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.

It’s currently 8pm in Prague and I’m sitting outside a bar at the Strahov dorms. The weather has cooled down somewhat and a nice breeze has been rolling through. Day 1 of WUCC 2010 is over (for the best part) and the hundreds of players staying here are settling in. To the bars, that is.

Having played two games in the heat myself, I’m a bit amiss to try and recall details of matches we lost and those I sort of caught parts of, so for now I’ll share some general thoughts on the tournament.

The Venue

Prague is a nice city. What I’ve seen from bus rides, anyway. However rolling into the Stadion Strahov area you are indeed reminded that this place once was a communist stronghold. Not a bad thing by any means, but listen to the players joke about how their student dorms resemble detention cells or a mental asylum, and it’s pretty clear that it’s not the 3-star hotels we’re used to on the road.

What is notable is Stadion Srahov – Czech for “Strahov Stadium”. Imagine a soccer stadium. Now imagine instead of one pitch, there’s room for nine soccer pitches. Plus stands that can fit somewhere in the order of 200,000 people. Although there’s more vegetation than spectators up there these days. Enough negativity. The fields are flat and green, which is all you can ask for, really.

That’s the Strahov area. The other area – Vrsovice – is a 20 minute bus ride away and seems to contain all the fun stuff, but a little less of a tournament atmosphere since all the fields are long walks apart.

The Uniforms

This sport contains a lot of non-conventional uniform designs. Sure there are a bunch of league teams that have a standard colour/logo/number setup, but some of the design efforts on the jerseys here are incredible. All manner of colours can be seen – right now I can see green, purple, yellow and orange team jerseys being worn. Five Ultimate are responsible for a lot of them, with elaborate subliminated designs being the order of the week. My favourite so far – Sin City (Singapore). I’ll see if I can get a photo at some point.

That’s nice but who is playing?

Redbacks faced Ragnarok and Chevron Action Flash today. Ragnarok played us very smart. They spent the first few points taking each and every deep shot they could, and a lot of them stuck. So we concentrated on the long cuts. So they starting getting open under all the time. Schoolboy stuff, really. Chevron fell for my “make outlandish statements and get more blog hits” trap but they moved the disc very well, with about 80-90% of their throws happening within about 2-3 seconds of a catch. Chevron and Ragnarok face off tomorrow for top of the pool.

Wildcard took care of Brilliance in their game. I caught the second half, and in the sunny still conditions hucks were the throw of choice. Brilliance were trying to counter on their O with hucks as well but simply couldn’t get them to stick.

The only other game I had a chance to actually spectate was Pie Wagon versus Talinn Frisbee Club (Estonia), aka Sexy Legs. Pie Wagon went within two points of Mental Toss Flycoons earlier in the day, but Estonia got the jump on them. The windy conditions at field 30 (on top of a hill) made things tricky, and I think the artificial turf made the Newcastle players think twice about laying out for getable discs on O and D. After about 7-5 TFC’s way, Pie Wagon started to step up and play through their stars such as Jon Tatham and Clare Hussey and were playing better.

What’s on tomorrow?

Only one game for the Redbacks so plenty of spectating is on the cards. Redbacks play Absolut at 10:30am, Heads of State versus Sockeye at 12:30pm, Eastern Greys play at 2:30pm and the Chad Larson Experience vs Jeremy Codhand showcase game at 6:30pm. Right here I’ll throw in a cheap plug for my Twitter feed, where I’ll be on the sideline for those games.

Since a couple of others have taken the time to introduce themselves I thought I would jump on board as well. I’m Simon Talbot and I reside in a small city in Australia called Ballarat, which most of you probably haven’t heard of. I’ve been playing ultimate for just over 5 years, and this will be my second WUCC. I’ll be playing for Redbacks in the Open Division.

I’m not blessed with the skills and athleticism of some of the other authors here, but my passion for the game runs just as deep as anyone else’s. Those who knows me would refer to me as an “ultimate nerd”. I don’t disagree for one minute, but I much prefer to be thought of as an “ultimate fan”. As well as playing and enjoying ultimate, I love to watch top level teams in action and dissect what their gameplan and playing style is. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve watched the likes of Colony, Heads of State, Dublin, Chevron Action Flash, Clapham and Fire of London in the flesh. Throw in the online clips and highlights and that list gets much bigger. Off-field the aspect of WUCC I’m looking forward to the most is inter-continental match ups – how do the South Americans defend Asian dynamic offence? Will the conservative European offence be more effective than the risk-taking Australian style? And can anyone topple the North Americans?

In between Redbacks games I’ll be doing my best to catch the games between higher seeds and other games I think will be close. As well as posting to my own website Force Sideline throughout the week, I’ll also be stopping in here to give you a fan’s perspective on the tournament – who is playing well, who isn’t, who is punching above their weight and who could be doing better. I’m sure there will be plenty of coverage for the well known teams, so if there are any other teams you would love to read up on, get in touch with me (forcesideline at gmail dot com) and I’ll do my best to report back.