On Lightning and Cliches...

They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but that's exactly what happened for DojoMojo last Thursday night. Well sort of, given that Dojo's game against MBB was at Annerley Junior FC fields and the previous round had been at Griffith. And then of course there's the fact that the Griffith game against UQ Lovers had resulted in a final point win, whereas last week's game against MBB was... well let's not spoil it for those that weren't there (or at the invisible-image-touting BUBlog afterwards)...!

Looks like they were right about the lightning.

And now that we've done enough stretching of analogies for one post we can proceed to give a brief and hopefully not-too-tedious rundown of the game itself. Let's see:

Things actually started out quite well for both teams offensively at least, with Dojo playing proper Ultimate from the first point of the game - surely a first this season?! After 6 points the scoreline was locked at 3-3, with the Dojo's zone D looking the stronger of the two, but still yet to get a block. Perhaps sensing that the Dojo was slowly getting the upper hand in the give-and-take early points, MBB decided to abandon their early attempts to share the disc around with lots of short passes through the Dojo zone, instead going for a full rosary of good old faithful hail-Mary shots to Mike in the endzone. It's an Ulti-cliche for a reason i.e. it works so it happens a lot.

Before anyone knew it the score had rapidly blown out to 10-5 in favour of MBB, and with the game looking more or less won and the kenshi looking pretty bored with the whole thing, MBB subbed Mike off. And this, as it turns out, was not a great move on their part.

Who can say what it is that's made the Dojo such a never-say-die team this season. No doubt the return of veteran Dojo legend Leon McIntyre has helped, as has the addition of rookie Darren Shi - a guy too young to notice when he's dislocated a shoulder. Perhaps the brilliant captaincy of Sensei C, who has selflessly subbed himself off the field and out of the way in both of the last two games, has also contributed...

What we do know for sure is that this season, the Dojo will take any opening it can find no matter how late in the game and how hopeless the situation. This time, the removal of Bug #1 from the field was exactly that opening, allowing the kenshi to press hard under on D without the looming threat in the deep and to throw long with abandon. By the time the Bug leader was back on the field (a couple of points later, as we recall it) the momentum had noticeably shifted and there was no stopping it. 10-5 MBB became 11-10 (MBB now in front by just 1 point) with one point to play!

In situations like this, it always feels like a win for the team that was behind on the scoreboard to draw the game in the final point, and that's exactly what happened after a forced turnover and a beautiful long-range score. For a game that started so evenly to swing so heavily in one direction then just as quickly and for just as long in the other is something we certainly can't recall being part of before.

So the Dojo keeps its Minor Premiership prospects alive (needing a win over the pseudo-newbie Cobras this week) by escaping from what appeared to be a fairly well-dug grave yet again. The question now is: will the notoriously unpredictable Dojo throw their final regular season game in order to avoid the weight of "favourite" status going into the finals? It certainly weighed heavily last season... Only time will tell, but until then we've got A&B voting to do right there on the sidebar.

Keep an Eye Out

It's Sunday night and we're doing our Dojo blogging duty. No surprises then that we stopped by the Brisbane Ultimate Blog first to see what the fallout had been from the Dojo's 13-12 win against UQ Lovers last Thursday night.

And whilst not quite of a Chernobyl-rivalling scale, the rumble that took place between Dojo and Lovers on the GU backlots last week certainly seems to have generated a bit of conversation, even ignoring (as we do) those who lack the cahones to post comments under their own name...

You can certainly understand why many of the UQ guys would have been desperately unhappy to lose out in the final point - if it had been us we'd be feeling exactly the same. They'd turned up early with a huge squad, warmed up like a tight unit should and hit the ground running from the first point. Contrast this with a customarily leisurely arrival for the (eight) Kenshi, standing around and chatting for a while before maybe throwing a couple of short passes before the first pull. If we're honest with ourselves we have to admit that it's a pretty shabby way to get the night underway, and after a brief flourish of Dojo throwaways it was halftime with UQ way out in front at a thoroughly deserved 8-2.

Fast forward to the final point of the game by which time the Dojo had managed to level the score at 12-12, through a variety of effective zone D's (helped by a gentle breeze into one corner of the field) and minimal-turnover offence (sorely lacking in the first half). The last point of the night however featured multiple turnovers from anxious hands on both teams, but the disc was eventually secured in the prophylactically-safe mitts of Sean Flanagan for a stupendously unlikely Dojo win.

Okay, so that paragraph made pretty light of the extraordinary effort involved in pulling back that halftime scoreline, and yes we're quite chuffed to have escaped that game with our undefeated record still intact. But to be perfectly frank, everything that had transpired previously in that game boiled down to the final point clincher, and it really could have gone either way. Dojo went in with a definite momentum advantage, but UQ were also within tasting distance of the win they'd worked so hard since before the game even started to achieve...

Anyway, it's experiences like these that both teams will draw on in the future, and one thing that does appear certain is that you can expect the Dojo to play half a game of excellent Ultimate on any given Thursday night.

A&B voting is back on the right!

Dojo Royale

Yes, it's been a while since we last posted anything here at the Dojo blog. Why? Well, we've been on a little holiday, played some golf, done some gardening and generally done anything other than play or talk Ultimate. In fact, we can quickly summarise the Dojo's on-field Ultimate exploits since our last post by simply noting that the Dojo has won every game, most by a comfy margin.

So of course when yet another "training week" came around (immediately following the BPL's Uni Games no-play week) we were looking for anything other than Ultimate training to occupy our Thursday night. And what better substitute for a night of hard running and intensive skills practice than to take our places around the table at Andy "Coopers" Lankowski's place for a night of high-stakes poker - the inaugural Dojo Royale poker night.

As you can see from the image below, some were taking the event very seriously. That's Andy McLean decked out in the unbuttoned waistcoat (and newsreader-spec shorts below the table), trumped only for seriousness by the "Hustling German" Stefan Schmidt, looking like a cross between Eminem and an elderly driver with his hoodie up and dark specs on (sadly not caught on camera). Stefan also saw fit to let us know on the night that he'd previously spent 2 years as a poker dealer in some sort of travelling German poker circus. The things he can do with poker chips are truly arousing.


What you can't see in that photo is the huge stack of chips sitting in front of Mr McLean. At this point of the night he was undisputed chip leader, and it wasn't long before the final winner was decided. So in approximate order of departure from the table (we really should've posted this sooner with a fresher memory), the players on the night were:

- Andy Lankowski (great host, lots of bad hands)
- Mike Morgan (made the mistake of thinking that his trip-4 on the turn was going to be enough to beat the all-in Sensei's pair of aces in the hand and a 2 on the river giving a sensational straight)
- Stefan Rappazzo (had been duking it out all night in his own brash ultra-rapid style, opting against all common sense not to buy back in at the 9pm deadline and yet somehow hanging in there for another hour or so)
- Stefan Schmidt (can't remember how he went out, but most likely it was bluffing big time with absolutely nothing in hand)
- Stephen Cameron (unbelievably unlucky to lose out with his solid 2-pair from the flop against a big spending chip leader McLean who picked up an outrageously unlikely straight on the river, not at all similar to the the way the Sensei had knocked Morgs out earlier on)

That left the pot at the mercy of Leon McIntyre (the chap looking so relaxed in the photo) and Andy McLean. And actually it was all over the very next hand. Leon was clearly keen to wrap things up for better or worse, and went all in after the flop with nothing but maybe a king in hand, Andy (with a massive chip lead) went with him with pretty much the same hand. And as the cards came down it was the man in the white waistcoat who came out the winner.

So there you go, nothing on the Dojo blog for a couple of months and now something that has nothing to do with Ultimate at all. Or does it???

BTW - extra points for spotting the non-Dojo ring-in in the photo...