on the weekend i... (explain what you did on the weekend)

on the weekend i went to sydney. this was my fourth trip to sydney for the year and i feel that i know it as well as i do melbourne. this particular trip was for the australian ultimate championships which were held from saturday through tuesday. my team, chilly, were seeded number one as we won in perth last year and were looking to defend.

i was pleased with the amount of game time i received this year in comparison to last year, and for the sheer fact that we took a squad of 19 with us.

i'm not big on blogging long reports on how each game went play-by-play, so i will recap some of the things that happened that i hope to remember. the first is that we did not go undefeated throughout the tournament as we did last year. we lost to fakulti on the first day by two points and our team played terribly. texas pete from the australian under 20's (fakulti) was carted off half way through with a suspected broken leg after colliding with shaun 'built like a train' freeman. i visited pete that night at the hospital with arwyn, piers, greta and john. the x-rays showed that it was not a break but he had done severe damage to the ligaments on the anterior side of his left foot. he will be out for about 6-8 weeks but is expected to be back to play worlds with us in august.

fakulti had split evenly into two teams - and we played the other on monday in the quarterfinal. we started sluggishly and were down 9-6 at half. we pulled it out of the bag and were able to make it to 14-14, game to 15. universe point. we are on o and a think it is shaun or shane who hucks to gack running deep, marked by ant dowle, they wait for the hanging pass deep in the endzone and ant jumps first, unbelievably high and gets the d before gack had even left the ground. this was the best block i have ever seen. simply amazing. now on o, fakulti have a few throws and are on the sideline. the disc goes up to an incut and tao browne lays out and gets the disc back for chilly. this time we do the business and close out the game, advancing to the semis, awaiting the winner of the deathstar-southside match being played on the field just over from us.

southside win and we play them on tuesday morning.

i score the first point of this game after both teams turn over twice. abra switched off me and i was being marked by a taller guy. the disc was pretty much on our defensive goal line and i cut from level with it to burn my man deep off a 70m gack huck.

we won this game 17-4 and were to play the fakulti team we had lost to on day one in the final.

somehow fakulti got up by two, early in the game before we clawed our way back into it. we ended up closing it out easily 17-10. i think they had a smaller roster and were probably tired by this stage of the tournament.

shaun freeman - playing with a broken throwing hand and improvising with his left - came on in the final point and skied with his non-preffered hand to bring down the championship. that hand is going straight to the pool room.

but the biggest thing that stood out to me about this trip was the amount of heckling and jeering that the chilly team receives whenever playing in front of a big crowd. no one has a nice thing to say. granted, i felt a few calls we made on the weekend were not necessarily correct. but every team has their moments. i was disgusted when one of our players were fouled by the mark, called it (and it was not contested i might add), and then was booed by 'better spirited' teams in the crowd.

when i first started playing ultimate and was asked why i liked it, i remember saying "everyone who plays ultimate is awesome, they are all so friendly". looking back, i didn't feel that way a lot at this tournament, in fact, much the opposite. but i think i will persist with the sport nonetheless in the knowledge that people can change and that the younger generation is breaking through the ranks everywhere the country.

so we have the shield for the second year, and back in ballarat, wood is happy to call me a winner as i could go back to back. but i feel a little bit empty because of the way we were treated.

mmhmm mmhmm mmhmm

i have had a lengthy stint away from the blog, only to return and find that my beloved blog www.pmisoutthere.blogspot.com no longer loved me. i tried to post. it would not post. i said nice things about it. it snubbed me. i tried to comfort it. it would not be comforted.

and so i set up an new blog at blogspot.

but the story does not end there.

i got to that blog and it would not let me post once more.

and so i started a new user name, set up a new blog, and again, once more, i could not post.

and so i called in to see my old friend google, in hope that he wouldst find me a new place to blog. and upon google's advice, i thrust my thoughts upon eponym. but eponym could not handle them, as i too could not handle eponym.

and so i left eponym, and blog was dead to me. i wandered in the wilderness for what would be known as 8 days before returning, hungry, poorly fed and when i had not eaten, to blogspot. here i am now. a new username, a new blog title, saturn and jupiter.

i choose to start the blog.... now.

good good

just checking if this blog is going to work