BPL Is Back

After spending the two month off-season meditating and creating JCVD-style training montages atop the rocky outcrops of the Dojo's hillside estate, the kenshi descended once again into the fray of Ultimate combat in the miasma-smothered marshlands of the AJFC fields.

Of course, making training montages doesn't actually mean doing any training, so those Kenshi that didn't take advantage of the excellent off-season training sessions ended up using the first four or five points of Game 1 to get back up to speed. Hence the early scoreline in the first Dojo outing of the season (against UQ Passion) being something like 0-4 Passion...

But once the first Dojo point was on the board, the opportunity to set up a defence wasn't wasted and the kenshi went straight into a choking Zone D formation. This yielded instant results with lots of cheap turnovers near the UQ endzone and easy goals for the Dojo. So despite that heavy early deficit, the Dojo took the first half by a couple of points. Okay - it's not exactly the first time we've seen that happen...

The halftime break gave Passion's maestro Johnny Mac a chance to talk his young chargers through the intricacies of breaking a Zone D, and Passion had a lot more success getting the disc into those little pockets behind the cup (via the traditional BPL zero-wind over-the-top route) and managed to force the Dojo D to adapt into different Zone formations and a few points of Man. By now however the Dojo offence was looking after things very nicely, and before anyone knew it had closed out the game 15-10.

Kudos to Passion for their phat new shirts (goes to show that if you have to rip off a logo you might as well make it a good one) and committed playing style. This is a team we can easily see becoming much stronger as the season progresses, especially if JMac can get them working as a solid, motivated unit - which we're sure he can.

But the Dojo can always depend on the depth of its roster, as was the case in this game. And that brings us to the first Above&Beyond poll of the season, which is ready for voting on the right. It's a bye for the kenshi this Thursday, so the next outing will be on August 27th against the other UQ team - the Lovers.