Eight Was Too Many...

DojoMojo's run from nowhere to Premiership contenders came to an end on Thursday night against a very charged UQ Passion. Seems beating them with six last time was akin to beating a rather large nest of wasps with a flaming stick...

But all credit to the boys in pink - they got stuck into the game VERY hard and capitalised on early Dojo errors, of which there were several (more on that shortly). Perhaps UQ's masterstroke was sending home their captain Johnny Mac with a rolled ankle just before the start of the game, giving Dojo about 5 minutes of false security before Buzz "The Cornerstone of Queensland Ultimate" Burwell arrived to put things back in serious doubt, just moments before Game On was called.

Thankfully Marijke Walls (you're a lucky man, Dan) was on hand to film some of the action for us, and on reviewing the footage a pretty sorry tale emerged of a stagnant, hammer-dependent Dojo offence struggling to make yardage against a (frequently double-teaming but rarely called) UQ puppy/fence zone. This first video exemplifies just how hard Dojo had to work just to get the frisbee anywhere near UQ's endzone:


44 passes! And of course we weren't helped by a vast number of unforced errors.

Some of these I'm-okay-you're-okay establishments don't like to single out individuals for either praise or punishment, but here at the Dojo we take a more "traditional" approach a-la John Kreese. Whilst watching the video of the game, we couldn't help noticing that one player had more turnovers than the rest of the team combined, and this player was Lee "McLovin" O'Dwyer. We had considerable pleasure in producing this little compilation of Lee gold:


Great grab by Dan Walls at the end there - seemed unfair not to include that one... But at least Lee does it with style, right? More mojo than dojo, and obviously not big on reading emails. For this writer the funniest bit is Coopers shrugging his shoulders at 1:02... Not sure why there's no sound, but things rarely work properly the first time.

There's no denying however that the boys with the worst shirts in the league (kind of like musk sticks, and even worse when combined with the apparently fashionable white shorts) deserved to win through to the Final. Burwell of course generated most of the play around the disc, but everyone was involved around the middle of the field and the defensive intensity was high all over. It certainly seemed that the zone D suited the style of the UQ yoofs much better that their man-plus-one from last time around, and they seemed very successful at stopping the Dojo developing any real flow.

On offence they were simply safer than the Dojo, with very few risky options (this writer only recalls one long shot all night) and they always had the single-malt smoothness of Buzz's break throws to call on under pressure. Here's how easy they made it look at times:



So that's it for the season. Next week UQ Passion take on Messy Bugs in the Final and it's going to be a cracker. Will big Jules take his A-game to Brisbane's "dominant player at the moment" Mike Neild? Will Buzz and Jason spend all night trying to out-huck each other? Will John's ankle be the right way around again, and will Wetnose really wear a mankini? And what feats will the other 20-or-so guys pull out in the big game? Perhaps someone will make us an offer we can't refuse to film the action...

There's one final MVP poll on the right (voting for multiple players is fine as usual), but the outcome will have no bearing on the fact that this season's MVP winner is Matt Eastburn. Matt can expect his fabulous prize to arrive about the same time the tracksuit he won for the inaugral Dojo blocks comp back in 2004 does...