One Hundred Not Out

On June 12th 2008 the DojoMojo blog took its first tentative step into the Ultimate blogosphere. In that first post we described ourselves as "the oldest, most gloriously history-laden and also most spectacularly well-merchandised team around", and nothing much has changed. Except for the fact that, including this one, 100 posts have taken up their own tiny chunks of server space somewhere out there in the great Google cloud...

Over the past 26 months we've interviewed the biggest names in the BPL, had our team shirt voted one of the best in the world (thanks everyone), written plenty of controversial stuff (none of which we regret in any way), and of course provided video coverage of a multitude of BPL games and two Grand Finals (the ones we weren't playing in) absolutely free of charge.

For those with a statistical bent, or even just the slightest degree of curiosity, or perhaps just wanting to dodge work for a few minutes, here's a few interesting DojoMojo Blog facts:

6,849 unique visitors
29.96% new visits

#1 most viewed post: Sorry Mum (251 visits)
#2 most viewed post: Smells Like Bad Spirit (153 visits)
#3 most viewed post: Worst Huck Ever (147 visits)

Seems nothing rates quite as high as a good old Spirit controversy, eh?!

Visitors have viewed the blog from 43 different countries (including the odd visit from interesting-sounding places like Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Lithuania and Laos, among many others).

Top Ten Visiting Nations:

#1 Australia - 6,031 visitors
#2 USA - 341 visitors
#3 Canada - 133 visitors
#4 UK - 59 visitors
#5 Germany - 26 visitors
#6 Hong Kong - 20 visitors
#7 Ireland - 13 visitors
#8 New Zealand - 12 visitors
#9 Brazil - 12 visitors
#10 Japan - 10 visitors

Sure, we're not likely to be targeted by News Ltd for a hostile takeover anytime soon, but it's good to know that people around the world are getting to read - and watch! - the way Ultimate is played here in Brisbane. Hope you're liking what you see.

Pete Allen Goes Above & Beyond

It's official, and deserving of a blog post all to itself:

Pete Allen is the winner of DojoMojo's Above&Beyond competition for Season 1 2010. Well done and well deserved, Pete. Your fantastic prize is in the post (oh so unreliable these days...) and your name has been added to the glittering list of Dojo legends on the Above&Beyond Honour Board....

Bear Market Blogging

Seems that most of the BPL blogging community is in hibernation this week (we really hang out for those Power Rankings, Spaz), with the one notable exception of the ever-friendly & lighthearted Heroes media outlet. Okay, so maybe no-one but the Heroes themselves cares that their training has been re-scheduled, and perhaps that's something that might be better communicated via team email rather than worldwide blog post, but nonetheless Carl did manage to put in a trailblazing BPL blogging effort a few posts back... He even had time to grumble about the crumble of the BPL fields - couldn't agree more, Carl.

Hmmm... You know how when you read a Jeremy Clarkson article in the paper he spends at least the first 500 words rambling on about something totally unrelated to the subject of his review? Well we'd been hoping to adopt a similar approach with this post, picking up on shreds of gossip and innuendo from the many other BPL press agencies out there and building some sort of LD-annoying controversy out of it. But reading back over what we've written it appears that we've accidentally succeeded in building a reasonable word count out of very little material, and wouldn't be the least bit surprised if most readers have already clicked away to some of the much more interesting content the internet has to offer... Hi Lee.

Oh okay, let's talk briefly about the game against Heroes last Thursday night. Yes, Sensei C appeared to be in dire need of some laser eye surgery, flailing around for a spinning white blur on several occasions. Too much time staring at the "New Post" screen on the Dojo blog perhaps??? Otherwise it was pretty much the usual situation against Heroes - Dojo turn up expecting an easy win (thankfully with a team this week), then spend the first half doing some lazy trading, lurch into halftime with a dodgy 8-6 (or was it 8-7?) lead and finally decide that games against Heroes need to be won in exactly the same way as against any other BPL team i.e. significant effort and commitment required. So with socks pulled up and appropriate exertion applied the kenshi roll through the second half to a 15-8 win.

Heroes have some useful-looking new recruits this season, and with Matt Boevink now in an on-field Captain-Coach role, they should see some significant improvement in depth of ability and availability of multiple options. However having said that, every second pass is still going to Jangles, and relying on a key player like that is never good for any team. Just look what happened to the Bugs without Mike last season...

Sorry couldn't resist. But hey, if you're going to be so tactless as to advertise yourselves as "Brisbane's current Premier Ultimate Frisbee Team" (which might need a re-write to bring it up to date BTW) you really are asking for trouble...

The Above&Beyond poll is updated above right for a fresh round of voting....

Ultimate Speed Dating

Two points was all it took. Even for the least "Dojo Way" player in the entire BPL...

Due to the absence of pretty much all of the kenshi last night, each and every Bug got the chance to enjoy that most forbidden of all guilty Bugger pleasures (and one assumes there are many...) - to run with the Dojo. As the night progressed, everyone from Special G to Tony Ross spent two or three precious points breathing the rare air of the Dojo's nonlinear, anti-hierarchical structure - and it wasn't hard to tell that it felt good.

And so it was that even the #1 Bug found himself echoing the sentiments of Oscar Wilde, who famously said he could "resist anything other than temptation". It was only a momentary aberration, but no sooner did Mike catch a disc 30m out from the Bug endzone than without even stopping to think he let fly a vintage Dojo hammer for a breakside goal in the front corner of the endzone. Feels good, doesn't it?

Okay sure, so he might have followed that up by saying that he's "more likely to play for Heroes than for Dojo", but that's fine by us. This writer is more likely to spend his Thursday nights drinking a nice cold beer than playing for the Buggers, and it's enough just to know that that one little souvenir of Dojo escapism will stay with Mike forever...

Anyway, that's about enough storytelling for now. During the game we'd been planning a fantastic tale about how the Dojo beat Bugs with only 5 players (it was actually looking entirely likely that there might be a Dojo win for most of the game), topping our current record of being the only team to ever win a BPL match with only 6 players. Sadly however, that's a story that will have to remain untold for now (of course it also would have only been true in what we thought at the time to be a hilariously quoted-out-of-context fashion anyway).

Pretty soon we'll get around to naming last season's A&B winner, and to getting this season's voting underway...