.
FINAL SCORE Thrown 1 – RUF 2

We ended the day 12th but it was an incredibly good day and considering our
guys were Iron Man (and not the tallest team in the world) we ran incredibly
hard and did very well. The entire team should be very proud of how they did and
thanks also go out to those experienced players that helped (sorry to not
mention you in the match report).

……. now back to my stem cell essay

Dan