It was once remarked to me that if you don’t win a tournament, it feels better to finish 3rd than 2nd because you get to go home on a win.

When I first heard that years ago as a rookie it didn’t make sense – why would you want prefer to finish lower? But over the years I have become more atuned to wanting to end a tournament on a positive note, whether it be winning the last game, having a really fun match-up or even some sweet heckling in the final. The last thing you do together as a team can affect the impression you have of the whole event.

Redbacks didn’t have the week we wanted to. While we certainly gave many teams a run and had some narrow losses, we threw ourselves out of many games and we were down the bottom end of the bracket playing off for 45th place against LOL from Hungary. The score was 15-7 and the game was as good as over. I was on the line for the O point and Pete, one of our receivers, quietly said to me, “I’m gonna go. Let’s do it.”

A little backstory: There had been very little talk of personal stats during the week until our captain caught a goal on Day 5, proudly declaring he was “on the scoreboard.” To this point I was the last active player on 0. I play as an O handler and had been playing an ultra-conservative tournament, preferring to be reliable rather than huck it at will. Only one turn for the week but yet, zero assists and zero goals.

So back to the game, the pull comes in and the disc gets to me, around 50 metres from goal. The zone isn’t quite set and I can see Pete drifting deep. I wind up and let a picture perfect high floating huck go. Pete, as cool as ever, gets position and height over the two defenders and comes down with the disc… four metres short of the endzone. We then turned the disc and conceded the goal. With my head down, I headed towards the sideline.

My team however, had sensed the chance for one last small victory for the tournament – get Simon a stat. A timeout was called and a play was set up. Some of you may know it as the Reverse Moses. The pull comes in; one pass to Neil who jacks it in Pete’s direction. He pulls it down easily just shy of the endzone and calls another timeout. This time we set up a Moses endzone play, with me as the third cutter. Disc checked in… first cut… second cut… I take off and get in front of my marker. Pete puts the disc straight at my chest and I clap the disc between my hands. Cue my over-the-top celebration as my teammates storm the field in elation – we had set ourselves one final goal and we had done it.

Up to that point in the week, some of us were getting pretty down on the fact that we were dropping further and further down the table. LOL got the last point pretty easily to seal 45th spot, but at least we got to end our tournament on a high. I just hope that the 132 teams and the thousands of players that didn’t win a championship this week got their personal victory for the tournament and can go home with a smile on their face.

Thank you Prague, thank you Redbacks and thank you everyone else for an amazing week.