DOJOMOJO

Dojo wins BPL Final

2011-06-05T12:41:00.011+10:00

Of all the big issues surrounding BPL ultimate over the past 6 months or so, the biggest of them all has been the constant question: why has the DojoMojo blog been silent for so long? The speculation and rumours have ranged from the scandalous to the downright outrageous, with some even going so far as to suggest that this blogger's prolonged absence may have been due to a broken "w" key, due to excessive W+M1 misadventures... Utter libel - just look at the veritable avalanche of w's already used in this post!

But now, at last, and using a spare keyboard plugged in for whenever we need to use a "w" (which is surprisingly often - we've used 6 already in just this sentence alone!), we can at last give you the true reason for the 6 months' worth of static that have filled the screen of Dojo TV. In an ambitious screen production rivalling the supreme efforts of the great Jack Horner, we have stopped at nothing and spared no expense to produce a moving, narrative-laden documentary film covering the titanic clash between the heavily-favoured (and sadly now-defunct) UQ Lovers and the walking-wounded underdog DojoMojo in the BPL season 2 2010 grand final.

So here it is, the official, Dave Watson-directed, Palme d'Or winning film ("short obscure-sports drama" category) that so many avid BPL fans have been waiting so long to see:

There you go. Could history repeat this Thursday night? Can the rank outsider Dojo team, further hampered by an ominous Minor Premiership, pull off a grandstand win against the unbackable favourites and perennial Power Rankings supremos, the Slamtown Flatball Club? Only one thing is certain - you'll have to wait a long time to see the video...

Be the Club...

2010-11-22T23:29:00.004+10:00

What do you get when you combine late-night highlights of the Ryder Cup with a nice dram of Macallan? The first post on the Dojo blog in a long time - that's what.

Oh man - so much to write about, so many distractions. Let's take it from the top. DojoMojo has qualified for yet another BPL grand final this season with a gritty 3-point win over Cobras. And that's where the latest round of controversy starts!

Controversy #1 - Reece

We (ie I) let Reece play. Well you know it just wouldn't have felt right getting into the grand final against a 6-man team (and it certainly wouldn't have felt great should we have happened to lose to one!). This despite the fact that our man Chris Cunliffe accepted Stu's ruling and didn't attempt to get on the field. In fact he didn't even attempt to get TO the field, but that's another matter altogether...

Nonetheless we feel sure that had Chris turned up then Liam would have happily allowed him to play in exchange for bringing the Cobras roster up to 7 with Reece.

Okay to be honest we were having some serious second thoughts about the wisdom of our chivalrous conduct about 5 points in, when the Cobras were starting to build a small lead courtesy of some vintage Stewart play, but at the end of the day it does feel good to have won a proper game...

Controversy #2 - Ultimate Fighting or Ultimate Disc?

Sure, the Cobras captain has a bit of a dodgy reputation when it comes to foul calls, and he does like giving receivers a bit of a touch up (putting it mildly?) after making a bid on a long disc. But none of that justified our man Ryan pushing Liam to the ground twice after some borderline post-catch contact. Yes, tempers had been building for a while (especially courtesty of an utterly bogus "out" call by Liam a few points earlier), but any kind of physical retaliation is completely unacceptable in Ultimate. A Spirit timeout was called and Ryan made a full apology to an accepting Liam, but in the interests of setting a suitably harsh benchmark DojoMojo has officially suspended Mr Black until next season, ruling him out for this week's Grand Final match against UQ. Ouch.

So we've got no Ryan, no Cunliffe, left-handed Leon only has his right hand, Eastburn has been injured all season and Dan Walls decided that the second half of 2010 would be a good time to take a sabbatical. If we can win the big game from here it'll be a miracle.

Things Chimay Will Make You Say

2010-09-27T21:47:00.008+10:00

You know something we've realised lately? Reading descriptions of frisbee games really isn't very interesting. In fact, unless you were there and/or you get a mention in the article itself then you'd have to wonder if the few minutes that you might spend reading a game review wouldn't really be better invested in, oh, let's see - making some homemade hollandaise sauce, planning your trip to a farmers' market on the weekend, or just taking out the rubbish.

So this week we're saying nothing about the game against MBB last Thursday night, other than the obvious facts that it happened and Dojo lost.

Okay, we might say that the expected Burwell-to-Neild combo didn't bore us to tears as we'd been afraid it would. In fact early on it was more the Burwell-to-Chadwick connection that was taking some kenshi by surprise (ie whoa Buzz has the disc and some tallish guy is running long WTF!). We might also add that the game was 8-3 at half and finished 15-10, meaning the Dojo at least managed to trade the second half despite some pretty wacky options going to ground in the face of a virtually mistake-free Bug performance.

But that's enough of the tedious details of what was just another brick in the BPL Season 2 2010 wall. What we know from the Google stats (and stats, as we heard today, will confess to anything if you torture them for long enough) is that the readers of this blog care little for quality reportage and in-depth match analysis. Juicy BPL scandal is the key here, and thankfully when there's a controversy on the boil in BPL the Dojo is nearly always involved.

Onto the subject of Chris Cunliffe then. Chris, as many will know, is a bit of a gun frisbee player. Turns out that he's been injured for a while (2 years since his last BPL appearance, apparently), and that he's just managed to get himself fit enough to go for a run on Thursday nights. The thing is though - Chris had signed to play Cobras for the remainder of the season (he's young and is entitled to make mistakes), and he needed to play every remaining BPL round in order to be eligible to play in the finals (for reasons we're not about to elaborate upon here). Sadly for the Cobras, their opposition, those mankini-wearing Slamtowners, couldn't get 7 guys to make the trip from the GC and forfeited the game, leaving Chris in an awkward jam. Oh baby - you know where this is going, don't you...

So of course it's Dojo v Bugs. Which means the team some (hi Mike) consider to be the "villains" of the BPL and always shortest of numbers on the night, was up against the team that also happens to be home to our esteemed LD, who couldn't agree more wholeheartedly with Mike vis-a-vis the Dojo's villain status... Anyway, short story is that Chris has now taken up permanent residence at the Dojo, much to the detriment of the Cobras and much to the annoyance of an LD who has long since tired of these sorts of eligibility quandaries (not to mention Dojo opportunism). But don't get too upset just yet Wetnose - Chris is still a shadow of his former self and probably won't be back to his full vertical leap or maximum speed until the semifinals get underway...

Too much? Let us know in the comments if you'd like more of this sort of Courier-Mail gossip column stuff, or if a return to the strictly sporting style of the majority of our first hundred-and-one posts was more to your liking. Or maybe just videos without any words at all...

Black Light

2010-09-22T20:56:00.003+10:00

Were Dojo wearing black against SFC last week? Maybe, but that's the one thing we forgot to ask Pete Allen when we inquired to see if he wouldn't mind putting together a match report for Dojo's round 5 BPL matchup against the team that some have affectionately taken to calling "Salami Town"...

Thankfully, Pete was able to find some time in his busy schedule (does anyone know what Pete does other than being awesome at frisbee?), and here's his description of how the game went down:

"Thursday's match began in the usual Dojo way with no one knowing who was and wasn’t showing up, and with a last minute phone call from Stephen letting us know he wasn’t coming after he had arrived home and whilst preparing to leave for the game turned the key in his lovely Porsche, only for nothing to happen…I guess that’s what you get with quality Porsche engineering.

With the arrival of our 8 players and a slow and succinct warm up in stark contrast to the drilled and high intensity warm up down the other end we took the field not sure how this would go. Our opponents had turned out in force and had been doing well this season but how would they go without the Mayor. It appeared as we lined up to receive the pull that we would be facing a 2-3-2 (the light breeze did carry that much info to at least my ears) and then it was on.

Dojo worked the disc around frantically with some extremely fast popping and swinging to work the disc up to the other endzone…and then threw it away. SFC then threw a couple of short passes followed by the usual huck, which didn’t complete, and then Dojo repeated their last effort, and threw it away again…and eventually after quite a long first point conceded. This was pretty much the way the first half went, with Jody throwing his dangerous flick for a few points and pretty spectacular layout D’s (pretty much all from SFC), and it was looking tight after Dojo fought back from 6-4 down to take half 8-6.

The second half saw this rather nice little run of points to the Dojo continue to make it a 7 point run, with pretty much 100% offence after some lucky turnovers from Slamtown who had a little bit of a drop fest for a few points allowing Dojo to get out to 11-6. We like to think it was our intense defense…

Around about now we slackened off a bit to allow a few quick points in and start the hearts beating again (Pete starting to feel the power of the dark side of reportage here...). Luckily with time running out, Coops was on the ball and alerted us to the fact that it was after 9pm and after another Slamtown point time was called, with the last point to start with the scores at 11-9 to Dojo. The last point saw Dojo click back in on offence and sink the last pass with a rather unspectacular pass from and almost complete silence with the receiver standing dead still. Quite a quiet end to what was one of the most fun games of BPL I’ve ever enjoyed and the spirit between the two teams was the best I’ve seen in a long long time - thanks SFC."

Ladies and Gentlemen - Pete Allen. There is no substitute.

One Hundred Not Out

2010-08-29T14:46:00.010+10:00

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

2010-08-29T14:39:00.005+10:00

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

2010-08-29T12:42:00.003+10:00

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

2010-08-20T21:54:00.003+10:00

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...

Worst Huck Ever!

2010-07-11T12:33:00.005+10:00

That's how the DojoMojo commentary team described the winning throw in the Grand Final match of Brisbane Premier League Season 1 for 2010, fought out by UQ Passion and Cobras (ummm Reece - anything to say?). And as far as describing the game goes, we reckon that's about all that needs to be said, given that we've got nearly an HOUR of exclusive, non-stop frisbee footage right here for your viewing pleasure, absolutely free of charge.

Oh there is just one thing, and that is that the naming & shaming that went on here at the Dojo blog a few weeks ago seems to have been a cathartic moment. Both teams, and most notably the Cobras, played with impeccable spirit and competitiveness throughout, with not even a single moment of controversy in the entire match. A great achievement by everyone involved, especially in such a high-stakes game.

And now let's roll the videotape!

Sorry Mum

2010-06-12T20:13:00.013+10:00

You know, my Mum used to say (and still does) that if you can't say anything nice about someone then you shouldn't say anything at all. The problem is that if I lived by that rule all the time I would a) have very little to write about on this blog, and b) do the BPL community a great disservice by failing to address some very important issues. Best not read any further then, Mum.

Oh okay - let's talk about the good things first. Final point of the game, Dojo and Cobras even at 14-14. Strange that I can't clearly remember how that point started, but the Dojo put together a lengthy offensive push featuring innumerable hammers over the Cobras trap zone. It seemed only a matter of time before the inevitable winning Dojo goal would come, until a cross-field hammer outside the Cobras endzone was picked off by a Cobras player who I really should know the name of, and hopefully will soon. The Cobras team then put a fast sequence of completed passes together and scored fairly easily. Game over.

(Post-edit note: Thanks Reece for reminding me about what should have been an unforgettable foul call in the last point, where Finn (I know his name now!) was running in the wrong direction for the disc and collided with Coops, neither of them being anywhere near it, and neither of them intending for there to be any contact. Ah, but a foul was called nonetheless and Cobras got another shot...).

That's it for the "saying good things" bit.

What also has to be said is that due to the actions of a few senior players the Cobras are fast developing a reputation for themselves as a cheating, aggressive, obnoxious and downright nasty team to play against. This must be something that all of their great young guys who just want to play excellent disc find very troubling.

During the game we saw a Cobra player run headlong into Coops, and complaints from the Cobra captain when "dangerous play" was called (i.e. "but he'd already dropped it!" - yeah, because if he caught it he would've ended up knocked to the ground). We had general abuse and arguments over call after call. Probably the "Bug" moment for Cobras though was when Liam called an obviously premature stall on Dave Watson (memory fails as to whether Watto's throw was a goal or had set up an easy goal pass). Even the spectators on the sideline were ridiculing this at the time, and Liam was given the opportunity to retract, but alas... A turnover followed, and what should have been a 12-9 scoreline to Dojo turned into a one-point game at 11-10.

Sure, we made our own mistakes thereafter to lose the game - no-one's denying this. But seeing our lead reduced by 2 points through pure deceit certainly didn't help. I never thought I'd see merit in having referees in Ultimate, but after last week I'm starting to understand. I'm tempted to add further to this point, in particular pointing out that often those who call loudest for referees are also those who are most in need of being scrutinised them, but I won't (any more than I already have)... There's a lightly veiled point being made there for those who care to read between the lines.

I really would have followed my Mums' advice though, even after all that, if the comments from the Cobras captain in the post-game huddle (and afterward, including his ridiculous efforts on the BUB) hadn't been so full of gloating ill-will. If winning a damn trophy is all that matters, and you're prepared to sacrifice your own reputation and friendships to get there then I for one think that's a pretty sad situation, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone there.

Anyway, I've been searching for a suitably tone-lightening witticism to end this post with, but nothing comes to mind. Instead let me just say that it's been an honour and a pleasure to play my 20th consecutive BPL season (yes - every season there has ever been, under the various nomenclatures) with my Dojo teammates Pete Allen, Ryan Black, Matt Eastburn, Rohan Ferris, Sean Flanagan, Jon Good, Andy Lankowski, Leon McIntyre, Darren Shi, Adrian Thompson, Dan Walls, Dave Watson and, for one golden game, Andy McLean. And to all the great, great guys playing in all the other teams - thanks for making the BPL something that we all want to come back to, season after season.

See you for the next one.

How Not To Play Ultimate (or Blog About It)

2010-05-18T19:34:00.005+10:00

Okay so we might have failed yet again in our blogging duties here at the DojoMojo Blog over the past couple of weeks, but that's nothing compared to the on-field fail against Cobras last Thursday night...

What an absolute shocker. Okay, we traded for the first half against a very pumped up and confident Cobras, but just trading points isn't something the Dojo has done a whole lot of this season, so nothing to get too excited about there. And even less to get excited about in the second half. Nothing, in fact, except for this soon-to-be-legendary moment:

[NB refer comments for several more accurate versions of the story]

The Cobras receive the Dojo pull well into their own endzone and manage to move a pass or two until the disc reaches Abra (pretty sure it was Abra - happy for anyone out there to correct this detail) in the front left corner. Abra goes for a throw of some sort only to find the surprisingly long arms of Leon McIntyre already where he's just released the disc to (some say Leon should've actually caught the disc for a Callahan, but that's another story).

So, big handblock to Leon on the glue that holds the Cobras together, and a key turnover on the first (or maybe second?) point of the second half. Leon then quickly dumps it backward a few metres to Coops who immediately looks to the endzone for the score. He sees Rohan streaking away and lets it fly! Ummm - just one problem, he's hucked it the full length of the field toward the DOJO endzone...

Thankfully Rohan pulls the catch in just short of the Dojo goal line, turns and sees Pete heading toward him. So what does he do next? Well it seems the penny hasn't dropped yet despite the guffawing from the Dojo sideline and he puts up a very dodgy floater (more of a slip&slider actually) for Pete to run onto for an own goal (luckily not possible in Ultimate) in the Dojo endzone.

Ah, but being the brainiac he is Pete has had the situation under control the whole time. With the entire Cobras team now in disbelieving confusion and slowly jogging back down the field, he has ALL NIGHT to look back in the correct direction this time where he sees Daz (as we recall it, maybe it wasn't him) begging for the disc in a now very sparsely occupied Cobras endzone. Pete sticks it - GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's the last thing that happened all night, as far as we can remember...

Just Quickly...

2010-04-29T10:27:00.005+10:00

Oh dear - a big FAIL to the DojoMojo blog after last week's game against Heroes. No results, no A&B poll, no excuses.

Here's a quick recap just to set things back on a somewhat even keel. Dojo turned up lazy & missing Pete, Coops, Adrian & Ryan. We traded for the first few points, getting easy blocks against the rookies but then being too casual about holding on to the disc (or playing defence...).

It must've been something like 3-3 when Sensei C had a vision of Andy McLean, wearing a long brownish robe and speaking from beyond the BPL grave, who gently offered his advice: "use the time-out, Steve".

So we did. We gave ourselves a little lecture and, learning from the disastrous early-season failure of the Cobras, and the near-failures of both UQ teams against the rookie Heroes, resolved that this game needed to be won like any other.

So back on we ran, and what do you know - Andy's advice worked. End result 15-8.

Having had that big upset win early and a few close (and bitter) losses, these Heroes chaps have clearly settled into the BPL environment and are now playing to win. Heavily reliant upon their 3 main players they may be, but as the skill base of the team builds those wins are going to become much less sporadic.

Oh and speaking of those 3 main Heroes, if there is a prize for most-improved BPL player then without doubt this season it has to go to "Silent" George Salisbury. That guy has transformed his game in the space of a few months from being mostly a deep speed threat to an all-round cutter, popper and quick disc mover. Just goes to show what serious training coupled with a senior role in a developing BPL team can do.

Anyway - don't expect a match report from tonight's game against Passion either, as this correspondent won't be there. Perhaps another kenshi with a literary bent might oblige???

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2010-04-11T21:10:00.009+10:00

Sometimes a draw can feel like a win, but last Thursday against the Moreton Bay Bugger outfit our 11-11 draw felt well & truly like a loss.

Actually it was a bit more complicated than that, as the Bugs managed to get ahead by a couple in the first half through their standard combo of quick, sharp disc movement and, when things get static, throwing any old thing in the vague direction of Mr Neild. After half a dozen points of this sort of carry-on, Leon McIntyre made himself very clear during the break between points that he wasn't going to stand for it any more. Some might find this a little bit surprising, but Leon has quite the knack for delivering a rousing gee-up talk, and the assembled Kenshi took note...

Before we continue the story, let's intersperse it with some video coming to us once again courtesy of the one & only Mrs Marijke Walls. We've cut the footage into three segments not with any intent to tell a story in three parts, but in actual fact the game played out pretty much that way. The highlights of the first part, with the Bugs inching ahead, run thus:

The score had run away to 6-4 in favour of MBB before the Dojo decided that a change of strategy would be necessary. And before you could say "Man D" the Kenshi had got themselves out in front with an unanswered 5-goal streak, including taking half 8-6.

All looking pretty good for the Dojo, but as ever the Bugs weren't about to give up and as the time cap loomed they had managed to even the scores 10-10. Everyone knew there couldn't be much time left, and as it happened the only person who actually knew exactly how much time was left was one Mr Tim Ferguson (making his big BPL comeback this season with MBB) who, in his inimitable style, had managed to secure whatever timing device was being used in lieu of the BPL's standard issue but apparently broken alarm clocks.

You can see where this is headed. Amazingly, the Dojo managed to score the next goal with "just two seconds" left on the clock, meaning there would still be time for one more last point! Of course, there's every chance that this was in fact true - we'll just have to take Ferg's ever-reliable word for it. It's also true that this minor timing incident needn't have had any bearing at all on the outcome of the game, as you'll see in this last clip:

Yes, it really is time for the nice people at QUDA to come good with some new video equipment for our humble media outlet. We're not about to describe what happened during those moments where our equipment failed us, but it's clear enough from the end of the film that the Bugs were able to move the disc back down the field for an unlikely and, from a Dojo perspective, highly unsatisfying conclusion.

Ah well - but how about that h-u-g-e block from Pete Allen on Mike to get the vital turnover in the last point?! Sadly it's beyond our capabilities (and quite possibly even beyond our software) to show that big moment zoomed-in or in slow-mo, despite our best efforts. All we can do is to note that Pete definitely saved his best for last, and that's after a game of standout play marking or being marked by Queensland's only Dingoes player.

Big games were also had by Ryan Black, Sean Flanagan, Jon Good and Firestormer Coops, who was also involved (entirely blamelessly) in the night's second-biggest fail (and there were more than a few) where the Sensei completely misread Coops' beautifully placed huck for what should have been a goal... Thankfully Marijke was saving battery power at the time and didn't have the camera running.

So there you go - it was the Dojo's many missed opportunities, rather than any single event, that led to an unsavoury draw. Plenty of room for improvement next time round... Above&Beyond poll ready to roll on the right.

Out the Back with Stefan Rappazzo

2010-04-08T14:27:00.008+10:00

A quick look outside at the brilliant sky this morning was all the inspiration we needed to decide it was time to load up the Dojo combi van. So with our pre-dawn kendo practice finished we set out for Slamtown, that famous fantasy land where ladies in golden bikinis pay for your parking and Ultimate players wear orange shorts.

Of course, there's always plenty of time to sit out the back at D-bah, waiting for the next set to come through. And it was in precisely those moments of sundrenched calm that we turned to Stefan Rappazzo, the don of Gold Coast Ultimate, for some reflection on last week's match between DojoMojo and his Slamtown Flatball Club:

DojoMojo Blog: Spaz - thanks for taking a sickie and joining me for a surf & a chat. After the late cancellation of our planned pre-season clash, that first game between the new-look Dojo and the largely ex-Dojo Slamtown FC teams was a long time in the making. How do you think it lived up to all that anticipation?

Stefan Rappazzo: Well, poorly from a GC point of view. It would have been great to have played ya in the preseason as the SFC is very much relying on developing some chemistry together, and there is really no other way of getting that done than getting more games played together. The Dojo were good on the night, and I think some of the lads that are a bit newer to the competition may have been a bit rattled by the pregame banter whilst SFC were warming up, and the Dojo were excelling at their usual pregame rituals.

DMB: Ah yes. In fact I spent most of my pre-game moments pestering Becky to shoot that video for us (thanks again Becky). I noticed a second video camera in use on the sidelines - can we be expecting some footage with more of a Slamtown focus to be popping up on the SFC blog soon?

SR: Video is something we are only starting to experiment with, and in all honesty our footage from the other night will not likely make it to blog, but we're hoping that future games will begin to find their way online. I've always been a fan of the video, win or lose, it's great to watch how things unfolded and a great way to continually improve. With nearly every BPL team represented via 'blog', it would be great to see this become the standard and you could have every game video documented. I can't put any firm time lines upon this becoming standard procedure, but I can tell ya it's a work in progress.

DMB: Yep - it certainly would be great to see all three BPL games getting video coverage each week. Anyway, back to the questions. What differences did you recognise between the 2010 Dojo unit and the team that you and so many of your Gold Coast colleagues were part of over the past few years?

SR: Well, height for one. In losing myself, Mike, Phil and Lee, and then gaining Pete and Jon G you definitely gained in the sky department. Getting Wallsy, Watto and Ryan back also helps. That said, short or tall, the Dojo continues to be the deepest team in the league with a solid roster of players who play nearly every position on the field. The real difference will come if you can get the finals monkey off your back... besides that... it seems business as usual for the Dojo.

DMB: Yes - winning the big game always takse a little more than business as usual. And speaking of outstanding efforts, does any one moment stand out in your memory as last week's "play of the night"?

SR: Hmmmm.... tough to say. Not much of a highlight type of an evening, no layouts that stand out, and no 'particular' throws that do either. During our post game discussions we spoke of the fact that we were very flat, but how the Dojo played nearly flawless O... I don't recall too many turnovers once you guys got the disc. The amount of crossfield hammers was uncanny, and Fatty's lefty breakmarks were disheartening. Not that it was highlight material but Darren Shi's foul call away from the disc to nullify Jody's endzone D was a heartbreaker. Daz had his revenge on us with his hard working game, and I think that call should have been made by Pete... or not at all.

DMB: Interesting that some sort of foul call has been included in the answer to that question two weeks in a row now. Anyway, looking ahead - you've got a big game coming up this week against UQ Passion. Do you think it's fair to describe JMac and Julz as "the new Jason & Mike"?

SR: No. I think JMac is much more of a dynamic player than just a pure hucker, and as much as Jules is an amazing receiver/player, I don't think he has as dominant a persona as Mike does. That said, they could very well be the hottest combo in the league right now, but I wouldn't go so far as calling them the next bromance. Speaking of hot combos, Pete and Fatty both being able to huck and both taking discs high is becoming a lethal pairing in itself...

DMB: Right again, Spaz. And with this swell starting to pick up again we should probably leave it at that...

Fifty-Four Million Words and Counting

2010-04-05T11:50:00.013+10:00

Sun Tzu once said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep. Okay, maybe it wasn't Sun Tzu, but the point we're trying to make is that with the near thirty minutes of video coverage below running at one thousand words per image, this little introductory paragraph is only the first tentative footstep on an Ultimate odyssey that is about to take us all the way to the Gold Coast and back, taking time to paint large portions of Slamtown red, white and black while we're there... Here goes (credit to Ms Becky Larkin for the top shelf cinematography):

Yep - the Flatballers were down 8-3 at halftime, and Dojo managed to stretch the lead out via many, many hammers to 15-8 by the time it was all over. What the video perhaps doesn't convey is that this game was played with exemplary spirit by both teams. Some early niggle was quickly defused by a few well-timed words, and what followed was a hard-fought AND thoroughly enjoyable and respectful game. Otherwise the video pretty much says it all, so to add anything further here would seem superfluous. Oh, other than to mention that Dojo spanking SFC has apparently not been enough to put us back at the top of the Power Rankings (which we love reading - thanks Spaz), despite Passion's pretty ordinary showing against Heroes. Hmmm...

Next week it's Dojo v MBB - sure to be a cracking game, made even moreso by the word on the street being that Bug numero uno won't be around for our game(s?) later in the season. No doubt the already frail autofocus of our video camera will be strained to the limit by a match-up that's usually played out from endzone to endzone, skipping all those boring bits in between... Stay tuned.

Above&Beyond voting is ready and waiting to the right - it's going to be fast & furious with only a few days left before the next round.

Oh and PS Reece - please rest assured that we featured the best moments we had on video from each team in last week's footage. The missing disc eventually turned up, but not in time to make it on the blog (and there was no sign of a callahan - you must've dreamt that one). What we've found though is that the best way to see all the highlights we want to see is to produce our own video...

TXT Versus Talk

2010-03-31T20:16:00.007+10:00

It's no secret that Liam "Wetnose" Gillions is deep in preparation for his imminent nuptials at the moment. What might come as a surprise to many, however, is that Liam has chosen the Dojo Gardens as the venue for his big day. At least it'll certainly be a surprise for his delightful fiancee Grace, when he gets around to telling her.

So while we were looking over the Dojo estate, inspecting the various teahouses and pine tree groves for their ceremonial suitability, we managed to also quiz Liam about his views on the game between DojoMojo and his Cobras team last Thursday night at the AJFC fields:

DojoMojo Blog: Liam, let's divert ourselves from talk of ritual kimonos for a moment and discuss our game last week. Firstly, we were thinking of inviting new Cobras spokesman Reece around as well for a chat today, but it seems he's having a difficult enough time just keeping his own media outlet up to date. What's going on there?

Liam Gillions: You know how kids are these days - so fickle and flippant. He probably got distracted by something shiny and ran outside to play in the rain or something. In all seriousness though, it has been good to offload that duty to Reece. With my duties on the highly prestigious BUB and running the Firestorm books, it was good to have one less thing to do while I'm at work, other than work which tends to get left till last.

DMB: Hmmm - perhaps we might hear from Reece in the comments about that? And speaking of intra-Cobras communication issues, there were lots of Cobra discs going to ground last Thursday night due to what appeared to be a lack of communication or even just thrower/receiver eye contact. Do you think this is a problem, and if so do you have any plans to address it?

LG: There was a bit of a lack of peripheral vision from the players. Often the disc was thrown correctly and to the right player, but either the thrower didn't see a defender, or the cutter was only making a fake and was not aware of where the disc was. That's probably more a result of the youth and inexperience of some of our players - it will come with time.

DMB: Well time is certainly something your youngsters have plenty of, along with that classic youthful combo of individual confidence and collective misdirection... Any truth to the rumours that you're having to implement a special series of face-to-face communication seminars to assist your younger players deal with the problems of talking to each other in person rather than just sending a txt or tweet?

LG: I dnt no wat ur tlkn bout.

DMB: Indeed. Let's continue. Plenty of big Pete-to-Leon and Leon-to-Pete connections for the Dojo, especially when you were playing man-on-man D. Your late change to zone seemed to improve things a little from a Cobras perspective - reckon you'll be developing this option into the future (for instance against the huck-o-matic Bugs)?

LG: That Leon-Pete combo really hurt us. The switch to zone was more out of desperation against what is generally regarded as a very strong handling team, and it worked quite well. I think against the youth of the Bugs we will just need to keep switching things up to not let them get used to things and get into a rhythm. Will be an interesting game.

DMB: It sure will be - I'd say nearly as interesting as this week's much-anticipated Dojo v Slamtown grudge match... Sticking with our game last week though, is there any moment from the game that sticks in your mind as the "play of the night"?

LG: There was a shocking foul call from the Dojo player who "claimed" to be stationary whilst attempting to catch an equally shocking hammer. That sticks pretty strong. Also, one of the afore mentioned hucks from Pete to Leon (as seen on video) was pretty sweet. It was inch perfect and needed to be, because Leon was outnumbered 2-to-1 and would have had to work for it if it had floated or been slightly off line.

DMB: Ahh, the highs and lows of Ultimate... Which brings us to the highs and lows of the BPL ladder. Based on current form, what teams are you currently tipping for the semis, and who do you think is going to pick up the wooden spoon?

LG: I'm going to put Passion, Dojo and Slamtown in the semis. Lovers to finish 6th with Heroes 7th. Bugs and Cobras to fight it out for the 4th spot with a late season absence from Mr Neild giving the edge to Cobras.

DMB: Liam - it sounds like you've got it all figured out. Now we'd better get you fitted up with those Geta sandals you were wanting to go with your flying-crane kimono...

Sensei (right) discusses wedding arrangements with Wetnose (left) and Grace (centre, and clearly grateful that You Only Live Twice...)

Return of the Video

2010-03-27T11:47:00.013+10:00

Yes - that's right. There's no need for us to waffle on about frisbee this week, thanks to a young chap by the name of Alex (of UQ Passion fame, we believe) who happened to be spending his bye week spectating the Dojo v Cobras clash. Oh - by the way Alex, if you happen to be reading this could you let us know what you did with all the mini DVDs? Wetnose really wants to see the footage of his (failed) layout, so please get in touch.

Anyway, there was one DVD with 20 minutes worth of footage on it still in the camera when we returned to the Dojo Gardens late Thursday night, so we can now present most of the second half of the game, kicked off by a sensational 75 metre flick huck to score from Pete Allen.

Oh, and we've also experimented with a soundtrack for a bit of extra Dojo Way ambience this time (language warnings all round...). We've chosen some vintage Ice Cube (hi Jad), and for all those Gen Z Cobras out there, you'll note that Mr Cube mentions the year of 1993 in his opening line of rap. Because a large contingent of the BPL youth were quite possibly still in nappies at this point, we feel obliged to add that this 1993 recording followed on from Tone Loc's assertion that "'88 was great, but '89 is mine", after which 1990 was "time for the Guru". Around this time, a small cohort of young LA chaps formed a rap group called NWA, and after saying some very unkind things about their local constabulary they quickly went their separate ways. Ice Cube was one of these Compton lads, and he went on to a stellar solo career (where he also said some very unkind things about not only the law enforcement fraternity, but also his former collaborators). Feel free to let us know if you find this entertaining or just plain annoying:

What can we add to that? It's pretty obvious that many of the young Cobras are simply not on the same page as their teammates, with lots of passes going astray or straight into Dojo hands. From our point of view it's also comforting to see the Dojo roll that game in with plenty to spare, even though we were missing a third of our roster. Probably not so great from the Cobra pit, but hopefully they'll be using this, and other recent results (someone say "Heroes"?), as motivation to start realising their great potential.

There's a fresh Above&Beyond poll ready for voting on the right.

The Five Rings of Ultimate with Al Don

2010-03-21T21:15:00.011+10:00

It's been raining since Christmas here at the Dojo Gardens, and the sound of the burbling creeks can be heard even from under the deep eaves of our delightful southern verandah. The outline of the ancient pine trees can be made out only as a faint, distant silhouette amidst the constantly changing mists. Indeed, it is only when one hears the primal screech of black cockatoos passing overhead, and realises that those ancient pines are actually Bunya pines, that the illusion of living in Heian-period Japan starts to fade.

But then out of that very same mist emerges a figure with all the fierce athleticism of the great Musashi Miyamoto and you're right back there in the feudal golden age. The approaching figure bounds over the arched bridge, leaps over the stepping stones (set just below the surface of the pond), and vaults straight over the timber balustrade and into the vacant seat to our right, somehow leaving the steaming pot of green tea by our side completely undisturbed.

And in fact the only difference between our guest today and that legendary double-sworded duelist is that the man on our right is wearing a Doughboy Allstars shirt. It's the only shirt he owns, and his name is Al Don.

DojoMojo Blog: Ohaiyoo Gozaimashita, Al. Thanks for dropping by. Before we embark on a stroll through the mist, let's enjoy a nice cup of sen-cha and re-visit our game from Thursday night. Firstly I must say there are a lot of guys I've never seen before on the Lovers team this season (and they all look pretty handy). Have you got a lot of BPL rookies on the roster, or have I just not been paying attention?

Al Don: I'd hate to suggest that the Sensei hasn't been paying attention.... But there were only two new faces on the roster this season that weren't there when the Dojo scraped it home against us in the semis last season.. And for varied reasons neither of those two will be hanging around for the rest of the season..

DMB: Hmmm - seems I'd better start putting some names to faces then, so I know who I'm chasing around next time... I'm also curious to know how you would rate the Lovers' performance (eeew!) in that game, relative to what you're aiming for this season?

AD: Ummmmm.. If I was to rate it in one word I would have to say "pretty poor".. That's two words I know but I'm sure you get the point.. If we were to move towards a more numerical, say a standard scale of 1 - 10 with 10 being where I think we can reasonably be expecting to aim for over the season I'd struggle to bring us in with anything more than a 5.. Showed some fighting spirit and played a few pretty good points but in the schema of a whole game it was a pretty disappointing effort on the whole. Too many drops, too little intensity in the cuts, too many times being beaten on the open side downfield.. Was pretty happy with the way our attempt at taking the 2:3:2 defence to the BPL's major proponents of funny looking zone D's went though.

DMB: Room for improvement, then. One thing that probably couldn't have been done better on Thursday night was Coops' incredible catch of a pretty wild cross-field thumb-hammer from Watto (his second thumber of the night, after a sensational first effort resulted in a goal that no-one saw coming). Imagine if Coops hadn't managed to hold onto it - shortly after halftime, close to the Dojo goal line - reckon there might have been an opening there for a UQ comeback if that outrageous throw had gone to ground, as it very nearly did?

AD: Interesting question.. Fantastic catch on Andy's part and from where I was standing it was completely unexpected from the time the thumber left Watto's hand. It came at a point in the game where we had managed to put a couple of points together.. Think that it could probably be said that the Dojo at that point may have, somewhat understandably, relaxed into the game a little.. Would it have got us truly back into the game? Would like to say yes but honestly don't think that was the case.

DMB: Fair enough. We're always conscious of momentum in games, and while you're probably right about that instance we've seen teams (including ours) lose all their steam after seemingly minor incidents. And on the subject of momentum, no Dojo player has ever been more expert at this vague "science" than our erstwhile colleage Andy McLean. Last Thursday was Andy's last game in a Dojo jersey, and he's going to be sorely missed. Any "Magic McLean Moments" you can recall from your years playing and/or partying alongside him around the country?

AD: Hmmm.. A couple of fairly drunken evenings in Brazil pre-wedding where I saw him shaking it on the dance floor like I'd never seen the man do on home soil were certainly memorable for me. Andy was one of a fairly short list of what you might call "the quiet men" of Brisbane frisbee.. Always to be relied on to give a hundred percent on the field and almost guaranteed to never to get up in anyone's face about it. Also possessed of a very nice, and in my opinion somewhat underutilised forehand flick.. Someone who was always willing to lend a hand whenever asked off-field as well. A member of the community who will be missed by all after the transition to Melbourne.

DMB: Yes, getting used to all those great bars and fantastic cultural institutions is going to take some transitioning for poor old Andy. Bet he'll hate it. Sigh. Ah well - what are your thoughts on the other two games from Round 3? Both very interesting results...

AD: Very interesting results indeed. I'll start with the Passion/Buggers game. I don't think that anyone who's taken a look at the Passion roster and results so far should really have been surprised by the way this one went. Though the final scoreline was perhaps more than most tipsters might have had down for the split... The passion team are a very solid line with characters like Cheese, Gref, Jules and new kid on the block Daniel Henbest to name a few. If you don't know who this guy is yet you certainly will by the end of the season. Though if he keeps changing his haircut and general appearance at the rate he's been going since arriving in Brisbane you may not actually recognise him. The rest of the Passion roster are looking fast and fit as well. At this point, without wanting to put the kiss of death on them they are certainly my pick for the title this season. The Buggers are obviously still a solid line but it's different this season without the classic get out of jail that they've had in the back pocket for as many seasons as I can remember. You just know that they'll continue to dig deep and keep on coming up with exciting new recruits to add into the very reliable Buggers mould, and it would be a brave tip to say they won't make the finals.

And now for the Heroes/Cobras match. Fantastic result for the other new team in the comp. One I'm sure wasn't picked by many (any?) in the BPL tipping comp this week. I do know that there were many pundits out there suggesting at the beginning of the season that "they wouldn't win a game", that maybe "they shouldn't be allowed into the league" for fear of dragging down the level. Many of those same pundits were also suggesting that this might be the season for the Cobras to come flying out off the blocks and perhaps be strong contenders this time round for their first championship. Would be interesting to see what those folks are saying this week.

Heroes have a bunch of young, enthusiastic, albeit fairly inexperienced players along with a couple of more experienced blokes being given the chance to come into their own as playmakers and leaders at a BPL level. Watch this space for some more upsets from the men in green over this season.

On paper the Cobras look great with a roster full of talented players. They've got the throwers, the receivers and some great defenders as well. Somehow it just seems that the "whole" at this point, rather than being greater than the sum of the parts, is actually somehow far less than the sum of its' individual parts. If they can find a way to harness the energy and talent they've got towards playing good Ultimate rather than whatever they're turning it into at the moment then they might still turn it around and make a dash into the finals..

DMB: Indeed. And while we're talking about the Finals, which teams are you currently tipping to make it to the semis, and why?

AD: Like I said above, my pick at this point in time to take the Championship is the boys of the fist - Passion. Think they're closest to the complete package with some of the best throwers and receivers in the game in Brisbane at the moment and the rest of the squad looking fighting fit. From what I've seen they're also looking like they're really enjoying playing together at the moment. Think they're going to be tough to beat. I'm picking them to win the Minor Premiership and then go on to take the finals.

After that though it gets a whole lot more interesting. Will list below the order I'm picking to finish the season up to finals:

2) Dojo - can't go past the experienced line you've got going there. I do think that the absence of Andy McLean will affect the Dojo more than some may expect. Beware the quiet man.

3) Buggers - they've got enough experience there and a good simple system to slot a couple of exciting looking prospects into to make this slot their own. Think that they'll also show enough mongrel fighting spirit to get them into a Final for I dunno the hundred and seventeenth time or something on the trot?

The battle for fourth.. As some bloke once said, this one's harder to pick than a broken nose..

4) Slamtown FC - They're rough around the edges but they've got the athleticism and the heart to edge out the rest for the last spot in the semis I think. They're also the only team in the long history of BPL to run regular training sessions. Way to lift the standard Slamtown.

5) Got to put my boys the Lovers down here. Think as per last season we're going to improve week to week and will have enough to get this far but, and it saddens my heart to say it, you'd have to give me some pretty impressive odds to get me putting down much money on us making the semis this season. Love to see you prove me wrong, Lovers..

6) Cobras.. Great on paper but yet to show it where it counts.

7) Heroes. They're going to be better each week. And had a fantastic result this round. Think the lack of experience will keep them here for this season..

DMB: Al, as usual you've thought of everything, and said even more. Thanks for spending a quiet Sunday afternoon here with us at the Dojo Gardens - must be time for a stroll past our roaring waterfall.

AD: It's been a pleasure chatting, Sensei.. Though for next time I'm really more an espresso than green tea sort of man.

Natural Enemies

2010-03-19T21:18:00.006+10:00

No, not DojoMojo and UQ Lovers. We're talking about the big news from Round 3 of the Brisbane Premier League: Heroes upset win over Cobras!

Sure, not many people tipped that outcome. In fact nobody did. Even the Heroes themselves are so stoked that they've posted about it not once, not twice, but thrice already on their blog. And why not.

Ah, but with the benefit of hindsight we really should've seen this coming. Anybody with even the slightest historical perspective knows that the Heroes (i.e. the good guys) always beat the Cobras (i.e. the perennial bad guys). You only had to be a child in the 80's (surely there are still some BPL players who were, not including children of the 70's like Buzz & Sean?) to know that the Cobras always lose out to the Heroes. Take for example that legendary heroic organisation the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand (aka M.A.S.K.). Episode after episode, Matt Tracker and his buddies stuck it to those inexplicably nasty characters from the Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem (aka V.E.N.O.M.), later re-written into the GI Joe storyline as stooges of the fiendish - wait for it - Cobra Command!!!

Ryan Black has often lamented the tendency of the modern-day Dojo to lean more toward the teachings of Mr Miyagi than those of Ryan's beloved Cobra Kai crew, but we do it for a very simple reason - winning.

Which presumably brings us to a quick wrap-up of last night's game between Dojo and UQ Lovers. We'll keep it brief, as we'll be taking a stroll around the Dojo gardens with UQ legend Al Don shortly. But what we can say is that Dojo pretty much walked away with a comfy 15-8 win, helped along by some incredibly rare off-target throws from the Cornerstone of Queensland Ultimate himself, Buzza Burwell. We won't be seeing that again anytime soon.

Anyway, more on that later. In the meantime, we'd very much like to read what the new Cobras frontman Reece has to say about things, and of course we're keenly awaiting news of the other Thursday night shocker, the perhaps equally controversial caning of the MBB unit by the current #1 BPL team UQ Passion. Sadly, we fear we could be waiting some time, as the Bugs are known more for their "hail-Mike" offence than for having an up-to-the-minute blogosphere presence, and the Passion boys don't bother having a blog at all...

The Above&Beyond poll is ready to roll on the right.

Smells Like Team Spirit

2010-03-15T11:39:00.011+10:00

Hey here's something that came to our attention recently. Looking back over last season's wrapup, we noticed that DojoMojo was placed 5th (i.e. last) for Spirit, so we figured it might be time to see if anyone out there in the BPL community wants to help shed some light on what is supposed to be the most valued, and yet is also the most mysterious aspect of Ultimate - Spirit of the Game.

Woohoo - time for some controversy (hopefully)!

What we're looking for here is some comments from our BPL peers, especially those people who actually assigned the spirit scores, letting us know what it was that made the Dojo seem the worst-spirited team in the league last season. To make sure this is useful, we've also turned OFF anonymous commenting. Yes, this might make some more reluctant to come forward, but really we're just tired of getting the usual snide comments from people who lack the cahones to put their own name next to their words (ps we love the comments from people who do let us all know who they are, even when they're bagging us). And anyway, everyone knows who is writing this blog, so fair's fair.

Now, Spirit of the Game comes in at rule #1 in the WFDF Rules of Ultimate, and it's got quite a detailed description. That's exactly how it should be in a self-refereed sport where the constant co-operation of opponents is required in a fast-paced, physically and mentally demanding environment. The problem with this, however, is that there is absolutely no feedback mechanism (at least in the BPL) for teams and players other than a simple, dumb numeric ranking that you don't see until the very end of the season. And then we only see rankings rather than even just a basic points average. What can be learned from that?

What we would very much like to see is a change in policy, at least in the BPL, where Spirit scores are openly reported each week, just like the game scores. But this is just for starters. We'd also like the actual content of Spirit scoring to be much more detailed and defined, probably in a tick-a-box format to keep it quick - the lights always go out so soon after the game!

So we're seeking comments from anyone that's man (or woman) enough to put their name to their opinion regarding:

1. Why do you think the Dojo scored lowest for Spirit last season?

2. What do you think about our proposal for regular, transparent & detailed Spirit reporting?

Battle of Who Could Care Less

2010-03-12T12:57:00.004+10:00

Another borrowed-lyrics intro? Oh yes!

Will you never rest
Fighting the battle of who could care less
Every day you wake up late
Sometimes I wish I was that way

It's not that we're trying harder this year to appeal to pop music trivia nerds (hi Joel Smith), it's just that sometimes Ben Folds can describe in a few irony-laden lines and with a fat, fuzz-bass and crash symbal accompaniment, what is about to take us a whole blog post to ramble on about...

Okay - first the facts. UQ Passion beat DojoMojo by 1 point last night in a game that, for people that weren't there, would presumably have been an intensely hard-fought scrap for a single point victory at the top of the BPL ladder. What actually happened was a festival of slack Ultimate, with neither team appearing to really care too much about winning or losing. Even the ever-hardcore JMac didn't really seem to be too concerned when a disc was dropped or a pass went astray. Weird.

Maybe it was just the sheer quantity of lazy or poor-option turnovers that dulled the players' enthusiasm last night? Sure, it was wet & windy by Brisbane standards, but nothing that people from less gentle climes would find upsetting. It was certainly an evening where hammers were a bit harder to catch, and with Dojo playing zone there were plenty of UQ hammers going astray. Needless to add that the hammer is pretty much the default throw for half the kenshi, and perhaps a little bit of adjustment to the conditions might have helped...

But really, it wasn't the sort of game that can be analysed technically or strategically. It was more just the vibe on the field where someone would get a great block and then one of their teammates would run over to the disc, pick it up and huck it straight out of bounds. Doesn't get much more careless than that.

Anyway, as Mr Folds knew all too well, not giving a damn is an attitude that is usually adopted to conceal one's caring a whole lot about something - summarised thus:

This should cheer you up for sure
See I've got your old ID
And you're all dressed up like The Cure

What the Dojo needs to do now is dare to show that we actually do care about the block our teammate just got, or even just the situation on the scoreboard. We're not going to win games this season without trying a bit, even though last night's game happened to also be the Dojo's first regular season loss since October 2008 (!!!). With 7 teams now in the league, gaining a spot in the semis is by no means a given, and a lot of the other teams in the league have plenty of reasons to care, such as ambitious newcomers Slamtown FC and last season's great underperformers, the Cobras. Time to take it all the way back to wax-on wax-off basics.

Vote away for above&beyond on the right.

Like Kryptonite

2010-02-26T12:09:00.005+10:00

Last night was the first BPL outing for both the new-look Dojo squad and the new-to-the-league Heroes team. The result was a pretty brutal 15-2 to the Dojo, and we think we know why: the Heroes shirts are the same colour as Kryptonite!

Is the head of Heroes' merchandising possessed of a deeply ironic sense of humour? Or perhaps they're styling themselves more as the Greenzo sort of modern eco-hero? Either way, one thing we know for sure is that there was no colour more feared by the original man of steel than green. OMG - man of steel hating anything green? Superman was the original comic-book poster boy for environment-destroying industrialists!

Anyway, at least the Heroes have gone for a colour that no other team already had (a simple concept that has eluded the Cobras and even MBB in the past), and they certainly looked a lot more unified than the anything-white-will-do Dojo. With all the roster shakeups of late, a new batch of Dojo shirts can't arrive soon enough.

Anything worth noting about the game? Well, rather than participating last night, this writer observed the first half from a comfortable seat atop the field-side esky, and what was clear even from there was that the Heroes have a lot settling in to do before they start to seriously challenge in the BPL. LD Stu could be heard on the sideline criticising the Dojo's use of zone defence against a rookie team, but really - it's not the Brisbane Preparatory League, and everyone knows that when you play the Dojo you will face zone D. Best get used to it early.

No doubt the Heroes will be much improved by the time we meet again in the second half of the season, and after all they are the only BPL team ever to have a dedicated, non-player coach (one Mr Matt Boevink), but the new additions to the Dojo roster will be much more firmly embedded by then as well...

Ah well. After what can only be described as a poor blogging effort last season, we've resolved to return to our usual up-to-the-minute standards this season. As such, the first round of Above&Beyond voting is now open - vote away on the right. Maybe next week we'll even return with the video camera...

Our McLeans Are No Longer Showing

2010-02-18T21:35:00.004+10:00

We've been meaning to make mention of the departure of Andy McLean, one of the founding DojoMojo players, for quite a while now, and it's simply a sign of our summer slackness that it took our descent on the BUB blog list to a position below even the Cobras to get us typing. This should put things straight, and be a good early test for Reece's commitment.

Ah - if only we had a suitably dorky photo of Andy to put with this post. No doubt Dave Watson or Ryan Black or Jay Sansness will have one hidden away somewhere. We certainly hope they do, as writing 1000 words in lieu of an image of Andy will take us most of the night. But fear not - we'll keep our recollections of Andy's glittering Dojo career brief enough that even Lee O'Dwyer might make it to the end of the post. Then again he would probably have stopped reading already, even if he had managed to drag himself away from the internet's other attractions...

So - Andy McLean. Here at the Dojo Gardens, we'll remember lots of things about Andy's game, including his delightful flick hucks, his honest defence (something you can't say about that many kenshi - although thankfully most of the slackers are now Slamtowners...), his speed, agility and most of all his graceful style. Indeed, it was that very gracefulness that made Andy the winner he is both on and off the field. Despite being seen wearing white waistcoats over black shirts, Andy is one of those guys who transcends the nerdiness inherent in his daytime profession of Town Planning (although calling it a profession is something of a stretch) and ends up marrying a ridiculously hot Brazilian lady. Yes - he's got it all figured out.

Andy McLean - kampai!

The Joys of Autocracy

2010-01-21T22:03:00.006+10:00

Our battery indicator shows we have 15 minutes to write this post, which some may not be surprised to find is precious little for this laboriously loquacious alliterator (Blogger seems to believe we just made that word up!).

So why did we waste the first two precious minutes with that totally unnecessary introductory diversion when we could've just straight-out announced that Leon McIntyre has earned himself a spot on the DojoMojo Honour Board by winning last season's Above&Beyond award?

Yes, we just decided on that all by ourselves without consulting anyone or following any due process. However, the poll votes from the season back up this decision 100%, as did Leon's unfailing excellence throughout the season and especially in the Final.

So well done Leon - your first season back at the Dojo and just like that you're immortalised right here at the DojoMojo blog. There'll be a whole new crew vying for votes a few weeks (hopefully) from now.

This Is A Call

2010-01-08T16:31:00.003+10:00

Visiting is pretty
Visiting is good
Seems that all they ever wanted was a brother

This can be a secret
We can keep it good
Even all the ever wanting had a problem

Yes, this is a call, but not to any of Dave's past resignations (or to any of the many angry, angry youtube commenters below that clip - why do they get so nasty, and why can we not resist morbidly reading them?).

This is in fact a call to any would-be Dojo kenshi out there, and it's a very serious call at that. Why? Well, there's a plan afoot, and it's a very good plan if it works, to get a Gold Coast based team into the Brisbane Premier League. Clearly, a coastal expansion team would be a great thing for the BPL, but sadly it isn't such a good thing for DojoMojo. You see, half a dozen or so of our kenshi are Gold Coasters themselves, and they've been making the trip to play the Dojo Way in Brisbane every week for years. But starting next season, our old chums Stefan, Mike, Lee, Phil & Darren aim to be wearing GC jerseys and we wish them all the best. Including the best and most humiliating defeats upon each encounter with the Dojo...

But all of that is assuming there will still be a Dojo for the Gold Coasters, and all you other SE Qld frisbophiles to play against, once nearly half our players have departed. So - have you ever wished you could feel for yourself the quality fabric of the world famous Dojo shirt? And have one in black AND white? And have your name mentioned regularly on the only local team blog that ever gets updated (shame, Wetnose, shame)? And not have to do any training ever (assuming here that you're already 6'5" with unmatched natural talent)? Well, now is the time to turn those fantasies into reality, even if you're none of the above! It's a pretty simple story - DojoMojo needs YOU (no, not you Cupcake), and needs you NOW. Feel free to email stephen (at) ark (dot) net (dot) au and demand your spot on the team.

Oh yeah, while we're here we might as well add in a quick recap of the Grand Final that we lost last season. It would be really quick and easy to say that the final was won by Mike Neild, but in actual fact the final was lost by DojoMojo. We were ahead by a lot with not much time left, and managed to lose the game despite being handed multiple J-Ray turnover gifts - sometimes several in one point.

To be fair, Jason also threw most of the goals that Mike caught, but his real impact came down to two throws, both of which were pulls in consecutive points in the dying moments of the game, when Bugs were 3 points down and all Dojo had to do to win was score 1 measly point. After a nervy Dojo turnover and Bug score, Jason proceeded to put the next two pulls deep into the back corner of the endzone with plenty of hangtime, giving his defending teammates plenty of time to set up and forcing the Dojo to go for risky throws over and around the Bug D, leading to back-to-back turnovers within 20m of our own endzone. Anyone that plays team sport can tell you that this change in momentum is all the Bugs needed to tip the game in their favour, especially when Mike was there to grab what swill he could get near (the turnover count was sky high in every sense) and accept the victory that the Dojo seemed so keen to hand over.

Gotta say - watching all this happen from the sideline with both calves cramped as usual was all the inspiration this team blogger and occasional frisbee player needed to make getting back into proper shape a high-priority New Year's resolution, alongside "win BPL". The kenshi kernel you know and love/loathe will be there to have another crack at the leaden R.C. Dog Cup this season, but only if we can find some new teammates to walk the Dojo Way with. Drop us a line if you reckon that might be you.

On Lightning and Cliches...

2009-10-24T21:59:00.007+10:00

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

2009-10-18T21:17:00.003+10:00

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

2009-10-12T20:51:00.004+10:00

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...

BPL Is Back

2009-08-18T09:49:00.003+10:00

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.

Going Way Back

2009-08-13T12:28:00.009+10:00

Before we get underway with the first round of the brand new BPL season tonight, we thought it might be an appropriate moment to indulge in a little Dojo history. A short pictorial history, to be precise, showing the evolution of the Dojo jersey over the years...

Some say that there is a mythical "original" jersey design out there somewhere, perhaps under the pile of dirty clothes that Watto never gets around to taking back to his Mum's place for a wash, but as far as we're aware the chronology goes pretty much like this:

1. The Cobra Kai Frisbee Dojo (2001 or maybe earlier - 2004)

Very cheap cotton XL-only black & white shirts sporting hand-printed graphics that show an afro-touting, gi-wearing martial artist mid flight. Worn during what were primarily mixed weekend matches where Dojo was, of course, the dominant team. Other teams included The Collective, Boot Camp, and a few others we can't remember the names of right now.

Seems Liam and his buddies over at the fledgling Cobras team have pretty short memories as well, but that's to be expected from what appears to be a bunch of schoolboys (at least Mat and Jimmy still run around like schoolboys, although we can certainly quote Will Churchill as having said that the same isn't true of captain Wetnose...).

2. DojoMojo (2004-2008)

These quality VC Ultimate shirts first saw action at the 2004 National Ultimate Championships in Brisbane, where the Dojo team starred in the second-tier competition, blitzing the division and defeating the Div 1 Tasmanian team, then losing narrowly to the Div 1 Newcastle team early on the last day. DojoMojo went on to destroy their opponents in the Div 2 "Plate" final, a game which included the notorious behind-the-back cross-field throw from Ryan Black to Dave Watson (who appeared to have been the only person expecting it), Watto then throwing the game-winning huck. Dan Walls was holding the video camera at the time and managed to get none of it on film.

These shirts also saw tournament action in the 2006 Nationals in Sydney where Dojo finished a pretty superb 7th. Notable moments were Dojo winning a spectacularly tense local derby against the other Brisbane team in attendance (MBB), and then losing out via Golden Goal to a double-Dowle'd Fakulti team in the quarter final round.

3. DojoMojo (2008 - current)

Earlier in the year, many people voted for this jersey as the best in the world. And at least a small fraction of those people were real, not just fake Google identities that Stefan uses to vote for himself in the A&B poll each week...

Made from silky soft, lightweight Patagonia fabric, these things are an absolute joy to play in. Dan Walls even lays out in his and it still looks fresh. We can't see these being superseded for a very long time.

You'll Want to Buy the Company...

2009-07-14T12:01:00.003+10:00

The second off-season training night is on at the AJFC fields this Thursday night from 7pm - here's the message that went out last night to every SEQ ultimate player that's old enough to shave:

Men of the Brisbane Premier League,

Our off-season training sessions got off to a truly spectacular start a couple of weeks ago, and I'm not just talking about the cone arrangements that would have made someone doing a PhD in fractal geometry proud. We had a truly huge turnout - I'd guess that at least half of Brisbane's BPL players were there (even a few Dojo players!) - and Mike and Al put us through a whole array of seriously worthwhile drills, with the title for most pushup penalties going of course to Stu Austin...

We covered a whole heap of stuff that I could rabbit on about for ages (and may very well do just that at some point, not now), and the response on the night was that it was all really interesting and highly exhausting - great for keeping up the off-season fitness, and great for plugging into real games once we get back into it in August.

So, as planned we're doing another session THIS THURSDAY NIGHT from 7pm at the usual AJFC location. Do you want to huck, break, hammer and generally cause defensive chaos like John McNaughton? And no, I don't mean learning how to be left-handed. John is in fact recognised as one of Australia's top Ultimate coaches, and he personally guarantees that you will go away from this week's session with your throwing game improved more than your shave would be by switching from a Gillette Mach3 to a Schick Quattro...

See you all for some serious Ultimate betterment at AJFC 7pm THIS THURSDAY July 16th.

Stephen
+Al, John & Stu

Because You're Worth It

2009-06-29T13:09:00.004+10:00

For those that prefer not to subscribe to any of the many, many frisbee yahoogroups we have for our sport, here's a copy of an email that went out this morning about some upcoming off-season BPL events:

Men of the Brisbane Premier League and beyond,

The BPL is about to become harder, faster and better. How? Read on.

Starting this Thursday night July 2nd, and then on July 16th and 30th, three off-season BPL player development sessions will be held at our usual Annerley Junior FC location and everyone is invited, including guys who aren't yet playing BPL but would like to.

Now, some might find it surprising that the Sensei of the notoriously non-training Dojo is here promoting training nights, but I can't wait to get stuck into these sessions and I'm pretty sure you will feel the same. Why? Because the organising group of Al Don, John McNaughton, Stu Austin and myself have put together a series of themed training events with a list of local legends (no, really) running the show. Here's what we've got lined up:
__________________________________
July 2 - Playing better Man on Man Ultimate

Offence coach: Piers Truter
Defence coach: Al Don

What's involved? Better cuts, better options, better dumps, better marking, better teamwork, more mongrel
__________________________________
July 16 - Throwing better and Marking better

Coach: John McNaughton

What's involved? Better breaks, better hucks, better swings, better force marking, better dump marking
__________________________________
July 30 - Playing better Zone Ultimate

Offence coach: Chris Burwell
Defence coach: Mike Neild

What's involved? Better disc movement, better cup breakers, better above & around options, better long hucks (oh yeah), better cup setting, better zone teamwork, better deep D, better setups & strategies
__________________________________

Did I use the word "better" enough? Well, that's because the whole idea of these sessions is making the standard of BPL competition BETTER by offering every player the opportunity (thanks to some help with the funds from QUDA) to improve their skillset and knowledge base. And by every player I mean YOU! This is improvement-focussed training that we should ALL be taking advantage of.

So - be there starting 7pm this Thursday night at the AJFC fields for some kick*ss training that I personally guarantee will improve your game more than Loreal skin cream will reduce visible wrinkles.

Looking forward to seeing everybody there.

Spazzo Goes Above and Beyond

2009-06-17T10:29:00.008+10:00

We interrupt our usual off-the-air mode between seasons to bring you two pieces of news featuring the Dojo's GC liaison Stefan "Spazzo" Rappazzo.

A quick scroll down the sidebar to the right will show you that the Above&Beyond standings for the season have been finalised after last week's Grand Final showdown, and as predicted it turned out to be very tight at the top! So tight that both Stefan Rappazzo and Andy McLean shared the #1 spot for overall votes gained. Sadly for Andy, he earned his votes playing in all ten games, whereas Stefan played nine for the same vote tally, leaving him with the title of DojoMojo Above & Beyond Winner for Season 1 2009, based on his higher votes-per-game stat. Stefan's name is now engraved for perpetuity on our Honour Board in recognition of his efforts in consistently pushing his game further and harder week after week.

The traffic jam continued in the minor placings as well, with Dan Walls, Stefan Schmidt and Sensei C all on 21 votes, Wallsy racking up the votes at the rate of 3.5 per game - the highest of anyone, trumping Spazzo's 3 per game. Perhaps we could change the ranking system next season to prioritise this stat over total votes? Comment below.

And of course, the beauty of the A&B system is that it reflects the regularity with which individuals perform above their own usual standard, rather than comparing players against each other. So it's intended as an incentive to constant improvement, and a means of gauging how people are progressing their own game. Who will earn their place on the Honour Board next season???

Oh yes, and the second BIG news item regarding Mr Rappazzo in his capacity as Gold Coast Ultimate Liaison (interpret that any way you like) is that he's just launched a brand new and very cool-looking website to promote the game in the town where even the parking meters are gold... Check it out.

Deja Boo Hoo Hoo

2009-06-08T11:47:00.014+10:00

Haven't we heard this story before? A short-staffed Dojo team turns up to face a Neild-led Buggers squad that has been warming up for the game apparently since just after a carbo-loaded breakfast, the Bugs stretch out a big lead, Dojo stages a comeback, some Bug rookie crashes a kenshi or two out of the game, the lack of fitness from the we-never-train Dojo starts to show, and it all finishes with a flourish of hammers & hucks to Bug #1...

But don't think we're bitter, it was a great game with plenty for everyone (well, most people anyway - more on that shortly), and really the final difference between the teams was the number of offensive errors the Dojo made. The first five or six points of our video footage make for particularly unpleasant viewing if you're of a Dojo inclination, as do the last few.

There's no doubt that the Dojo missed Matt, Piers, Coopers and Goldie particularly as the legs started to get heavy in the second half, and that some extra numbers might have made the difference. But really, if the kenshi hadn't worn themselves out trying to get the disc back after all those first-half mistakes then the job still could have been done without the full complement. That wasn't the case though, and on the night the Messy team were convincing winners.

Here's something we found interesting, though. In putting all the footage together, we noticed something that, whilst not surprising, was something we'd always thought was only an impression rather than reality. So here's an amusing game to play while watching the video - keep a count of the number of JRay throwaways, and also keep a count of the number of times anyone other than Jason, Mike, Leon, Stu or Jangles touches the disc. We can't say for sure, but we reckon the JRay throwaway stat will be at least the same if not more. Now, no-one will be surprised to see Jason throwing some pretty wild stuff (or to see that he also throws nearly all the goals), but I think even Mike would be surprised to see how little disc the Bug rookies get during a game, especially when the pressure is high. There must be at least a couple of guys on that team who only touched the disc once or twice in the whole game!

But enough about that - what we've all come to see is plenty of sweet Ultimate action, so here it is, courtesy of the brilliant Marijke Walls and surprise cameraman Will Churchill (how he got hold of the camera we're not really sure):

"Thanks ladies" indeed. It was a real treat to have the 97.3fm ladies with their marquee, esky, fruit & drinks, and each Dojo player is now sporting brand-new cleat bags, water bottles, cold bags and cookies. Yes, cookies.

There's now a huge break of a couple of months between seasons, but the BPL will be back (will there be a new monkey at the helm???) with what will surely be a serious shakeup in the teams and perhaps administration. It can only get better (and hopefully bigger), so stay tuned.

And lastly, it's the final Above&Beyond poll for the season on the right. It's all up for grabs - will Dan Walls be able to get enough votes for his awesome efforts against one of the world's premier players to push him past current frontrunner Stefan Rappazzo? Will our German BPL MVP runner-up Stefan Schmidt sneak past them both? A place on the honour board is at stake!!!

ps Below the poll can also be found our latest blog addition - DojoMojo TV! Oh yeah.

Fifteen Seconds of Fame

2009-06-04T15:30:00.001+10:00

If you happened to be listening to 97.3FM on the radio this morning at around 7.50am (and if you're female between the ages of 25 and 40 then the research indicates that you probably were!) you would have heard a little soundbite from the Sensei talking up tonight's big game at the AJFC fields. Yes - the Brisbane Premier League has really hit the big time, and some nice people from 97.3FM are going to be joining the huge crowd at the field tonight, bringing along plenty of freebies and giveaways with them.

And that's not all - even though our best efforts to make the audio of this morning's interview available here have failed, we should be on air again tomorrow morning giving a quick recap of what is sure to be a stupendous game of Ultimate tonight. The grandstand will be open from 7pm and the on-field action gets underway bang on 7.30. Our tip - Dojo to win 15-11.

The Game of Death

2009-05-31T09:47:00.007+10:00

Yes - we've sailed the Sea of Japan for the title of this post, but it's only a short trip and over the millenia it's turned Chan into Zen, Penjing into Bonsai and Shaolin Kung-Fu into Shorinji Kempo, so we figured we could safely lean on the analogy for the upcoming Grand Final of the Brisbane Premier League, featuring semifinal winners DojoMojo and Messy Buggers.

Yes - the kenshi have finally climbed all the way to the top floor of the BPL pagoda in their black, red & white tracksuits to find a towering, short-jumpsuit clad Messy team waiting in the dark, shoji-screened room. It's the matchup that everyone had been wanting to see nearly as much as a Dojo v UQ Lovers final, but the huck-happy Lovers (apparently missing several key players through eligibility issues) lost out to a Messy team that has progressed from rookie-laden obscurity to genuine championship contention thanks to the inspirational on- and off-field leadership of one M. Neild, ably assisted by a solid core of experienced colleagues. Will the Dojo manage to poke enough fingers through the pagoda's paper panels to blind the sunlight-shy Buggers next week???

But more about that shortly. The news of the moment is Dojo's 15-12 semifinal win over what we understand to be the now-defunct Old-School Buggers (more on that later as well). In essence it was a tale of two comebacks, with Dojo stretching out decent leads only to ease off or slip up and see the OldSchoolers drag themselves back into range. And the good news is that it's all on video, thanks to Ulrike - yet another first-time filmographer, and ladyfriend of our resident Dojo Deutschlander, Herr Schmidt. Here's all the exclusive action:

There it is. Perhaps more than a little shaky at times but the job was done. Despite playing well below standard as a team, the Dojo still managed to win through without any real dramas. The question is, though - should this give the kenshi confidence in their strong potential going into the Big Game, or should it be cause for concern that when the stakes are raised the easy, natural Dojo game starts to tighten up uncomfortably? And here's another question - will somebody manage to post something this week on the Buggers blog for the first time since last season's semis???

And that leads us to yet another question - what will be the name of the new Gillions/Larkin-led team to emerge from the crashed & burnt wreckage of what was the Old School Buggers? Will Wetnose step down from his gig as guest correspondent on the Brisbane Ultimate Blog to become the regular mouthpiece of his new BPL outfit? Maybe he could even manage both. Either way, it'd be nice to have some new & improved competition both on and off the field.

One thing for sure though is that the A&B table is still wide open to anyone who can muster up enough friends or Google identities to vote for them(selves). Yes, Stefan (the Italian/Canadian one with many friends) is way out in front, but it is the very nature of the internet that anything could happen!!! Vote away on the right.

Buzzing In the Telepod

2009-05-26T15:30:00.007+10:00

Yes, it's Tuesday again and we can only cross our fingers that the AJFC fields will be open for play this week. So, with all the world waiting to see if Wetnose really is worth 11 extra points to his team (sounds like there's at least one "1" too many in there, if you ask us), we've come across an interesting little Ultimate diversion to tide us over...

Most will have received their first lavishly-produced and super-glossy edition of the new-look Australian Ultimate magazine well before a copy found its way into the elegantly rusting mailbox that quietly announces the entrance to the Dojo gardens estate, so we apologise if this item is a tad out of date. But as soon as we saw this particular item we knew that something just had to be said...

Flip to page 9 (the centrefold!) of the new AU and you'll find an article on "Australia's Greatest Players". Now, whilst no-one can challenge the top-notch journalistic efforts of the authors, we did find immediate fault with the mention of one Chris Burwell, aka The Cornerstone of Queensland Ultimate, which notes:

"With perhaps the most extensive repertoire of any Australian to have every thrown a Frisbee, Buzz's throws were a thing of beauty. His inside outs, around the mark breaks on both sides and killer hammer meant no marker stood a chance."

All factually accurate except for one thing - the insidious use of PAST TENSE!

Other greats listed therein get the present-tense treatment - Ant Dowle's "pace and agility has made him a top block getter", for instance, but poor old Buzza is apparently past it. Knowing he'd be outraged (this is a man who we can quote as having said "I've never had fun playing Ultimate EVER!") we gave him a call to gauge his response and see if he may be in need of some counselling...

Predictably, Buzza was straight on the offensive, and like most grumpy old-timers started carrying on about all the "young kids these days" who know him only as "the greatest thrower of a frisbee ever to set foot on an Ultimate field", and how tragically one-dimensional this heroic vision is. Okay, he may not have actually said that last bit (doesn't make it any less believable, though) but we can faithfully report that he's taken this insult to his athleticism (which has also apparently taken up permanent residency on his staffroom table at the Qld Museum) as an incentive to get back into the shape of his old days when he was "3 times" as good as he is today.

But it seems it was eventually the write up of one John Greenfield (AU Ed 1 p8) that really got Buzza's cockroaches crawling, prompting him to proclaim:

"If Greenfield can go and reinvent himself from being a 'sensationally athletic block getter and receiver' into a 'high percentage handler', then I'm going to do the opposite and I don't care what anyone says about the fact that I'm 40. From now on I'm going to stop at nothing until I've transformed my game from the usual 'greatest thrower ever' tag to 'unbeatably athletic block getter and downfield receiver' status."

Let's just hope insect-man Buzza doesn't have any Seth Brundle-esque experiments in mind for this transformation. Be afraid. Be very afraid...

Monkey Magic

2009-05-21T10:55:00.003+10:00

While the search continues for a monkey to replace the current BPL League Director, the bad news is that tonight's semifinals have been postponed due to the fields being largely submerged after Tuesday night's biblical flooding event. They're now scheduled for next week (28 May), with the Grand Final pushed back to 4 June.

But there's no shortage of Ultimate-related entertainment to be had in the meantime, as there's still plenty of dust being kicked up over the banning of the UQ Passion team from the finals series. In fact, the scene being played out one email salvo at a time is taking on the rather charming semblance of a small-town Western movie. It's got it all - a lynching, some disgruntled locals trying to chase a new hustler out of town, lots of quiet folk trying to stay out of the crossfire, and a sheriff that shoots first and, well, doesn't ask any questions at all... And like all the best Westerns, it's impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys!

Anyway, it appears that a much-needed review of the BPL will be held during the (very lengthy) break between seasons. Not that there's been any official announcement about that...

This One Goes Right To The Top

2009-05-19T11:14:00.004+10:00

Despite what he may tell you, the title of this post doesn't refer to our interviewee. Well, not directly at least...*

You see, the Brisbane Premier League has been thrown into turmoil just as we head into the finals series, thanks to a furore-generating decision on Friday by the League Director to ban 4th-placed team UQ Passion from playing in the finals due to their dodgy paperwork during the regular season. Sounds heavy-handed for a five-team amateur (and, yes, very competitive) league where everyone knows everyone else? But then rules are rules, right?

Well, the funny thing is that it's quite unclear exactly what rules are being invoked, especially when the LD himself apparently didn't see any need to review the team sheets in question after each round, thereby failing to issue a forfeit (as required under the rules) to first-timer captain Will and his team after the first slip-up.

So it's muddy already and we've hardly even got started. And in the meantime, the beneficiaries of all this (due to a similarly elastic application of the rules, or is it really blind ignorance?) are - you guessed it - Liam Gillions and his Old School Buggers team. How is it that luck just always seems to run Liam's way? You ask anyone and they'll tell you that he always wears the visage of a man who has just picked up the "bank error in your favour" card from the Monopoly board...

And now it's we who are lucky enough to have a quick word with him in the lead-up to his team's clash against the Dojo this week:

-----

DojoMojo Blog: Liam (and team), congratulations on making the semis in the most unusual of manners. Presumably the first thing you'd like to do is thank UQ Passion captain Will Churchill for filling in his team sheets incorrectly for most of the season?

Liam Gillions: Well we have really tried hard to get to this point this season. I made sure that the score sheets were filled in for every game just so we could get there in the end. I will certainly be giving Will a big hug next time I see him. But really, did anyone ever expect both Buggers team to NOT be in the semis? I mean come on, that's the whole reason we got [LD] Stu into the club.

DMB: Well that's certainly paid off big time. But do you think you can pull the OSB team back together and get everyone re-focussed in time for Thursday night? Jimmy Larkin and Mr Chadwick were saying something about the Hamptons...

LG: Well, we have actually sent some of the struggling team members away so that we can get things on track. Seriously though, we need to just forget about everything that has happened in the last 10 weeks. If we do that, then we can pull it off. This is getting back to the old days of BPL when you could lose every regular season game, then win 2 playoff games and walk home with the trophy.

DMB: Ah yes - the old days. Reminiscing just over this season, the last Dojo v OSB clash ended in a fairly emphatic 15-4 scoreline (even with Dan Walls, Dave Watson and Matt Eastburn staying home), so it appears there's plenty of catching up to do?

LG: Well Sensei, you are obviously forgetting that I wasn't there. 11 point swing, you ask? Well, I think it's probably a bigger swing than that. And Dan Walls, Dave Watson and Matt Eastburn? Who?

DMB: Hmmm - actually, maybe you're right and they're just figments of our imagination. We certainly haven't seen them in a while... Good to know you're not immune to mental delusions either though. Anyway, it's been a fairly controversial end to the BPL season, to say the least, and LD Stu tells us there's more to look forward to as well! Do you reckon as a result of all this we'll see some big changes in the structure of the BPL heading into next season?

LG: Would it be the BPL without some controversy? Although, this one has touched forces higher than I have seen before. I don't know if there will be any structural changes. Personnel changes perhaps? One thing is for sure, people will now know that the rules are the rules, and not following them will result in consequences. I for one don't think that is a bad thing.

DMB: Yeah. If only we could work out which rules are being enforced and who exactly is required to comply with what... The rulings to come out this week certainly don't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Ah, well - the other semi this week is between UQ Lovers and your sister team Messy. How do you see that one shaking out?

LG: Could go either way, depending on who turns up for each team. Jules will obviously be 15 minutes late, but if Burwell turns up then it could go the Lovers way. Also, it will be interesting to see what injury Joel Smith suffered last week as that could leave the Messy boys one experienced player down. What happened? Well, the pull came up and about 3 passes later, we realised that Joel hadn't moved from the endzone and was sitting there holding his ankle. Initial diagnosis from J-Ray: Torn archilles. And of course, we all know that Jason never makes a bad call in the middle on an Ultimate game. Don't we?

-----

Well, we think we'll leave it at that for today - this post has got long enough already. The decision to ban Passion has been made and the LD has made it very clear to everyone including the AFDA president that he won't be backing down no matter how tenuous the decision may be. As he says, "If BUDA, QUDA or the AFDA don't want that then they can find someone else to be their monkey rather than an actual League Director."

Yes - the BPL is in safe hands.

* As ever, this is not an official blog and carries no official endorsement. Plus all that usual guff about "the views of the author(s)" not necessarily being held by anyone else...

Block It Every Time

2009-05-12T08:09:00.006+10:00

It's never been our MO here at the DojoMojo blog to brag about our exploits, so let's get this out of the way early - DojoMojo have emerged from Season 1 of 2009's Brisbane Premier League as undefeated minor premiers. Yay for us!

And that's all we're going to say about it, especially as there is still the traditional Dojo stumbling block of the semifinals to get through before the Big Game... Anyway, as it happened the last game of the season turned into a 15-4 blowout against the Old School Bugs. Dojo blitzed the first half 8-0 with a seemingly unstoppable offence scoring at will and a defence that capitalised on any sub-par options from OSB. The OldSchoolers managed to keep their pants on though, running in 4 points in the second half despite having nothing seem to go their way all night (well, except for a fumbled disc flipping right into Knotty's waiting hands).

There's probably very little other than that to say about the game (given our aforementioned "no bragging" policy), so let's get into the video. Guest cinematographer this week was a GC chap known as "Wazza" - you can tell when it's him with the camera by the faintly disturbing Darth-Vader-with-a-head-cold sound effects... Still, there's plenty of quality action on there, so for that Wazza we're eternally grateful:

Yes, we really need that QUDA funding for a video scaffold so we can put and end to those awkward moments where a great catch is hidden from view behind people on the sideline...

Anyway, that's it for another round. There's no game for the Dojo this week (the other 4 teams will be playing their final regular season games to settle the end-of-season standings), so as part of our tapering toward the semis we'll be working hard on our Rex Kwon Do moves courtesy of Andrew "Napoleon" Goldstiver. We'll also be watching the votes roll in for the A&B poll - things are getting tight at the top, and a spot on the honour board is still there for anyone to grab, especially those with a whole lab of university computers at their disposal...

A Bit Heavy on the Fizz...

2009-05-05T18:30:00.004+10:00

We're tight for time this week, but at least there's video. And at 15fps and 1000 words per image, the paltry two and a half minutes worth of footage we've got adds up to more information than even the most extravagantly long post-doctoral thesis...

Video credits this week go to Suze Lankowski, who managed to acquire a few moments of game footage during the second half when UQ had finally managed to put 7 guys on the field (thanks to Big Julz turning up a little later than his customary 15 minutes...). The result of the game was a straightforward 15-7 win to Dojo, who did most of their damage to a very short-staffed Lovers team in the first half and then coasted home - who would believe that?!

A&B voting is finally up & ready for this round on the right, with pre-season favourite Dan Walls sure to lose his top spot this week after yet another Hong Kong junket.

Naked Ego?

2009-04-29T15:30:00.008+10:00

We don't normally indulge in general Ultimate gossip here at the DojoMojo blog, but when this tragic/funny news item landed in our inbox this morning we couldn't resist sharing.

And that was probably because we instantly felt a sense of trans-global, anti-establishment kinship with Dusty Becker and his obviously very committed Oregon University Ego team-mates (who are apparently a very highly rated US college team) who, like the kenshi, haven't let their athletic ambitions cause them to forget how to live a little... Indeed, it seems that the Ego boys have a relationship with their College's student sports board that's not at all dissimilar to the Dojo's with our own BPL League Director (one day we'll look back and laugh, Stu).

So, Dusty & co, we just wanted to put it out there that we're right with you (assuming you're not countenancing doing these things simultaneously...) when you say: "Speeding, drinking, nudity — they’re not bad things... They’re things a big portion of the community doesn’t think are wrong." The story says that Ego players have had four speeding fines across the whole team in two years!!! Just four. We have no doubt at all that there would be many individual kenshi who've received more drive-by taxes than that over the last two years. And if nudity is "wrong" then surely we should all be reprimanded at birth???

Anyway, only a small insight into this unfortunate situation can be gleaned from the news articles, but this story seems to be a terrible one of moral misunderstandings, disproportionate punishments and a general lack of good humour. We're not sure how the student board can actually stop the Ego team from travelling to play - one assumes the severing of future funding would be the only viable instrument - but it seems obvious that this is a prime example of how the inherent anti-authoritarian nature of Ultimate doesn't always sit well within structures of authority (whether that be the local student board or the local constabulary).

It's easy to get used to the Ultimate players' privilege of each individual (rather than some impersonal figure of authority) making rule calls based on their own, personally accountable assessment of every alleged infraction, and often very difficult to accept that the rest of the world at large can't work that way as well...

Thanks Emma!

2009-04-17T17:21:00.004+10:00

Who is Emma? She's the partner of one of the Messy Bug players without whom DojoMojo would have had to forfeit last night's BPL round. And that would have been a tragedy because the game that unfolded turned out to be an absolute classic.

How classic? So classic that some were comparing it to the finale of the recent US Masters golf (just without the plaid pants, massive prize money and huge audience). Looking back, it was a game that unfolded in 5 parts:

Part 1 - Dojo has 4 guys ready to play at 7.29pm, and it looks like the night's going to fizzle out before it's even started. There's only one person at the field not already spoken for - a young lady by the name of Emma who thankfully doesn't even hesitate when invited to join the kenshi quartet on field. The forfeit is narrowly avoided, but 5 players are always going to struggle against 7, and the Bugs score 3 or 4 unanswered goals before late arrivals Piers, Matt and Coopers (who would believe a grown man could take so long to tie his shoelaces?) are ready to play.

Part 2 - The Bugs continue as if they're still playing against 5, relying heavily on loopy hammers and floaty hucks to Mike, and the kenshi take advantage, quickly hauling in the deficit with all 7 players making equally top-shelf contributions. By the time the Bug boys are up to speed the Dojo has taken half and is on a serious roll.

Part 3 - The Dojo roll continues into the second half, and the lead gets out to 13-10 with 15 minutes left to play. With both calves cramped solid, the Sensei calls a breath-catching timeout (against the advice of game momentum mystic Andy McLean) and spends it lecturing the kenshi about how easily the Bugs could score the 5 goals they need to win the game, and how the Dojo has "all night" to roll in the 2 they need with solid completions and no risky hucks. Of course, the following 3 points see the Dojo throw 3 wild throwaways on the second or third pass, and the Bugs, who couldn't have asked for more, return fire with quick completions to Jangles and Mike.

Part 4 - Another Dojo throwaway, Bugs have the disc and work it into the redzone where predictably Jason looks for the hammer to Mike. Only this time it's a bit stray and Stu Austin is also looking to get on the receiving end. Mike leaps and gets just enough of a touch to knock it clear of Stu's grasp. Sometimes you don't need to be Andy McLean to know a change in fortune when you see it...

Part 5 - Knowing they've been let off the hook, the Dojo steadily works in the next score (a flat hammer to a backpeddalling Sensei who makes the catch in a somewhat inelegant fashion that Matt Eastburn later describes as looking like a falling tree). Some good old-fashioned man-on-man defence brings the turn on the next point before the Bugs can get it halfway up the field, and the kenshi don't waste their chance to close the game out with some quick, short passes, scoring in the front centre of the endzone... And just like that it's all over bar the speeches, and Mike Neild delivers one of the classics - dogged and determined in defeat as he is in victory.

So that's it - our best effort at communicating the feeling of the game (from a Dojo perspective) in lieu of any video footage. A&B voting is ready to roll on the right, and sadly there's no game next week due to Nationals in Perth. Good luck to all the Firestorm chaps heading to Perth - we have no doubt you'll do a lot better than your unflattering seeding and give quite a scare to several of the southern teams. More soon!

Travelling Without Moving

2009-03-30T14:31:00.004+10:00

Even though the talk before the game was centred mostly around the controversial new "experimental pick rule" we in the BPL have the apparent honour of trialling, it was the other 8 or 9 WFDF rule changes that made for the real entertainment in Dojo's 12-9 win over UQ Passion last Thursday. Well, that and a h-u-g-e layout from Dan Walls that we're going to make you wait until the very end of the video footage (filmed by his incomparable missus Marijke) to see.

So while it may be true that the young scholars on the UQ Passion team have lengthy reading lists to wade through in their academic endeavours, it seemed quite clear during last week's game that the 2009-spec WFDF rules are most certainly not, as that old smoothy Andrew O'Keefe would say, "on the list"... Okay, captain Johnny Mac was no doubt on top of things, but clearly isn't as big into the benefits of spreading the word to his team via email-based training as some, so for a bit of fun we've included some of the highlights of the discussions around a variety of travel calls in the following video.

It's worth adding that we think it's a pretty strong affirmation of the integrity of the players in our uniquely self-referreed sport that the game never descended into the chaos that might be expected under multiple simultaneous rule changes and varying knowledge. Instead, the few unnecessary stoppages that occurred were resolved with equanimity and a complete absence of raised voices or frayed tempers - just the way Ultimate is meant to be. Anyway, let's get into the video:

DojoMojo leapt out to a massive 7-1 lead, taking half at something like 8-3, and then in trademark fashion switched on the cruise control, sat back and watched the UQ lads claw back to within 3 by the time the 80 minutes were up... John McNaughton and a chap we know only as "Eric" put in the standout efforts for UQ (yes Will, you pulled off some special-looking moves, but how many goals did you score???) and will need to be sat on with much greater force next time. At the Dojo end, Dan pulled down whatever swill was thrown his way in the endzone, whilst our three Gold Coast sluggers Stefan R, Mike and Cupcake worked hard all night in the front of the zone D and with the disc. Here's how things finished up:

That's it for another week. A&B voting as usual to the right, and with the new moon hidden behind rainclouds most of the week, perhaps we'll check out some Sumo action in the next day or so with that inveterate grappler John McNaughton...?

Now THAT was Old School

2009-03-16T12:02:00.006+10:00

It's tempting at the outset to construct some sort of witty (well, at least half-witty) gag about the oddly-named "Old School Buggers" receiving a Dojo-style schooling last Thursday on field 3b at the AJFC fields, but it just wouldn't be accurate. And you know how much we here at the DojoMojo Blog value journalistic veracity above all else.

No, the game was a lot tighter than that. In fact the Kenshi started off in vintage Dojo style, quickly falling 2 or 3 goals behind while using the early stages of the game itself as a warmup. A tactical timeout was called before things really started spiralling, and what must have been a massively inspirational pep talk from the Sensei led to a fully charged Dojo scoring a string of virtually unanswered goals, leading to the Dojo taking half well & truly ahead.

Let's pick up the video now (filmed by the thankfully willing first-time cameraperson Brooke, partner of OSB's bionic man Chadwick):

Just one of the night's many big, big layouts from Dan Walls at the end there. And if you were wondering what happened to the team you saw wearing white shirts at the start of the game, well, we all changed into black just because it was the only colour Dan and his buddy Dave Watson turned up with (a couple of points into the game, of course...). [Edit: Looks like there's no explaining of shirt colours required after that tedious clip where nothing happens in the middle of the film. Seems we hit "delete" on the wrong clip, not that looking at blokes standing around in white shorts can't be fun...] Here's more action:

Big grab by our brand-new German rookie Stefan at the end there. And the Walls sweet-layout count is now up to 3...

Cupcake putting it all on the line there at 1:47 to save a rather shabby floater from the Italian Shower... And horizontal again at the end there, making the grab from a trademark Flanagan hammer to win the game look that bit more special.

So, despite getting a little complacent toward the end the Dojo rolls in an easy 15-11 win over the Old Schoolers. That wraps up the first round of the League this season, with DojoMojo and UQ Lovers the only two undefeated teams (by virtue of the drawn game last week). This Thursday is scheduled as a training week, with the second half of the season getting underway via a Dojo vs UQ Passion clash on Mar 26. There might be some entertainment to be had here in the meantime - we'll see what we can come up with - but in the meantime, this week's Above&Beyond poll is ready for voting there on the right, with current standings updated below.

Draw!

2009-03-07T09:05:00.006+10:00

As the wet season starts drawing to a close here at the Dojo Gardens, we find ourselves with very little time to spare from our weekend outdoor labours of pruning, trimming, raking, weeding and of course mowing. So, having edited the film into some semblance of a watchable sequence of events we're going to have to leave it pretty much at that for now.

Worthy of note before we press "play" was the debut of yet another fresh Kenshi this week, the youngest Dojo player ever to wear the #1 headband - a chap known only to us as Cupcake (although there are some who call him "Tom" - one for the Monty Python fans there, and yes, because you Python fans are all pedantic nerds, we know it was actually "Tim"). Cupcake can be seen running around as only youth can, and frequently wondering how the Dojo mark is so often and so easily broken. It's something we've been wondering for a long time as well...

Anyway, here's the film:

Okay, so at this point we should note that the game might have looked a bit scrappy, but the flashes of brilliance in there give some hint as to the intensity of the contest between the two teams which still share the top of the table, thanks to the 13-13 outcome of this round. Sadly, stand-in filmographer Mike Morgan ran out of DVDs or batteries or something just when things were starting to get really tense toward the end, so you'll have to take our word for it that the game escalated into a classic struggle that saw Dojo scoring the last goal (thanks to an outrageous Sean Flanagan hammer flat & hard into the safe hands of Matt Eastburn in the very back corner of the endzone) to secure the draw. All in all a titillating preview to what most believe will be this season's Grand Final matchup...

As usual, the Above&Beyond poll is ready for voting on the right, and this weekend due to tournament commitments we'll be accompanying UQ's big Julian Sacre on his private jet so we can interview him about our drawn game before he takes to the field at the Terrigal Towel event. More on that early next week.

Return of the Video

2009-03-01T16:51:00.005+10:00

That's right viewers - the top quality video footage you'd become used to last season and had been missing so badly is finally back. With Dan Walls on a covert Dojo mission in Hong Kong (sharing the night-vision goggles with sidekick Dave Watson) our resident filmographer, the longsuffering Marijke Walls, was also absent. This left it to the Sensei and a mystery man we found on the sidelines, known only as "Matt", to grab the footage of Dojo's Thursday night triumph over a rookie-laden Messy Bugs.

With the word count getting pretty stratospheric here of late, we might change it up this week and let the moving pictures do the storytelling:

So that's it. A nice, comfy 14-8 win for DojoMojo, keeping the early perfect record for the season at 2-0-0. Lots of Zone D and free-form O was the order of the night, with special kudos to new signing Piers Truter for driving the defensive setup and spending all night doing the Ninja assassination on Mike & Jason, and also to our new German rookie Stefan Schmidt for stepping right up to top-flight Brisbane Ultimate fresh off the plane.

Above&Beyond voting is underway again to the right, and because it sadly didn't turn up on the video we thought we'd make special mention at this point of the very large block Andy McLean got on Mike Nield in the endzone...

Perhaps we'll have a Bugger over for a stroll through the gardens shortly.

Second Chances Are All The Rage

2009-02-19T15:06:00.004+10:00

It turned out that Will Churchill had quite a bit to say as we sat on the verandah overlooking our reed-lined pond last night, waiting for the moon to emerge from mountain mists. So let's get straight into it:

DojoMojo Blog: Welcome as usual, Will, to the serene surroundings of the Dojo Gardens. We know you normally prefer to speak in 17-syllable poems, but do you think you might be able to elaborate a little on your thoughts about our game last week?

Will Churchill: Hell yes, Steve! Like a trip to the playboy mansion, being asked to visit the Dojo grove for a second time is like meeting God again and getting a chance to ask a question better than "why are we here?" Second chances are all the rage.

DMB: Excellent - let's get comfortable then with a nice cup of tea and a little shakuhachi music. Now, that was a pretty good first game of the season the other night, with both teams getting the feel for their new player mix, resulting in plenty of spectacular action, including a couple of big layout blocks from the Passion boys. What was your pick for biggest moment?

WC: I'm not going to float my boat too much but I have to say that layout D I got in the dying minutes of the match was pretty huge. Big distance, killer intercept. Not much can look sweeter. Speaking from UQ’s perspective not much else went that spectacularly. We did some basic things right but we also did a lot of them wrong even though the game was really competitive. I don’t want to come off as scathing and I understand that the boys haven’t played together as a unit for quite a while but I have big ambitions and plans for where I want us to end up. Some good work was done by Dan Young but Dan did what Dan does and that’s bring down the big ones in the end zone. We pulled our weight but I know we can do A LOT better as a unit. I’m really looking forward to our next meet.

DMB: So are we, Will. Sadly though it won't be on those super-cushy GU fields. The late change to Griffith didn't seem to cause too many problems in getting players there on time, and once underway the softness of the fields seemed to encourage horizontality. Looking forward to another game there this week?

WC: Those fields have some really nice grass! Big props to JDR for finding some alternative fields so quickly. Another game there will be really appreciated while our fields regenerate to all their glory. The rain doesn’t hurt them being soft either.

DMB: Some big (or at least bigger than usual) changes at UQ this season, Will, and you've got plenty of fresh young guys on the roster. What new tricks are you planning on teaching these young dogs this season?

WC: I can’t help but feel I have gimped the club a little this season. While we have reverted back to the “classic” split for UQ (Buzz and Jules aside) I’ve noticed how passion only has 3 players noticeably over 6 feet tall (Gref, Dan Young and myself). For the moment that means our game will focus on under cuts rather than risk “the precious” in an unfair contest deep. However we’ll be able to change things up significantly when spiritual leader Johnny Mac returns as well as when the Lovers “Old Guns” decide to start showing up so we can get Nathan Litzow back on the pink side. This time next week UQ Passion will be back to strength.

DMB: You might have noticed that the Dojo has a few new guys as well this season. Sure, they're not rookies, but how do you see the Dojo brand of ultimate adapting to this season's re-jig?

WC: I have noticed that the disbanding of Rawhide sent skill into teams which hasn’t hurt the balance of the league, which is good. Dojo now has even more capable handlers oozing out of your ears which makes throwing a zone upon you even more unappealing. As for the Dojo brand of ultimate changing with this new influx of players, math has an answer. Dojo+Rawhide= MORE HAMMERS! Actually, ANYTHING+RAWHIDE=MORE HAMMERS! Just look at the Buggers. Since Tony Ross joined the team Hammers and Hammer related turnovers have increased Hammer percent!

DMB: Yep - we love a good hammer, of course preferably when completed in the endzone. Who doesn't! And now it's time for an early form call. Finalist teams for the season will be (and why)?

WC: Ok, the BIG question. As much as Mike will probably throttle me for saying such, I don’t think we’ll see a Buggers team in the final this season. Word in the endzone is that Messy Buggers are really trying to bring their newer guys up to a high standard by sharing disc and getting everyone involved more often. While a great move to get some fresh blood into the Buggers club it’s not going win them a final least the idea is dropped in favour for the Mike/J-Ray show to get some points on the board and win games which I think is going against the whole mentality that is directing Messy’s path. That said, this whole statement could backfire completely and the new players pick the game up and explode into frizbee greats who don’t need the Mike/J-Ray show to win games.

As for “Old School” their line whilst always strong is manageable with no monster threats (Unless Jimmy has the disc within strike range and Wetty runs long because you can bet your ass that disc will fly) . These guys will play a great hucking game through the season but their defensive capabilities are on par with other teams.

UQ on paper looks “classic”. The Passion team has changed slightly but is the sleeping Juggernaut it was last year. Offensively it's a fast, quick moving short game team stocked with young players who are good with a disc, but it just needs to get its options re-opened deep to truly restore itself to power. When John, Nathan (and don’t forget Arlann Christie) come home the deep option will really open and get goals. Defensively the collective experience of the team will get a lot of turn overs in our favour. If I recall correctly our zone was devastating.

Lovers…..need to show up to games. They had an easy win last week but they have tougher games in front of them. On paper they are quite the team (even without aL). Buzz has slipped in quite nicely in aL’s absence whilst Finn and Jon Good give Cunliffe a chance to play deep reciever. Not to mention Jules who is not only a nightmare when he’s following you playing puppy but he’s Burwell’s best friend in the endzone.

THE DOJO! I’ll call Dojo in top3, leaning toward a grand final position. You guys have a solid team now that has no excuse not to score “O”-points. Keep the goals consistent and get that forced turn and you have a gamewinner. But I do have some thoughts. Germans are not a primary foodgroup and should be eaten sparingly for offence, they should be taken as a supplement to the offensive staples. Taller teams will make you lose easy “O” points if you play them too often. Finally get Coops to put that disc! Coops (I know you're reading this), you NEED to jack it once in a while! (*bleep*, do it often that’ll really shake up expectations of what will be thrown) There were a good few deep cuts that were very on when the Disc got swung to you and they have to be taken. You can’t become predictable. I am guilty for letting my man beat me deep on a swing to you because I knew it wasn’t on and I had him waaaaay covered on his return cut. I’m not saying be reckless, but players need to think twice about what a handler may pull out of his bag of tricks. Sensei I will leave it to you to devise the appropriate “encouragement” for the man.

DMB: Well there you go, Coops. Time to start hucking it to whoever Will is marking. Thanks for that detailed run down, Will. Your analysis seems spot on as far as we can tell, and we'll be giving Lankowski your number so you can sort out his long game.

WC: As always Stephen it’s a pleasure to come visit the Dojo grove. Now that I know I’ll be invited back occasionally I need to go return some items to the kitchen and the silverware drawer that I took after our last interview… no hard feelings right?. See you in the endzone. Will-i-aM

[Unrelated post-interview note: They may not be working yet, but very shortly we'll be trialling some AdSense ads here at the DojoMojo Blog. All proceeds (if there are any) will go directly towards the ongoing improvement of this blog and/or a seriously sweet new merchandise line.]

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action Please

2009-02-18T10:32:00.003+10:00

While we're waiting for Will Churchill to join us for some nocturnal haiku recitations on the moon-viewing platform, we thought we'd better get back into the habit of sharing news of Dojo on-field adventures.

For those likely to skip the blurb and go straight to the video - sadly you're out of luck this week. The change of location to Griffith Uni playing fields at Nathan meant that our resident filmographer Marijke Walls was more interested in doing some serious Financial Stimulus at the nearby Garden City shops than getting the usual gratuitous closeup videos of her man Dan. Next time...

So we'll have to rely on our own pocket thesaurus to help describe the action from Round 1 of BPL Season 1 2009.

The Kenshi had done some serious team training between seasons, sending many an email about what should and shouldn't be done on (and off) the field this year. Of course, the first actual "training" run last week saw an immense flow of apologies and unavoidable absences... The most memorable virtual training effort was without a doubt from evil mastermind Dr Phil Stocks who sent around several frankly brutal emails taking the team and even certain individuals (why is it always Eastburn that cops it?) to task over various areas of perceived sloppiness, only to send a bleating email prior to Game 1 advising of his unavailability. Cue much guffawing and circulating of witty ripostes... So the Dojo is taking it right back to basics this season and making "turning up at the fields" training priority #1.

And of course what makes getting the Kenshi interested in training so difficult is the fact that the Dojo wins games regardless. The first outing for this season against a youthful and very much work-in-progress UQ Passion was a case in point. With the pre-game warmup consisting of a bit of a chat, donning of cleats and a quick throw or two, and the average age of Dojo players being more or less 10 years beyond that of your UQ yoofs, the Kenshi still managed to roll out a 12-9 win.

And you can see by the scant interest in this week's A&B voting that nobody really did anything out of the ordinary. But that doesn't include the Passion boys, who pulled out some spectacular layouts both on O and D, ran very hard and maintained their intensity throughout. This is a Passion team that just needs somebody like John McNaughton or Al Don at the helm to inspire all those young runners to greatness. And to instil a bit of order on proceedings. But as it stood on the night, the younger, faster, fitter, keener UQ Passion just didn't have the depth and patience to match the throws, experience and cohesiveness of the Dojo. We certainly don't expect this situation to last, though.

This week is sadly another "training" week (i.e. a bye) for the Dojo, so there'll be precious little to report on until the following week, but like any self-respecting news source we'll be doing our best to make something up. There are also just a few hours left in the Above&Beyond poll to the right, and hopefully just a few hours left until we hear Will's thoughts on last week's game.

DojoMojo 2009 in SF Style

2009-02-04T09:56:00.028+10:00

Tomorrow night will see the return of the Brisbane Premier League to the Annerley Junior Football Club fields, and the first 2009 training run of a new-look DojoMojo roster.

We've been busy during the summer break refining strategies, honing bodies and inducting new recruits to the Dojo Way and, as evidenced by the roster below, Dojo '09 is an even taller, faster, bigger-throwing team than Dojo '08 was. Tone Loc may have said "'88 was great, but '89 is mine", but DojoMojo is bringing that into the right-now. Gen Y kids reading this may not immediately comprehend, but then they've got YouTube to provide their oldskool education for them.

So, as uncustomary as it is for us here at the DojoMojo Blog to indulge in vainglorious team bios, we couldn't resist the temptation to announce this year's frankly kickass team, especially when (to continue the oldskool theme) we discovered that 2009 will also see the release of the third sequel to Capcom's 1987 classic Street Fighter. Without getting too nerdy (we leave that to our buddies at the Brisbane Ultimate Blog) let's look at the team:

Andrew Goldstiver (aka Goldy) - a towering behemoth with long range and devastating moves, one cannot become the "Greatest Fighter in the World" without first getting past him.

Andrew Lankowski (aka Coopers) - flat-top hair and a special-ops field presence give Coopers the visage of a man who never quits, and who unfortunately also has difficulty tying his shoelaces.

Andy Mclean - has the smooth, textbook moves of a man who stays up very late at night training himself to exhaustion while listening to "Eye of the Tiger" on his headphones. How he found the time to acquire a Brazilian fiancee nobody knows.

~~Dan Blacklock (aka Blackcock - says it right there on the back of his shirt!) - is possessed of a diminutive presence that conceals deep and quietly seething agression. Dan likes to run a lot.~~
EDIT: Turns out Dan likes to run so much that he's taking indefinite leave from the team to focus on his illustrious distance running career...

Dan Walls - nobody can deny Dan's rightful title of "Master of the Disc", and he is without doubt the player that Dojo opponents least look forward to meeting on the field. The disc just comes to him - no-one knows how.

Dave Watson - one of the very original Kenshi, Watto can occasionally be heard breathing the word "Shoryuken" when sending the disc long. Legend has it that he founded the Dojo along with his sparring partner Ryan Black, nemesis Dan Walls and a few notable others way back when Tone Loc was still doing the wild thing.

Matt Eastburn - a very strong physical (sometimes a bit too physical) presence on the field and master of the seriously destructive "Spinning Piledriver" move, Matt has a strange enthusiasm for the colour red.

Mike Morgan - the fact that he's an Irish surfer says it all: the man is an unstoppable mutant and never, ever quits.

Dr Phil Stocks - his famous one-two combo of wink & smile conceal a fiendish mind and an all-consuming evil nature (just ask his students). Phil has seen things no human should ever wish to.

Ryan Black - THE original big hair Dojo kenshi. The moves of every single Dojo player are just their own interpretations of things Ryan invented years ago, and to this day no-one has matched his behind-the-back throwing prowess in the heat of tournament play. Without Ryan and his buddy/rival Watto, there would be no Dojo for its current sensei to curate.

Sean Flanagan - is peace-loving by nature, but lethal when challenged. Nobody knows how old Sean is, or how he manages to apparently suspend himself in the air, and some say that his incredible ability to catch and deliver a frisbee to and from any part of the field derives from some mystical form of teleportation.

Stefan Rappazzo (nickname witheld for political correctness) - is a non-stop slugger who wins his way to the disc with brute force and aggression. He is a monster on the field and in the huddle, constantly spurring his team on to play harder. He is Canadian, NOT American.

Stephen Cameron (aka Sensei) - is protector of the Dojo Way, keeper of the secrets of the Hadouken, the Shoryuken and the Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku, sends a pretty good email and writes the occasional self-indulgent blog post...

Santa Delivers to UQ Lovers

2008-12-24T17:10:00.004+10:00

The tree has been decorated, the presents have been wrapped, the rum balls have been rolled in coconut and the drinks fridge has been filled. Time for one last little pressie - a gift from us here at the DojoMojo Blog to anybody out there with an eye for top shelf Ultimate.

Well, maybe not the very uppermost shelf. With the Grand Final of Brisbane Premier League Season 3 2008 being postponed for a week, both the finalist teams found themselves losing key players to pre-Christmas travels. Messy Bugs were worst hit, losing at least 3 or 4 key guys and resorting to gun pickup Kristen Nott (from sister team Slippry, and one of only two females playing in the BPL) to make up a seven-player line. Facing up against a Lovers team missing really only big Julian Sacre, the Messy team were going to have to work a Christmas miracle to win their fourth (?) straight title.

So, with that intro let's get into the action:

More turnovers than goals! Not the most impressive game we've ever seen. And on it went:

Halftime saw Lovers way up and the crowd more or less giving up on the prospect of seeing a tight contest. Could Messy find a way to hold onto their hard-won reputation? Here's how the second half started:

But don't stop watching just yet - with the final looking like it was heading toward another blowout the focus of the UQ boys seemed to drift towards the contents of the post-game esky rather than scoring the winning goal, opening the door for a Messy comeback. But surely they couldn't come back from 15-8 down?

So there you go. A brief slip-up toward the end, but an easy win for UQ Lovers was never in doubt. Final score must have been something like 16-11. We're calling Pete Allen as Player of the Match, and not just because he kept his power grip flick in the bag.

And while we're here, we should also give a standing ovation to Dan Walls who this season took out both the DojoMojo Blog's Above&Beyond title and also the Brisbane Premier League's Most Valuable Player Award. So it's not just us that reckon Dan is the absolute business.

Next BPL season starts mid-late January 2009 and of course the coverage here at the DojoMojo Blog will be live (within reason) and uninterrupted as usual. Perhaps there'll even be the odd post in the interim...

Bob-a-Job with Pete Allen

2008-12-18T10:05:00.007+10:00

Some people know Pete Allen as a young man capable of destroying the game of any frisbee team simply by tipping it to win. But we here at the Dojo know him as a mild-mannered student (not really sure what he's studying) who, unlike most other Gen-Y kids, earns his pocket money the old-fashioned way by doing odd jobs around the Dojo gardens.

Before he had to run off to lectures yesterday he spent the morning raking the pebbles of our meditation courtyard into patterns resembling waves breaking on a rocky shore, and when he'd finished we chatted for a while about our semifinal last week and the upcoming BPL Grand Final between his team - UQ Lovers - and Messy Bugs. Here's a sample of the insights Pete had to offer:

DojoMojo Blog: Beautiful work with the rake as usual, Pete. It's understandable that a man with your delicate touch finds using the power flick grip a little tricky sometimes... Now - let's firstly discuss our game last week. Try as we might, we just can't actually remember Lovers scoring 15 goals in that game. It's like you guys won without us really noticing! Can you explain that???

Pete Allen: I can’t really explain that win at all last week, the first half was pretty terrible on our part in terms of offense but the defense really kept us in the game, along with some dodgy offense from you guys as well... The second half is where we really got away with a few breaks, slowly building the lead. I’d like to think that the telling off from Buzz during one of the huddles struck a nerve with the whole team and made us play a heck of a lot better (I believe it was mainly directed at myself for multiple wayward short flicks at the start of the game *cough* flick powergrip sucks *cough*).

DMB: Yes, there was only 1 point in it for a long time there, but as the legs (and brains) of the kenshi started running out of steam the big plays started to be less and less successful. No doubt the many easy turnovers and errant hucks from the Dojo were a welcome gift?

PA: As unusual as it is to see Dojo turn the disc over it did happen a lot during the game. And yeah it was a little bit of a gift. Maybe this is why Dojo hasn’t won a semi-final this year. But that is the game of ultimate - you can have the best game ever one day and then not catch a disc the next. I reckon the main reason that can blamed for Dojo having a plethora of turnovers was that you warmed up. You should have stuck to the old faithful Dojo email warm-up.

DMB: Hmmm - well, that'll teach us for spending too much time at The Cultimate Opinion. And with that loss we've clocked up a hat-trick of semifinal losses for the Dojo this year. As much as it may not be in your best interests, is there anything in particular you think the kenshi need to work on to redress this situation?

PA: Losing a hat-trick of semi-finals is not ideal but when you keep playing UQ in the semis it is bound to keep happening. They don’t lose semi’s that often (or is it that Dojo doesn’t win semi’s - I’m not too sure). What I envision for next season is a semi-final where UQ doesn’t play Dojo and we end up with a Dojo vs. UQ final. That is what the people of Brisbane want to see. For you guys to pull this off though, you may have to think about getting some younger blood into the team sometime in the near future. It may hurt to do it, but then you’ll at least make sure the Dojo Way continues in the years to come.

DMB: Yes, well we've got some plans in motion on all of those fronts. And if only Dojo hadn't been handed a penalty forfeit earlier in the season then that dream of a Dojo v UQ final may indeed have been realised tonight... But no matter. Can we expect to see more of the "strong silent type" of play from Lovers in the big game tonight, or will you perhaps be letting your long game off the leash? It's only Wetnose guarding the Messy endzone, after all...

PA: Not quite sure what you mean by “strong silent type” of play, if you are referring to the improved short game we have this season and the fact that we don’t talk much then maybe we will see more of that this week, but it will be intermingled with the massive long shots we are capable of even if Julz decides to go to Sydney early (Wetnose doesn’t really phase us, even if he has become quite a force in the air). I’ll be doing my best to woo the opposition players into a conversation on the field before suddenly busting long.

DMB: Yep - as far as we're concerned, the "conversation fake" is the primary benefit of a classical education... And lastly, which player from each grand finalist team are you expecting to see something really spectacular from?

PA: My picks for plays of the game on Thursday are: from Messy - Silent George, who is freakishly fast across the ground, and maybe he’ll dive to take a spectacular goal or something; and from Lovers - Al Don will get a massive D to win the match. All in all if the game actually happens then it will be the most spectacular game you will witness this year.

DMB: Then let's hope it does! We'll certainly be at the fields with the video camera at the ready, hoping to see an epic struggle for end-of-year BPL supremacy. Thanks for the chat, Pete.

The Only "Training" We Do

2008-12-15T17:51:00.005+10:00

As we glide out of the city headed for the restful Dojo gardens in the hills, reclining for the next hour or so in the the airconditioned luxury (spartan as it may be) of QR's long-distance service, we find ourselves at last with some time to reflect on the win that should have been last week on Field 2 at AJFC.

Perhaps that's not actually a good thing, as thinking back over the game instantly sends the mood of this writer plummeting, and with no video to show from our last outing of 2008 there's plenty of writing to do...

Or maybe there isn't. We could instead fulfil our duty of reporting on Dojo exploits this week simply by confirming that the semifinal between Dojo and UQ Lovers resulted in Lovers winning 15-10 and advancing through to a Grand Final matchup with Messy Bugs. Basically a replay of last season's final except UQ will have Al Don and Bugs won't have Mike Neild - so hopefully a much more exciting game for the spectators.

Anyway, a brief analysis of the lost semifinal would run something like this:

- Dojo makes spectacular play
- Dojo throws it away (or just drops it)
- UQ plays consistent, simple Ultimate all night and wins easily

From memory (this blog hasn't been around long enough to just check through the archives), the last Grand Final that the Dojo appeared in was this time last year - three whole seasons ago. That game was a memorably tight tussle against Messy Bugs, and eventually a 6-man Dojo (after two kenshi were taken out of play with nasty injuries) was unable to keep up the pace and lost by maybe 2 or 3 points. But the dogged commitment that characterised the Dojo play in that game has really only been seen on a few rare occasions since - this season in particular has been characterised by a glamorous but high-risk style that relies more on sheer talent than grit and determination.

So as we go into the Christmas break it could be said that DojoMojo finds itself at a decision point. Come good on the promise of the tall & talented roster by ramping up the commitment or just kick back and cruise knowing that we can still be strongly competitive during the regular season with minimal effort?

Hopefully this decision will be made over the break and the outcome will be made immediately obvious on the field. We can also confirm that a few changes to the Dojo roster will be taking place before the next season rolls out, and these alone will further enhance Dojo's prospects into the future...

And that's about all that seems prudent to divulge right now. We're also keeping up our sleeve the identities of the all-star cast that will be joining the Sensei in the commentary box for this Thursday's Grand Final game, but we can confirm that those invited are very experienced and opinionated campaigners...

Lastly, but crucially, the final A&B poll for Season 3 is updated to the right, and given the way the system works EVERYONE is still in the running! Who will join Matt Eastburn on the A&B Honour Board? We'll know in just a few days.

Secateurs and Beers with Julian Sacre

2008-12-10T17:06:00.006+10:00

Yesterday, as we put down our gardening implements and wiped our brows after a long day of tending our rapidly-growing azaleas and black pines, we wandered back to our main Shoin via the bamboo grove with nothing in mind but a long, cold Yebisu beer. Rounding the corner we shouldn't have been the least bit surprised to encounter the unusually large silhouette of a steadily permbulating Julian Sacre.

Pleased to see him, but also keen to quench our thirst, we invited him up to our southern verandah for a drink and a chat about this week's much-anticipated (especially thanks to the rain delays) BPL semifinal matchup between DojoMojo and UQ Lovers. Here's a selection of the spiciest moments from our conversation:

DojoMojo Blog: Julz - who better to share a post-stroll, pre-game beer & a chat with than your immense self? Now - we see the only BUB tipper not actually involved in this weeks semi (Jangles) is backing Dojo to win. How does it feel going into the game as the underdog, despite Lovers' star-laden roster?

Julian Sacre: Its interesting that you choose to give out the underdog tag based on a sample size of 1. And that 1 is none other than Jangles! If we accept that he's representative of the Brisbane frisbee community then we're all in big trouble. But underdog or not, this so-called star-laden roster has been talked up in many circles from the beginning of the season, which I really don't think has been justified. If you compare the two UQ rosters there is very little separating those teams, and indeed the rest of the teams in this week's semis.

DMB: That may be very well be true, Julz. But then we also note that Pete Allen is backing Lovers, his own team. Sure - this is admirably faithful of him, but has he forgotten his uncanny knack of ruining a team's prospects simply by tipping it to win?

JS: I am backing Pete to put in a man of the match performance and reverse his tipping fortunes in the process. He took some huge grabs in last Monday's final squeezed between opposition defenders and is in top form. If he could only start using a power grip with his flick, he'd be unstoppable.

DMB: Well, he certainly says he's been reviewing footage of his flick and has some sort of devastating new move to unveil this week. At least we're hoping it's this week, or otherwise he's already unveiled it and nobody noticed... But now onto a man whose power-grip flicks we could all spend more time studying - Buzza. Who has been allocated the crucial job of escorting Mr Burwell to the fields?

JS: Buzz is so pumped for this game, he's already at the fields waiting. I drove through Annerley this morning and saw him throwing high 50m blades to himself. Rumour has it he was actually unavailable to play last Thursday (possibly due to your aptly timed 4:59pm intervention), so that storm may have been a really bad turn of luck for the kenshi.

DMB: Actually Julz, all our strategies rely entirely on Buzz being on the field - we'd be more lost without him than you! And speaking of key contributors, who do you think will make the biggest (successful) layout grab/D of the night? Not Andy Lankowski, presumably?

JS: Andy who? Nah... Dan Walls is the man.

DMB: "Andy who"? Perhaps three replays of Coopers' stunning layout attempt from our last game against your pink-shirted colleagues wasn't enough for you? And when it gets down to the semis it's a shame we can only video one game at a time. So what about the other semi? No doubt it'll be a tough tussle between the two Bug units, but which one do you reckon will still be standing at the end of the night?

JS: A 'tough tussle' alright. Based on recent history with those teams, we can only wonder whether those words might describe the game literally. If Wetnose calls a foul on Mat Ryan for breathing too loudly, we should all be on high alert. Assuming the game concludes in a manner that resembles a normal game of ultimate, I would expect Messy to come out on top. They've had a very consistent season and have a very experienced roster.

Hmmm, well then we'll leave the trash-talking of Liam and the Messy boys for next week (that's if they can get past their Slippry flipside tomorrow night!) - mostly as it would also implicate your teammate Stu Austin, and we wouldn't want to upset his delicate composure this close to a big game...

Another beer, Julz?

Straight to the Point With Liam

2008-12-04T16:05:00.006+10:00

It's 4pm on the day of the BPL semifinals, so we thought we'd sneak in a quickie with that most balletic of Ikebana (and sometimes Ultimate) masters - Liam "Wetnose" Gillions.

This is despite him making some rather "pointed" comments on our previous post, but we love that stuff.

So - while Liam was placing fresh orchids about the place we asked him to make a few quick tips in relation to tonight's semis. Here's what he had to say:

DojoMojo Blog: Righto Wetnose. Let's get straight down to it. Which teams are you tipping to win tonight's semifinals and 5/6 playoff, and why?

Liam Gillions: Teams to win: Messy, Dojo, Double forfeit.

DMB: Which of tonight's games do you expect to be the closest and most exciting, and why?

LG: The 5/6 playoff will be very interesting to watch. I don't know if a 4 man Rawhide will really have what it takes to beat a 3 man Passion. Should be an interesting zone defence set up though.

DMB: Which player(s) do you expect to make the standout contributions in these sudden-death matchups, and why?

LG: Whilst obviously Julz with be skying Sensei in the Dojo/Lovers match up, I think Mike Neild (if his ankle is alright) will stand up, like he always does in the big games.

DMB: Which player(s) do you expect to rack up the highest number of throwaways, and why?

LG: Throwaways will be a tie between Jason Ray, and Matt Eastburn. Tony Ross to throw the most hammers.

DMB: Who would you pick as your 3-person "dream team" to put in the commentary box for the Grand Final coverage?

LG: Obviously you would need to have myself in the commentary box (if not playing) but also would need M Ryan and J McNaughton for some good trashtalking and actually well informed commentary. Keep Sarah Sandford & Will Churchill well away from the commentary though.

DMB: Very interesting, Liam. It's always good to know that a spot in the commentary box awaits those that don't make it through to the big game - we'll be sending out our invitations as soon as the finalists have been confirmed!

*As we publish this post the terrible news has come through that tonight's semifinals have been postponed to next week, presumably due to the rather fearsome electrical storm currently passing through...

Last Ride Into the Sunset?

2008-12-01T13:48:00.006+10:00

It's Monday. Four full days after the rain stopped for just long enough to allow the final round of Brisbane Premier League for 2008 to be played (without completely destroying the fields) and yet nothing until now here at the DojoMojo blog.

And it gets worse - there's no video this week. With no Marijke, and just the one wobbly-handed sub available on the sideline at any time, the camera stayed sadly stowed in the kitbag. Luckily we've got last week's highly gratuitous, failed layout attempt from Andy Lankowski to enjoy over and over again until the finals get started this Thursday night...

So, in the interests of providing quality (if not quite up-to-the-second) Dojo-related BPL reportage, let's quickly look back to that last regular season game against Rawhide. Hmmm... Well, what sticks in the mind from this distant vantage point is that it was a reasonably perfunctory win for the Dojo. The highlight of the night from this writer's perspective was without doubt the precision hammer for a goal from Matt Eastburn to a full speed receiver flanked by a pair of defenders, neither of whom were more than a couple of steps away. Sadly that set a precedent which many others attempted to emulate (without success) later in the game... Final score was 15-7.

The Rawhide compadres were as well-spirited and keenly competitive as ever, but not unlike UQ Passion from a few weeks back they just don't have the depth of numbers to tackle the Dojo this season. In fact, they may very well not have the numbers to even take the field next season - a very unfortunate state of affairs. It seems those UQ and Bug mega-teams just keep gobbling up all the fresh new talent, like the Microsoft and Apple of Brisbane Ultimate. If there are any entrepreneurial youngsters (or oldsters) out there wanting to step out of the shadows and shape their own team, now would be a good time.

Anyway, the A&B poll is updated for voting as usual on the right and most importantly - vote for us in the logo battle over at The Cultimate Opinion. As this post goes online we're just narrowly in front of team "AIR", about whom we know very little.

The Scottish Play

2008-11-15T21:02:00.005+10:00

Our worst fears were realised on Field 3 of the Annerley Junior Football fields last Thursday night.

Sooner or later, we knew that all this video coverage would lead to trouble. You know what we mean - amongst us there are always going to be some with that certain disposition, that little weakness. They see the reaction that one little layout can cause and they can't help themselves. They yearn for a taste of that adulation, that feeling of heroism, that sense that they may be high-fived at random in the street by someone who happened to witness the feat.

The game started out sensibly enough, and DojoMojo quickly moved out to a comfortable lead with a combination of good choices on offence and strong commitment on defence. Here's how the first half went down:

But with a chunky lead in the bag, those suffering from Macbeth-style personality flaws saw their chance - especially when our fab filmographer Marijke Walls decided to try a new camera angle from the back of the endzone... The free-for-all that ensued was thankfully only brief, and to extend our Shakespearian analogy (this one's for you, Roger Church) Birnam Wood was kept well away from Dunsinane Hill, but it was long enough for Andy Lankowski to make his fateful bid at fame and fortune. It's buried in the middle of this second half footage, but we've repeated Andy's moment of near-but-so-far-from-glory a few times to make sure it can't be missed. Here we go:

So that's it. With that lengthy gag at Andy's expense we've pretty much neglected to mention that the game was a fairly straightforward success for the Dojo, especially once we got the message that Chris Cunliffe was going to pull down pretty much anything thrown long unless it was deadly accurate. But Chris and the Passion boys really missed the services of John McNaughton and just didn't have the throwing depth to keep pace with the Dojo on this occasion. They certainly made up for that with their high-spirited and unrelenting workrate, spurred on by Mr Armpits himself, Piers Truter.

Anyway, that's it for another round of BPL. Two rounds to go until the finals, with Dojo set to play Messy Bugs and Rawhide in the remaining regular season matches. Previous form this season is a 15-10 win over Messy (or a Dojo forfeit if you believe LD Stu), and Rawhide failed to field a team. Plenty of motivation there for cracking Ultimate all round then...

And as usual, the A&B poll is ready for voting. Ryan, Stefan and Mike, the guys who seem to have access to the most computers, all took sickies this week so we should see a rare round of voting that is entirely reflective of on-field play...

It's Japanese for "Rice"

2008-11-13T16:04:00.006+10:00

Yes, that's right. It's no coincidence that a man of unstoppable determination such as today's guest has a surname more commonly used in the Dojo to describe our favourite source of carbohydrates - and that man is Alistair Don.

Whether it's Unagi-don, Yasai-don, Katsu-don or Tempura-don, there's no staple accompaniment of which we at the Dojo are more enamored than some perfectly steamed "Don". But just look at the video from our game against UQ Lovers last week and you'll see that Al himself remained ice cool throughout - throwing bladey swing passes and zipping the disc through "informally arranged" Dojo fences with a noticeable sense of detached abandon.

So after leaving nearly a full week for the air to clear we invited Al around for a chat on our Southern verandah, where a most pleasant view over our gardens can be had, especially late in the afternoon...

DojoMojo Blog: Good to have you here again, Al. Whilst we enjoy the reflections of the setting sun off our rocky-shore-style pond onto the needles of the black pines, let's consider our game from last Thursday. There was some very clinical Ultimate from Lovers in the first half, Al. Of course most of us know this season's Lovers as a team of big throwers and big catchers, but many mightn't have noticed just how much depth of handling ability your team has?

Al Don: Yeah it was a pretty good first half of the game last Thursday. The Lovers team this season is tall and certainly looking pretty good in terms of strike throwers and receivers. But along with that pretty much everyone on the team is more than capable of moving the disc around and maintaining possession... Most of the time at least. We did have a few unfortunate examples of how not to do just that later in the game.

DMB: Yes - it seemed like a little bit of miscommunication or lack of time as a team (or both) might have crept in there. But normally you wouldn't have to worry about these trivialities if you could stick with your normal gameplan, which we recall Julz describing as "letting Buzz look after the offence"... Have you organised for someone to finally get Dr. Burwell some driving lessons? Or found him a regular chauffeur?

AD: I've been offering to teach Buzz how to drive for years. Had a funny encounter with a certain South American lady [Al is referring to the longsuffering Mrs Burwell here, for those unfamiliar with the entomologist in question - DMB] in Indooroopilly Shoppingtown one Saturday last year after she'd found out that I'd made such an offer... But up until this point in time he hasn't actually taken me up on it. So the status quo remains and I'll continue providing a limited chauffeur service for Brisbane Ultimate's man most knowledgeable about the local insect life.

DMB: Well that does sound rather annoying Al, especially given the lengthy drive between Chez Burwell and the AJFC fields. Must've also been annoying for the Dojo to finally take your very own strategic advice (i.e. just huck it) and put it into use against your own team...?

AD: Annoying? Probably not the word I'd choose first. Like I said in the huddle at the end of the game I was absolutely gutted that we managed to throw away a 12-9 lead, give up 5 straight points and go on to lose 14-12. But the way you went about doing it was actually pretty exciting. The first half of the game you went for quite a conservative offence, completing a lot of passes, recycling the disc well but giving up enough turns to enable us to get the jump on you and take the lead. Second half you came out, backed yourself to take some more of the big shots you're capable of on offence and kept up enough mongrel on your defence to keep on getting the turns you needed.

DMB: Yep - it certainly felt like the right way to be playing at the time. Any stand-out moments from the game stick in your memory (it's okay to use the video as a refresher...)?

AD: Dan Walls...

Hmmm, yep - Dan Walls... Think he might have scored 4 of 5 of that last ditch run for the game. A couple of big grabs over a couple of our big defensive receivers. We just didn't have an answer for it on the night. Great to see him back in the game and playing like he'd never left it.

DMB: It sure is, especially as he brings our resident cinematographer to the field with him every week as well...! Okay - lastly, we're now more than halfway through the season. How do you reckon the finals favourites are shaping up, and out of the non-Grand-Finalists, who do you think should be providing the video commentary in the big game?

AD: Finals at this stage are a tough call with, for my money, no team set apart from the pack of the top 4, even top 5 teams. I still think that passion have a chance to put together enough wins to make it to the Semis. Both buggers teams are playing solid ultimate and always get better when it comes down to the pointy end of the season. While the Lovers haven't really been managing to put it together for whole games for a large part of this season I think that we've got the roster to do the job and are going to feature on finals nights. And if the Dojo maintain the intensity you showed last week I think that you're the other team to beat. Still reckon we're going to be looking at a Lovers v Dojo final...

Commentators for the night? Personally I'd love to see Messrs Sean Flanagan and Tony Ross, two of my favourite Brisbane Ultimate stalwarts, get just a little boozed, take the mic and heckle like there's no tomorrow.

DMB: Well, that would certainly keep our post-production crew busy for weeks bleeping out half the commentary for general consumption, but it'd be worth it... And great to hear your own post-game comments as usual, Al. Now, how about some nice steamed rice?

Okay, okay!

2008-11-11T11:24:00.006+10:00

Yes, we're aware that it's now Tuesday - five days since our rip-snorting game against UQ Lovers. But when one takes into account the rural situation of DojoMojo headquarters and the positively Heian-period telecommunications technology it's serviced by, these little delays start to seem quaintly charming rather than plain frustrating... Don't they?

So let's not muck around with lengthy descriptions of the game. Here's how it went down:

The first half saw Lovers score more or less two goals for every one of the Dojo's. They played some really, really smooth Ultimate, throwing sharp passes to just-open receivers and capitalising on Dojo mistakes brought on by committed defence, mostly of the man-on-man variety.

The second half? Well, at the very least Dojo managed to hold the game to a points-trading situation for the first 4 or 5 changes of end, but then with time fast running out things took a significant turn. But before we go too far, let's show some video highlights from early in the game (and be thankful that the steady-handed Marijke Walls was back behind the camera):

As we said, lots of quick, precise disc movement in there from UQ, contrasting with a pretty static sort of dump-n-huck offence from the Dojo (not to mention some fairly casual defence!). No wonder things were looking grim. Here's some more action:

Starting to look a bit more fluent for the Dojo now, with a trademark grab from Dan Walls at the end there. And what about the hangtime Ryan got on that high grab over Stu? And as much fun as it'd be to speculate that the wildly errant pull earlier on from Pete "The Kiss of Death" Allen was a pivotal moment, it's more likely that the multi-turnover point which Dojo finally managed to grind out was where UQ started losing a bit of belief and Dojo did the opposite.

Anyway, the video never lies (especially with our factually-faithful editing), and what you'll see below is a Dojo team in vintage form with the long throws and big grabs flowing freely. You'll also see (or moreso hear - time for a language warning!) a few Lovers' tempers start to fray (if they weren't frayed already by pre-game shenanigans) as the Dojo serves up the style of play that the Lovers themselves are usually notorious for:

And there it is - Dojo claws its way back from 9-12 down to take out the game 14-12 in pretty supreme style. Yes, UQ were missing the unparalleled throws of Buzz Burwell, but Dojo were also missing the non-stop mongrel of Gold Coasters Mike and Stefan, so we're calling it a fair fight at the very least and a very satisfying win. Especially considering we were in UQ's shoes this time last week...

That's it for now, then. As usual, the Above&Beyond poll for this week is ready to accept your votes for players that trumped their usual game (please only vote for yourself once this week, Ryan), and the current A&B standings have been updated below that.

Also of note is that if you scroll down you'll now see links to all the official Ultimate organisations that are relevant to the game we play here in Brisbane, and for those needing a rules refresher the latest WFDF Rules of Ultimate are linked below that.

Check back shortly for a chat with that most Wolverine-esque Lover, Alistair Don.

Sipping the Sake with Mat Ryan & Mike Neild

2008-11-05T10:15:00.007+10:00

Some people eat lots of chocolate or ice cream when they're anxious or down about something. But here at the Dojo, on the rare occasions that misfortune strikes and gloom prevails we find instant comfort in the familiar flavours of a big bowl of tofu miso, served up just how we like it at our sushi bar.

And it seems we're not the only ones who enjoy pulling up a seat at the Dojo sushi bar and asking our ex-sumo sushi chef to serve it up "omakase onegaishimasu"... Stepping through the half-height curtains we immediately noticed Mat Ryan and Mike Neild busily knocking back the contents of a very large sake tokkuri while they tucked into a fabulous array of sashimi. And we thought Jon Good had a big appetite!

So we placed our order and joined them at the bar for a little recap of last week's game. The discussion went something like this:

DojoMojo Blog: Mike, Mat - it's great to see you chaps here. No doubt we've all spent a fair bit of time thinking back over our last game during the week, and it'd be good to hear things from your perspective. Firstly - how did it feel coming away from that game with a win when moments beforehand a loss looked inevitable?

Mike Neild: That was a famous victory and it felt great. It is the obvious closeness between towering success and crushing defeat that makes sport such an emotional experience. I think we were right up towards the top end of that continuum of emotion due to the narrowness of the win and the highly unlikely nature of the result. We've been talking about it all week.

Mat Ryan: Indeed we have. You know those rare and special moments when everything falls into place just perfectly? Like the time when Miss Alexander's blouse popped open in English class in Year 11? It was kinda like that. It was like we snuck in, pinched the crown jewels and got away with it. That said, a lot of the euphoria was due to the fact that the team played as well as it possibly could to steal the win. Everyone was totally focussed and played the perfect game at the perfect moment. You could just feel the focus and intensity. Magic.

DMB: That sounds very familiar - if only that focus & intensity was something that could be reproduced on demand... Now - coming into the game, all looked pretty normal with the Slippry warmup. No special strategies formulated to deal with trademark Dojo tendencies?

Mat: Mike's probably got more to say on that. I don't think we had any special strategies. We recognise Dojo as having a long roster with a lot of throwing strength. I think we spoke about keeping the pressure on and not making it easy... But not much more than that. It's not rocket science.

Mike: We probably talked more about what we wanted to improve in our game than we did about how to combat the Dojo game. We did consider avenues for dealing with a 'German' style set up from you lot, and about the forcing options we would take in our man on man defence. Things have changed in the Dojo with the addition of the height, throwing power and experience of David, Ryan and Daniel and so some defensive adjustments are required. But the reality was that the strategy that worked the best for us was something that we didn't plan to use at all.

DMB: It didn't seem planned from our end of the field either, but it was certainly effective! And what do you call that Zone D you played against us when you were down to six?

Mike: I've don't know what that zone is called. I was a bit dubious when James was explaining it at half time, but my goodness did it work.

Mat: That zone is called 'got no other options'. But somehow it seemed to work. It actually felt far better than many other 7man defences I've been involved with. To be honest, I think Dojo might have won it if they'd played a bit closer to their regular gameplan. It was almost like you expected to just walk it in, so you didn't take any chances, and we were able to build pressure and finally get a turn.

DMB: Yes - that much is also very clear on the video footage. And dare we suggest that dropping down to six players actually worked in your favour, as the six you ended up with had proven to be the most dangerous on the night?

Mat: As above. Part of the success was the focus that our 6 applied, but maybe part of it was due to the change in mindset that happened to the Dojo. As Phil Jauncey says "If you've only got plan A and plan B, don't try plan C". I dunno. A combination of total focus from our 6, a bit of luck and a seed of doubt in the minds of the opposition, all converging at the most propitious moment...

Mike: Look it was a turning point in the game however it is difficult to really believe that playing with one less person on the field could be an advantage. I'm inclined to agree with Mat on this one, and I always agree with anyone involved in the 3 time premiership winning phenomenon that was the Brisbane Lions of the early 2000s. Maybe the Dojo just got a bit too comfortable with the position they were in - it seems in line with what I understand of the vibe of the Frisbee Dojo.

DMB: Perhaps we did start to cruise a bit, but that mess-in-front, Mike-at-the-back zone is one you guys should really develop. And talking strategy, we noticed that you recently had a win over the UQ Lovers, next week's opposition for the Dojo. What sort of gameplan would you be taking into this match if you were calling the shots here at the Dojo?

Mike: Put your guns on Al, Buzz and Stu and make them get it going backwards rather than forwards towards their line. Be enthusiastic and energetic on both offence and defence. There is a bit of a weakness of connection that occurs when all the Lovers players are closely marked. They should be the best team in the comp based on their list however something just hasn't clicked yet. The rest of us have to keep up the pressure on them because if we let them and they do connect then it will be troubles for us.

Mat: I'd say just do what you do best. Play your own game. Perhaps send Ryan streaking long a bit more, because you're not getting the full value out of him in a dedicated handling role. That long cut from a handling position can be very effective. Particularly when you've got another tall threat to worry about in Dan Walls. It can split the defence. But hey .... Work it out yourself!!

DMB: Thanks chaps - we'll do our best. Now, would you mind passing the wasabi?

* 06.11.2008 postscript - Turns out we've been spelling Mike's surname incorrectly all these years. Sorry about that Mike - it's now been set right (at least in this post...).

Group Therapy...

2008-11-02T18:42:00.004+10:00

Here's the scene: The alarm signalling the final point of the match has just gone and the score is 12-12. The team to score the next goal will win, and DojoMojo is in the advantageous position of starting the point on offence. All that needs to be done is to weave the disc past an opposition that has recently been reduced to six players after a string of injuries. But it's their six most in-form players, three of whom are current Australian representatives, and they've managed to claw back a two-point deficit thanks to gritty determination (and some poor Dojo play), in the last four or five points played...

The pull comes down, a few passes are thrown and some yardage is gained until a fuse in the brain of Matt Eastburn blows and he hucks it high in the direction of Slippry's dominant big guy Mike Neild (and apparently a Dojo receiver running long as well). The inevitable turnover sees Slippry work the disc steadily back towards the Dojo goal. But with only six players on the field (of whom only 3 are really taking an active part in play), it's not easy to get into the Dojo redzone and an impatient pass is thrown just out of the reach of a typically desperate Mat Ryan...

Play then resets where the point started – on the Dojo goal line – and this time the Dojo are patient and smooth, making good progress with open cuts up the field. So open in fact that a Dojo receiver is standing stationary in the Slippry endzone completely undefended when the disc goes up – the win is in the bag!

Apparently not. The catch isn't completed, heads hang, and Slippry move the disc back easily past a demoralised Dojo defence to score the winner... It's still a very painful memory 4 days later.

But that was just how the game ended. On the way there there was a lot of sweet, sweet Ultimate played. Dan Walls and Mat Ryan both went horizontal in spectacular style, the usual big Neild grabs were in plentiful supply, Jangles was poachy as ever and plenty of long Dojo bombs found their targets. And it's all on video thanks to the injured but still present Stefan Rappazzo. Check it out (please excuse Stefan's shaky handheld work - it took him a few points to work out that walking is not compatible with stable filming):

The second half had just as much action, not to mention the disastrous conclusion described above (but not to be seen on video due to a shortage of battery lifespan...) - here are the highlights:

So that's it for this week. Dojo lose out to Slippry 12-13, but do so knowing that a different result is well within reach in the finals and with plenty of motivation to draw on when the time comes... The Above&Beyond poll is updated to the right, and we should see some interesting movement in the standings this week.

And now that we've put all that on paper and let go of the disappointment we'll hopefully be back at our conversational best with a Slippry Bug in the next couple of days.

Preview From the Bamboo Grove

2008-10-30T12:12:00.008+10:00

Most people would agree that having Wetnose as the most recent DojoMojo Blog interviewee for 10 days is long enough. Many would also note that seeing the Dojo anywhere near the bottom of the BUB blog list (presently occupied as usual by the Buggers blog) is a situation needing immediate rectification.

As it happened, our usual posting pattern was interrupted last week by a non-starting game against a forfeiting Rawhide crew. No game played, no video recorded, no post-game discussion to be had - what to do? And the answer of course was to be found wandering around the Dojo bamboo grove on a Monday afternoon as usual - big Julian Sacre.

So we strolled together for a while, chatting off the cuff about the work of Sun Tzu, and instead of analysing a previous encounter we contemplated the match-ups ahead for our respective teams in BPL Round 6 this week. Here's an excerpt from the conversation:

DojoMojo Blog: Julz - I see you're tipping a Slippry win over Dojo in Round 6. Why is that?

Julian Sacre: Well despite the spanking you gave them earlier in the season, I think they've really got their game together since then. They were quite impressive with a close win over us last week, they have a lot of depth and consistency across their roster and of course, the gun player in Mike. I think they're the more formidable of the 2 Buggers squads this season and the team to beat this league.

DMB: That's a big call Julz, especially when you consider that Pete Allen has put the kiss of death on the Slippry team by tipping them this week... But okay then - if they're such a threat, let's say you were asked to come up with a couple of strategies to take the Slippry Bug wearing the #1 shirt out of the game on O and D. What would those strategies be?

JS: Not a new strategy by any means, but I think putting maximum pressure on the gun throwers who will put it to him is the way to go. Mike will always do his thing in the endzone and there's not much you can do about it, but you can definitely do your best to shut down the strike handlers.

DMB: Our thoughts exactly. Now - who are you tipping to top the Dojo's "Above & Beyond" voting for this round, and why?

JS: Dan Walls - MVP for a reason.

DMB: There you go Dan - another member of the ever-expanding Walls fan club. And lastly Julz, you're playing the other Bug team this week, and the tips on BUB are going each way. How do you plan on following in the Dojo's footsteps and beating Messy?

JS: Going either way? Pretty sure only Wetnose and Will Churchill have gone for Messy so far. Wetnose is hardly an unbiased tip and Churchill... well... enough said. Last time we played Messy it was a tied game, however given that we were down 8-3 at half and it was the first time the new-look Lovers were playing together, I'm pretty confident we can come out ahead tonight. After much pondering of strategy over several visits to the bamboo grove this week, I believe that hard running on D will be required to generate blocks. Buzz will then take care of the offence. Easy.

DMB: Sounds like you've got it all worked out Julz. Thanks for the chat.

Liam Gillions Adorns Our Tokonoma

2008-10-21T17:11:00.005+10:00

Anyone familiar with the art of serving tea would know that no teahouse is complete without its Tokonoma, and the Dojo's garden teahouses are no exception. Of course, the Tokonoma itself is just an alcove, a “place of beauty”. Without a decorative feature it's just a void waiting to be filled. And naturally, who would be more up to this task than that inveterate void-filler himself – Liam Gillions (known more frequently, and rather obscurely, as Wetnose).

Many local Ultimate players know of Liam primarily as a deep-end danger and keen scholar of the game, never afraid to make the big calls. Few would ever have suspected that in his spare time he is also the Dojo's go-to guy for the Ikebana arrangements that so often adorn the otherwise vacant Tokonoma of our various garden teahouses (Johnny Mac chips in with the occasional calligraphy scroll as well). And it was while Liam was doing the rounds with his basket of sparsely-but-elegantly arranged flowers that we invited him in for a freshly whisked cup of green tea and a chat.

DojoMojo Blog: Liam – as usual the delicate beauty of your floral arrangements is inspiring. How you manage to play a tournament all weekend and still come up with this Ikebana genius the very next day is mystifying. Now - thinking back to last Thursday night, the game started out tight for a while, but once the Dojo saw the chance to take half it pretty much pulled away from there (late run from Messy aside). Even though it never seemed one-sided on the field, why do you think the second half went to the Dojo so convincingly?

Liam Gillions: We just did the simple things wrong. It doesn't matter how many turnovers or fouls you can generate, if we can't catch a disc then we aren't going to win the game. We had at least 3 uncontested drops in the endzone during the night, and when you add to that the numerous cold drops and cases of people pulling out of discs that they could clearly have caught you have a recipe for disaster.

DMB: Phew – tough! Sounds like there must be some Messy Bugs out there quaking in anticipation right now, wondering what sort of captain's correspondence you'll be landing in their collective inboxes over the next couple of days... Care to say exactly what you'll be emailing your team about during the week (and working on in your famous pre-game training sessions) as performance issues to address in the leadup to your next game?

LG: Like I said before, it is just the simple things that let us down. Our systems were good and our D wasn't awful. We were generating blocks, but just turning over simple catches.

DMB: Sounds like nothing to fear after all – just a gentle “please catch the disc”... Speaking of which - everyone knows that Jason Ray isn't a happy man unless he's got someone to huck it to. Any new guys stepping into that high-pressure position this season?

LG: Doesn't everyone want to cut long? Isn't that where the glory is? I am stepping out of that role a bit this season to give the other guys a bit of the run. Guys like George Salisbury (aka Silent George) and Damien Wong are guys that tend to fly under the radar, but certainly have the legs to go long and go there quickly. The whole team, with maybe the exception of Nandor, are young and quick and can all move, so I don't think it will fall onto the shoulder of just one or two people.

DMB: Well, at least that's one person we won't have to worry about marking long then... And Nandor – if you're reading, Liam asked us to make sure we clarified that he meant those comments in the most positive way. No doubt you'll sort out your differences in your own time & fashion... Anyway Liam, sticking with the topic of people you don't want to mark long - now that the option of just hucking to Mike when all else fails (or even straight away) isn't available, how do you see the Messy gameplan changing this season?

LG: We have a more experienced line up on Messy this season. This Buggers split this season was to put some top end players with our rookies on Slippery, and put a fairly experienced and well rounded line up on the Messy roster. This allows us some more options in terms of our reliability with our throws and knowledge of the game and positioning.

DMB: Well, whether that means you're using this season to build for the future or not, everyone playing BPL knows that neither of the Bug outfits are ever going to be easy opponents. So lastly, it'd make a pretty good story if Messy could make the final this season despite losing its erstwhile leader. Which other team will you be expecting to face if you make the distance?

LG: It'll be great if we can get there, and we will certainly be putting all our efforts into doing that. Obviously UQ have decided that they are sick of Mike having the trophy at his place, so have stacked the Lovers team and left JMac and the Passion boys a little short. I think the four semi finalists will be Lovers, Messy, Slippery, Dojo. I just hope that Dojo don't face Lovers in the semis, as you don't seem to have much luck against UQ in semi finals do you Sensei?

DMB: Ahh - good to see the pre-finals trash talk starting before we're even halfway through the season, Liam. And strangely unsurprising to hear it coming from yourself, an otherwise gifted practitioner of an art form as subtle and understated as Ikebana... Talk to you again when you next come by to refresh our suibans.

Lessons in Foul Calling

2008-10-20T11:22:00.005+10:00

It's been a while since DojoMojo defeated a full-strength Messy Bugs lineup, but Round 4 of the current BPL season saw the Dojo return to form and roll in a pretty straightforward 15-10 victory against the old Bug foes.

[To those that have complained about this post being too long in the making we do extend our apologies - normal service will be resumed shortly, and with Mixed Nationals happening over the weekend we figured few would notice...]

So - what to say about the game? Well - on reviewing the footage it has to be said that there were only very few flashes of real high-quality play (and several instances of the opposite...). Most of the 80 minutes was spent in the conventional manner against this tough Bugs team - struggling for psychological, rather than physical superiority. Just witness the finals coverage from last season to see how normally-great players (and even Julian Sacre) can crumble under the mental pressure of the red-shirted Bugs.

But not the Dojo. At least not this week... Cheeks were turned and implosions were avoided as the goals just kept on being caught (barring the odd Wetnose block). To make up for the slightly lower-than-usual spectacle of athleticism that last week's game was, we've taken a few editing liberties to ramp up the controversy a bit instead. The handy film work was as usual done by Marijke Walls, who as you'll hear is able to carry out a conversation about home decorating and film a game of Ultimate simultaneously. Looking forward to receiving the comments on this one:

If the title of this post didn't make sense before then presumably it does now? Some interesting exchanges there, especially the sideline comments from J-Ray and the response from Stefan, but most were resolved in the well-spirited manner typical of BPL play. In fact all this video coverage has got us thinking that knowing the world may be watching is a sure way to keep the Spirit bar high.

We couldn't resist scrutinising at least one Wetnose call either - hopefully he'll drop by shortly to share some of his own views on the game.

And that'll have to be it for now. To the right you can see that we've devised a new voting system that we're calling "Above & Beyond". It's similar to the old MVP system, but it differs in that it rewards individuals for exceeding their own standard of play, rather than that of their teammates. So vote for whoever you thought had a cracking game, regardless of whether they were the best on the field or not...

Will Churchill and the Sea of Tranquility

2008-10-15T10:32:00.008+10:00

With the night sky over the Dojo's wooden garden pavilions illuminated by a full moon these past few nights, we knew that Will Churchill (known to BUB readers as will-i-am) would drop by for an evening of serene moon viewing. No doubt it comes as a surprise to many that Will's lunophilia is of a purely celestial, rather than puerile nature, but there you go.

While we sat by the edge of our reed-lined pond observing the reflections in the water we delved into a discussion on our game last week and some of the big issues surrounding the Brisbane Premier League right now. The conversation went something like this:

DojoMojoBlog: Will, as usual it's a delight to spend a quiet evening composing lunar haiku and discussing the finer points of Ultimate with you. I'm sure you'd agree it was a tough game for the new-look Passion crew last week. It seemed like your team (which now appears to consist of mostly young/inexperienced guys) ran hard early but quickly lost interest once the Dojo got its game together and started crunching the goals in?

Will Churchill: I do agree Steve. What made Passion a killer unit last season was that our team had a lot of depth once the disc got past Cheeseburger and Buzz so we'd keep moving and score. Albeit that we did have a tendency to become complacent with our wins and let some games slip out from under us (ie: losing to Dojo when you had 6 players was a real wake up call).

At the moment I see it that Passion has gone back to square 2 (never 1). When we started with ole Bretty Matzuka and Pottsy the rest of the team was greener than a fresh recruit being sent to war, or an over ripe cucumber. For the immediate future at least I see the Passion working to rebuild our strength and skill base and come next season, with the return of some of our players, we will be a force of reckoning once more.

DMB: Sounds ominous! Speaking of which, any Johnny-Mac-special grillings between games this week? Or maybe you'll be rolling out some new sort of half-time drill?

WC: Funnily, no. There was no grilling this week, the loss hit the team in a pinching sort of way and being the resilient youth we are we shall bounce back (great layout by the way, how's the... entire upper half of your body? Bouncing back? .... that was cheeky I admit :)

Actually, Johnny has taken the backseat for this season opting to lend his experience leading teams to a new player who is up to the role of challenging himself to manage the Passion. Nat (never Nate) Litzow has taken the reins so far and is doing a swell job. John is around as an encyclopedia of Ultimate related knowledge and strategy on field but the man running us is Nathan.

DMB: "Manage the Passion", eh? That can't be easy with a team of undergrads. Okay - here's a hypothetical: If you could poach one player from any other team in the league to come over and bolster the Passion roster, who would it be and why (don't be boring and say Mike Nield)?

WC: Well straight out the window are Buggers players. A leopard doesn't change its spots and a crustacean will never be a cool creature like a Unicorn or a Cherub that the club so diligently bases itself around. So I'm left with 3 teams to choose from. I'd probably grab the 'Big Guy' Julian Sacre and bring him home to momma. The man is a unit on the field and a difficult player to stop. Couple with Jmac and there is a game winning deal there.

(Let it be known though that as boundless as my love for the big guy is I still want it public knowledge about how I took Julian to school and tore down a contested disc in the air against him in the YUFL final on Monday. Honestly, I was awesome.)

DMB: Happy to take your word for it, Will. Perhaps Julz will like to contribute his thoughts via one of his legendary post comments...? And speaking of defectors like him, we've been hearing rumours that all those guys betrayed their Passion roots between seasons simply because Al Don promised them nice shirts. Any truth in that?

WC: UQ is pulling itself under a single banner starting this weekend at Mixed Nationals and we shall be touting our bitchin' new colours and strips. The plan at the moment is to integrate these strips into our 2 YUFL teams (3 come next year if everything goes ahead) and then try to garb the BPL and womens team in the same. It'll be some work but we're confident enough that the price is right and we have instilled the right kind of pride and fellowship in the club that such a move would work.

As for how Al is getting credit for this I don't know. Props go out to Gref Goranson for his l33t photoshop skillz and design f1air. As a preview, it might be a downer to see another dark team around Brisbane but I ask why the Buggers are red instead of the more aquine blue and black of their aquatic environs? That's just n00bish (ok, enough of the leet speak).

DMB: Whoa - we weren't really following much of that Will, but hopefully those "leet speakers" out there were, whoever they are. We here at the Dojo pride ourselves not only on our oldskool (is that leet?) style but even moreso on our extensive merchandise range. Surely a man with your unusual perspective on life can suggest some interesting additions (including to this blog)?

WC: Sweatbannds! Frisbee players don't wear enough sweatbands. Heck, I've played with 4 one game and it wasn't enough! That and caps, no not the crappy GAIA caps that you shead a tear over for lost potential. TRUCKER CAPS! The line outside my house of people wanting to borrow my Decepticon Cap is nothing short of the attention that the self referencing egotistical all round winner I am deserves (yes, I just said that). Caps and sweatbands baby - that's a money maker (coming to a UQ fashion outlet near you).

As for other things... you guys could really use a unicorn in the zen garden here. But you'll need a dozen stableboys or so. There is a price that comes with magical creatures. But you can at least sell it for $5 a bag.

DMB: Not quite sure what it is we'd be selling for $5 a bag, Will, but you'll be glad to know that there are already Dojo caps in existence (circa 2004 Nationals), and headbands too. They just don't get a lot of use these days, now that we're a primarily night-time team...

Anyway, enough about Ultimate - let's get back to those haiku. Thanks for the chat, Will.

Lovin' It Sick

2008-10-10T15:34:00.006+10:00

Poor old Johnny Mac. Last season his UQ Passion team were in the final, then most of them migrated over to UQ Lovers and now suddenly they're on the receiving end of a 15-4 hammering by pretty much the same Dojo team that they narrowly beat in the semi last season. Okay, we didn't have Lee O'Dwyer with us this time around...

Anyway, there's very little to say about the game other than it being an early tussle for the first few points before the Dojo got its game together and asserted its dominance. As so often happens in games with these sorts of scorelines, UQ scored most of their goals early while Dojo were using the first half-dozen points as a warmup and it was pretty one-sided thereafter. So let's allow the video footage to do the talking (thanks & credit as usual to the delightful Marijke Walls) n.b. very infrequent coarse language ahead:

Yes, some of those points aren't in chronological order but we've exercised our directorial privilege to arrange them in favour of a more interesting storyline. "Never lays out", eh Johnny? Does falling over count? Also included there was a rare insight into the mensa-grade strategic machinations of a Dojo halftime huddle...

But the Ultimate coverage from last night doesn't end there. Once Dojo and Lovers had wrapped things up on Field 2 there were still a few points left to be played in the Field 1 derby match between the two Bugs outfits Messy & Slippry. So in the interests of providing maximum Ultimate entertainment for nil cost we thought we'd include some of the highlights of the last few points between these two now-evenly-matched teams. Our in-house post-production team has been working by lamplight through the night in their tatami-floored rooms to bring you this coverage...

But before we press play on this, it's also worth noting that there were some highly controversial moments in the dying moments of this match which, thankfully for the generally well-spirited cause of the BPL, occurred off camera. We have no doubt those unfortunate incidents will be discussed widely elsewhere, so we're sticking to our policy of providing only the most hard-hitting Ultimate entertainment and BPL commentary here (n.b. a little more of that occasional coarse language ahead):

Yes, once again the batteries in the Dojo video camera ran dry with just moments remaining. And once again it didn't really matter - the match ended with Messy scoring to save a draw against their Slippry pals. Is "pals" still the correct term?

Anyway, enough about them - back to the Dojo. The MVP standings have been updated to the right and a new poll is ready to receive all the automated votes Stefan and Dan keep getting any computer near them to send in...

Al and Julz Spin the Yundo

2008-10-08T12:10:00.005+10:00

Alistair Don and Julian Sacre were deep in discussion about the geomantic importance of a strong Blue Dragon when we joined them under the deep eaves of the Dojo garden's Eastern Gate on Monday afternoon. Naturally, they weren't inclined to give away too much about how their interest in Feng Shui informs their zone D strategies, but they were more than happy to have a bit of a Q&A session about our game last week and indulge in some idle conjecture about the season ahead.

Here's what we discussed whilst enjoying the outlook and the melodic birdsong:

DojoMojo Blog: Julz, we know how much you enjoy a wander around our gardens between games, but Al - we had no idea you shared his enthusiasm. It's a pleasure to have you both here. Let's briefly discuss the game last week. Despite the score being very close for most of the game, in retrospect it never looked like the result would be anything other than a Lovers win. What do you think was the most critical difference between the teams?

Julian Sacre: Well, as you say there wasn’t much in it. I think it came down to taking the right options with the disc in hand. I recall Dojo forcing a few throws close to the endzone which weren’t really on.

I also think the reason why a Lovers win seemed inevitable was because we seemed to have a few more scoring options with the hucking and break-side throws of aL and Buzz combining with receivers like Will Larkin and Gref.

Al Don: I think there's a couple of critical differences between the teams. The choice of sky blue shirts for the lovers is probably the most important of those though. A serene feeling comes over you when you pull one on and I think that transferred itself pretty well into an approach to the game that helped us to stay calm and take the opportunities presented at the same time as not stressing too much over the numerous turns that occured during the first half of the game.

DMB: Hmmm - now your interest in Blue Dragons is becoming clearer, Al. It also seemed that your receivers were pulling down the hucks with ease most of the night, and yet Dojo had to rely primarily on Dan Walls doing something spectacular/silly/dangerous to make the long throws stick. How much of this do you put down to differences in defensive pressure?

AD: Yeah - I was pretty happy with the defensive pressure we managed to bring out last Thursday. The Lovers this season, with a couple of notable exceptions, are young and hungry for anything they can pull down on defence or offence. One of the advantages of playing a team full of students is that I think they really are lacking a little on the nutrition side of things. So when I told them to get out and get hungry on D some of them may have taken that a bit literally, thinking perhaps that some of the Dojo discs may have been weighed down with something edible. Tasty little morsels of sushi perhaps?

JS: Mmmm - sushi. But seriously, Dan Walls had an incredible game. Easy to see why he scored the MVP title from last season of BPL.

I think the defence did make a big difference. When Dojo (ie: Dan) did get some effective connections with long cuts to the endzone, Lovers switched to a straight-up force and I think this was enough to put a little bit of extra pressure on those hucks.

DMB: Okay - let's cut to the chase then. This new roster - Al claims it just "sort of happened", but this mass migration to Lovers seems about as coincidental as the fact that there are 24 stubbies in a carton and 24 hours in a day. Just what inducements did Al offer in building this new UQ super team?

AD: Inducements? Nothing more than the offer to play on a team with the potential for more beards. Who would have thought that would be as attractive an offer as it seems to have been?

JS: I'm not at liberty to say. aL put a clause in our new contracts that forbids us from speaking publicly about it.

DMB: All very strange. Beards? Contracts? And what about these rumoured new shirts? Will you be sharing with Passion (we all know they need some help)? What do you say about the speculation that fluoro orange may be the new UQ colour?

JS: Can’t say, sorry Sensei. We’ve been designing them for at least the last 8 or 9 years. But I shouldn’t even be talking about them - they’re nowhere near ready.

AD: Well I can safely put that rumour to bed right now. I at least would rather play nude than shell out for a fluoro orange team uniform. And if it comes down to it then thats what i'll be arguing for...

DMB: Let's all hope sanity prevails then. Perhaps yellow Hypercolour? So lastly, it's early in the season and most team rosters (not least your own) have had a big shakeup. But assuming you'd rate yourselves as Grand Final contenders, which other team do you expect to see at the other end of the field come December 11th, and why?

AD: It's always hard to write off any team with a certain lanky Australian rep in the mix but I think thats exactly what I'm going to do here. For the first time in my somewhat unreliable memory, there will be no Buggers team in action on finals night. My money's on a Lovers v Dojo final. After a few seasons now where the Dojo have started strong and looked to be the team to beat I think they're actually going to go close to putting it together for an entire season this time round. The injection of a few strike throwers from the depths of history combined with a bit more of the mongrel that players like Stefan exhibit will see the Dojo cruise through most of the season, win a semi and then go on to make a spectacle of it for the crowd in the final. I'll even go as far as to predict a 14-12 Lovers comeback victory...

JS: Yep - when we line up on grand final night, I expect to be standing opposite the kenshi… of course!

DMB: Amen to that. Al, Julz, thanks for your time.

When the Batteries Go Flat...

2008-10-06T15:02:00.008+10:00

We've been putting off writing about last Thursday's game against the all-new UQ Lovers team for a few days now, partly due to other pressing matters but primarily out of denial.

You see, just how Dojo lost to this all-star UQ team isn't exactly clear upon first examination. The score was pretty close throughout, the teams pretty much evenly matched on a pound-for-pound talent basis, but somehow the formely-maroon-clad, temporarily-in-light-blue and soon-to-be-in-who-knows-what UQ lads simply managed to quietly and inexorably pull away from a mildly implosive Dojo team.

Perhaps the scars on every bony surface of this writer (no doubt Dan Walls is still festooned with bruises as well) are a clue to how things seemed to fade away toward the end of the game. Whereas the Lovers played a smooth, full-field game all night, it seemed that the Dojo players were constantly forcing themselves to do something special to score goals or even just retain possession. As the game wore on, coming up with something brilliant every point proved more and more difficult and eventually the inevitable just sort of happened...

But let's not sell the game short - there was some absolutely first-rate play from both sides throughout the night. From UQ it was mostly sweet, sweet long throws from Buzz and Al into the wide-open hands of Big Julz or Gref, and from Dojo it was mostly Dan Walls putting his body in danger catching heavily contested discs and going horizontal to save an overly-ambitious Dan B throw for goal.

Given that the kenshi spent most of last season learning to overcome this self-defeating style, it's a little disappointing to see it re-emerge so soon. But no matter - it will only be a matter of time before the Dojo style adapts to the return of old guns Ryan Black and Andy McLean and the rhythm returns. For now, let's just say that next week's opponents UQ Passion can expect to have their deep defences severely tested...

We're also pleased to advise that Big Julian Sacre is out strolling the Dojo bamboo grove at the moment, and today he appears to have some colleagues with him. We'd better rush out to catch them by the Eastern Gate for a quick chat about last week's game and the season ahead.

In the meantime, our usual MVP poll is to the right, and the MVP standings have been updated below. Vote for as many players as you think deserve it!

So You Think You Can Pull

2008-09-26T22:47:00.007+10:00

Another season of the Brisbane Premier League got underway at the Annerley Junior Soccer fields on Thursday night, and DojoMojo came out in force with subs to spare.

Dojo's Round 1 opponents were the new-look Slippry Bugs, or at least they would have looked new had their latest pickup, former Messy CEO Mike Neild turned up for the game. Come to think of it, we distinctly recall seeing big-haired youngster Reece (thanks for the correction) on the field in the Season 2 final last week as well...

In fact the sheer quantity of unexpected team defections (mostly of the incestuous bedhopping variety within Brisbane's two mega-teams UQ & Bugs) has taken many by surprise this season, especially given that it all happened in less than a week! And no-one would have been more surprised than poor old Johnny Mac who arrived at the field to discover that the top half of his Passion roster had suddenly decided it was playing for Lovers instead! On top of that, new LD Stu Austin deemed his moment of ascendancy an appropriate one to also ride away alone from the circled wagons of his old Rawhide compadres and follow the Lovers trend.

Yes - it's going to be a tough start to the season for the tipsters (don't think anyone tipped a Lovers/Messy draw), but as ever there's one team with a roster that can be relied upon season after season - and that team is DojoMojo. Okay, so it's never certain which (if any) of those rostered players will actually play in any given fixture...

Anyway, all this guff about the weirdness surrounding the new season must be a subconscious attempt on the part of this writer to avoid the main subject of this post, that being that Dojo simply cruised through to a very easy win over a 6-man Slippry team, eventually taking out the game 15-5. There were a few stutters early, and a few noteworthy efforts from both sides. Jangles must have got at least half a dozen run-through blocks on stationary receivers during the night.

To make it all easy to digest, we've collated the highlights of the game (and a few full points to give them a nice rounded flavour) into a single video. As usual the credit and thanks go to Marijke Walls for the camera work:

That last point on the video was also the last point of the night - interesting to hear Dan Walls behind the camera hoping for a turnover so he could get back on the field before the game was over... And on reviewing this footage we were surprised to discover just how much smack talking Matt Eastburn does throughout a game, at least one where he's not running so hard he can't see straight... Makes it all the more enjoyable to watch him drop that push pass over and over again.

But we've saved the best moment of the night for last, and it involves a brand new concept (creative direction by Dave Watson) that the Dojo will be progressively rolling out during the season - the choreographed pull:

That should do it for now. With any luck we'll soon have at least one of the top Slippry thinkers around for a few games of Go and a chat about the season ahead. In the meantime, feel free to vote for this week's Dojo MVP in the poll on the right. As usual, voting for multiple players is a-okay. Oh - and this season we're changing the MVP scoring system so that every vote counts, rather than the one-winner-per-week system we'd used previously. So vote carefully!

(Not Quite) Live and Exclusive

2008-09-23T10:26:00.009+10:00

Here it is at last - the Grand Final from BPL Season 2 2008 between Messy Bugs and UQ Passion.

Some will already know the outcome of the game, but for the sake of the story here we're going to leave that until the end. So let's set the scene:

A vast crowd had assembled on the sideline of the centrally-located field, set up specially for the occasion with extra space for beer drinking and even a nice little table with cupcakes (courtesy of Beth Rougier, and possibly friends, as far as we're aware). People had come from all over Brisbane to see two teams packed to the rafters with tall timber and disc-slinging sharpshooters fight it out for the title, and here's how it got underway:

UQ seemed nervy, and starting every point on offence gave them little time to set up their defensive strategy of getting Big Jules in Jason's face and having Johnny Mac chase Mike all over the field. On the contrary, Messy were cruising along with quick counters whenever they got the turnover. We pick up the action again with the Messy boys going into a huddle when UQ called a much-needed momentum timeout:

As the game went into halftime things were looking, well, grim for the men in pink (and a bit of white on this occasion). The commentary team kept on drinking though, becoming more & more loquacious as the game wore on. We hit the field to get some comments from a few local legends of the game, and here's what they had to say:

So, a unanimous verdict against UQ making any sort of comeback. But would they? Could they find the intensity that saw them overcome Dojo in the semi? The second half was about to get underway:

Hmmm - not looking good for the Passion boys, but from a Bug perspective the game was going completely to plan. The ever-reliable Jason-to-Mike connections were complemented by smooth flow with everyone on the field involved in every point. Things started getting a bit sloppy toward the end with Messy knowing they had it in the bag and UQ getting more and more desperate to score quickly, and this produced several multi-turnover points of the sort we don't expect to see in a regular BPL game, let alone the Final.

But we'd all come this far with it, so we decided to stick around to the bitter end:

Okay, not quite the bitter end. With all those stoppages and a few gratuitous interviews with members of the audience we found ourselves running out of mini-DVDs with a couple of points still to play... But no matter - the blowout win to Messy was never in doubt and no matter what Dan Young will tell you about UQ finally playing some decent ultimate in the dying moments the whole thing ended pretty anticlimactically. Okay - Wetnose's layout goal for the win was reasonably watchable. Much more so than Will Churchill's outrageously unnecessary (and unsuccessful) airborne bid from earlier in the game...

So there you go. From recollection the final score was something like 18-9, and for us it seemed that the biggest difference between the two teams was consistency on the night. The Messy boys bring the exact same game (not to mention pretty much the exact same roster) to the field every week and they execute their well-known gameplan with the same effectiveness game in, game out. No other team in the league seems able to do this, and it's hard to imagine Messy's reign coming to an end any time soon unless the other teams can match their reliability. If only Mike would update their blog from time to time...

But the best news of all is that BPL Season 3 starts up THIS THURSDAY NIGHT under the iron-fisted leadership of new LD Stu Austin. Early signs indicate that Stu will be running the league strictly on a need-to-know basis with a similarly dictatorial style to his predecessor Jon Good. Coverage here on the DojoMojo Blog will be uninterrupted, of course...

It'll Be Worth the Wait...

2008-09-22T11:33:00.003+10:00

For those waiting in eager anticipation to see the footage of the BPL Season 2 '08 Grand Final from last Thursday night, all we can say is that we've reviewed the footage in its raw form and it'll be worth the wait.

We're currently experiencing some technical difficulties editing it all into watchable format, which translates into "Windows Movie Maker is the most useless, bug-ridden, hopelessly incompatible-with-everything, time-guzzling program ever to be automatically installed onto a computer as part of a Windows update". So we're off to acquire some software that actually works and will, with any luck, have the game and associated commentary from JDR, Special G and the Sensei posted right here in a day or two.

In the meantime we've got some news that's much worse than a slight delay in our exclusive BPL coverage. And the news is that Steve Hjelm quietly announced (as is his way) that he won't be taking the field for DojoMojo in future as he's moving to Sydney. This is very sad news not only for us here at the Dojo but also for Brisbane Ultimate at large. Hjelmie has been throwing a disc here in Brisbane longer than most and is a past BPL MVP winner - the guy is fast. Let's hope he doesn't wind up playing for Fakulti or someone like that...

Oh - and speaking of MVPs, DojoMojo's "Weapon from Antiquity" Dan Walls took out this season's BPL MVP title, beating the likes of Mike Nield and Buzz Burwell with an average tally of over 1 vote per game. Dan joins Hjelmie and Dave Watson in the select group of kenshi to have their names engraved on the stupendous BPL MVP trohpy.

Prime Time Ultimate with Big Jules

2008-09-16T11:02:00.005+10:00

Something very few people know about Julian Sacre is that he loves nothing more than taking a stroll around the DojoMojo bamboo grove on a Monday afternoon. Apparently it's during the time he spends there, alone with his thoughts of leaping high and running long, that he hones his unique and devastating mind-over-body approach. We joined him on his meditative perambulations yesterday to contemplate and discuss last week's SemiFinal between our two great teams.

DojoMojo Blog: Good afternoon Jules - it's always a pleasure to share our gardens with a connoiseur of serenity such as yourself. Let's give some thought to our game last Thursday. You chaps were clearly on a mission right from the outset (you even arrived on time!). Had there been some harsh words said between our previous game and this one to get the team fired up?

Julian Sacre: Absolutely! No disrespect for what was a very impressive Dojo performance that night, but to get beaten by 6 guys was a very humbling experience. In light of that recent history and the fact that you’d had a few weeks to recruit for a full team, we knew it would require a big step up to get over the line. And yes, perhaps my turning up before the first point of the game for the first time this season was a reflection of that. Still not early enough to have a pre-game run and throw with the team, but I think JMac’s little incident is proof enough that the so-called “benefits” of warming up are a complete myth. Of course, from what I’ve seen of Dojo before a game, you’ve known that for years. I imagine some Sensei-led meditation would be your favoured method of preparation?

DMB: Indeed it is. It's no secret that the kenshi spend long seconds meditating over their weekly emails from the Sensei before each game and, thus prepared, simply step onto the field ready to play... But it seemed you had a real plan this time around. Passion went with a zone D pretty much all night - was this a deliberate strategy to contain the free movement of the disc we'd had last time?

JS: You obviously moved the disc with ease in that famous (infamous?) 6-man win despite the efforts of a poacher in the lane. So yea – zone D was the defence we chose from the outset, and based on its success throughout the first half, we obviously kept at it all night. I think Nat suggested that we switch to a man D at one point and got his head bitten off pretty severely.

DMB: That'll teach him for questioning your strategic brilliance Jules - and it must be said that you were wise to ignore Nat's suggestion. But enough about you - let's talk about us. How would you say the performance of the Dojo team you beat in the Semi differed from the team you lost to in Round 9?

JS: Apart from the obvious disadvantage of having not just 7 guys on the field, but also a sub (what the???), I thought your disc movement was much less free-flowing. Your handlers seemed to keep the disc in their hands for an eternity, allowing our zone to set and reducing your options up-field. Maybe it was also just one of those nights – everything you touched in round 9 seemed to turn to gold, but there did seem to be that little bit missing in the semi-final.

DMB: More than a bit - the video shows that we basically dumped-n-swung our way to the endzone all night! But that wasn't the case for Passion - it seemed that not having JMac this time actually brought more of your guys into play with the disc and made for a more (new)Dojo-like offensive setup i.e fewer long hucks and lots of solid retention. Will you be asking John to stay home for the Final as well?

JS: Yea, I’ve always thought his pin-point hucks were holding us back. Nah… seriously though, we may allow him to play – as long as he promises not to do that foolish thing called warming up. I guess losing his handling did force some other guys to come back, but I'm not sure it really caused us to reduce the number of hucks and change our style of play. I think your zone D covered the deep threats pretty well, so there were very few opportunities to strike long.

DMB: Fair enough. And lastly, how much longer until the Passion team gets some proper shirts? Some people are convinced that your faded pink look is the only thing stopping BPL getting primetime TV coverage...

JS: I don’t think I've ever read about Passion on the Dojo blog without a reference to the faded pink shirts. This actually makes me suspect that your consistent criticism is not out of dislike, but more driven by a subconscious jealousy? If you are looking to get your hands on one of the jerseys, I think there are a few still available in women’s sizes. I could see it as a very fashionable addition to Sensei’s office at DojoMojo HQ. We could even arrange it to be signed by all team members and framed? If the result goes our way in the final next week, it could turn out to be a pretty good investment.

But you mentioned TV coverage – I was actually thinking that your success in broadcasting games on your very own blog could be the start of something big. Perhaps you could upgrade your coverage to include all games and offer them on a subscription service? I would definitely be one of the first lining up to buy a platinum membership to “DojoMojo Blog Pro”. If our sense of style is what’s holding you back, we can try harder in future not to drop the bright red undies in when we're washing our whites (for the record, I can’t take credit for that joke – I first heard it from a heckling Buggers supporter during last season’s final and thought it was pretty good. Look forward to more of that next week!).

DMB: All good ideas there Jules - we're really looking forward to receiving that souvenir signed Passion shirt, and at the very least there should be some exclusive coverage of the BPL Final here on the Dojo Blog (pay-per-view of course). Thanks for your time, and feel free to let yourself out the front gate once you're finished wandering...

Eight Was Too Many...

2008-09-14T16:45:00.015+10:00

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...

Mat Ryan on International Diplomacy

2008-08-31T14:30:00.012+10:00

Despite the fact that our five-on-five game last week was a pretty sedate affair and ended early so we could watch the cracking Passion v Messy game, Mat Ryan (of Taipans fame) still had the good grace to accept our invitation to a post-game recovery session in the tranquil environs of the Dojo's onsen-style bathhouse.

With aches & pains massaged away by the Dojo's own Shiatsu masseuses, we retired to our outdoor thermal spring in a scene not dissimliar to James Bond and Tiger in You Only Live Twice... Here's what we discussed whilst having our shoulders rubbed and being served iced tea:

DojoMojo Blog: Mat, welcome to the luxurious facilities that help keep the Dojo kenshi in tip-top shape. It's a rare privilege to have such a well-travelled and tournament-hardened veteran of the game such as yourself drop by.

Mat Ryan: It's a pleasure, nay, an honour to be interviewed on such an august online publication. What's your readership these days? You must be getting say, 50-60 thousand hits a week?

DMB: On a quiet week, yes (g'day Graham in Canada!). But once word spreads about this little interview we expect to see that figure blow out exponentially... Now - down to business. A pretty poor effort from both our teams this week, although at least yours had enough to avoid a double-forfeit. Who were you missing, why weren't they there, and what sort of reprimands will they suffer during the week? Apparently water-boarding is entirely humane and legal...

MR: Yeah. It was a fairly mediocre turnout this week from both teams, particularly given that it was for the minor premiership. I heard the various excuses given by the Dojo squad but I suspect they are conserving their legs for next week's semi. Fair enough, it looks like it will be an all in brawl with the UQ Pashun after their last encounter (I wonder if Burwell will bring some tissues next week?).

I'm not sure what the story was with the Slippery boys though. I don't think I've ever seen more than 9 at any given fixture, so we're not exactly famous for our massive sideline. I'm not sure what discipline that Jimmy Larkin has in mind ... but he doesn't strike me as the waterboarding type. He'll probably just send a softly worded email in size 8 font.

DojoMojo Blog: Hmmm - the old sternly-worded letter, eh? Didn't work so well for Hans Blix in Team America, but we have had a fair bit of success here at the Dojo with our "virtual training sessions"... The most fun on Thursday night was had watching the Passion v Messy game. Obviously you were backing the other Bug team then, but next week I doubt you'll be cheering so loudly when J-Ray repeatedly hucks it to Mike?

Mat Ryan: Hey, as far as I'm concerned everything went exactly to script: Bugs are guaranteed a spot in the final while Passion and Dojo beat the crap out of each other. Obviously it would have been sweet to see a Bug v Bug final, but I'm not sure that would have pleased the Brisbane Ultimate community too much. That said, I'll be working hard to see the Slippery team follow up on their minor premiership. It would be great for Jimmy to mount the big hubcap on the mantlepiece at home.

DMB: Yes, well Jimmy is certainly a little terrier of an ultimate player, but the idea of him mounting hubcaps anywhere is something we'd prefer not to consider. So let's get back on-topic, as those media-savvy types like to say. The BPL table has been unstable all season, and now with the Worlds guns back to their teams and other teams going into the finals without some of their top shelf guys, is it possible to forecast a winner from the four semifinalists?

MR: Forecast? Look I could wax on about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various teams but honestly I think this season is the most open we've seen in ages. Dojo are the dark horse and if they can put all their guys on the line at the right time, and those guys play to their potential, then they can win it. I think they have the deepest, most consistent roster. All the other teams have some stars at the top but they also have a bunch of relative rookies. It's a great competition to be playing at the moment.

DMB: It sure is, and with players from the Dingos, Taipans, Barramundis & Thunder all back on deck the tipsters are once again struggling to pick the form. Looking to next week's semifinals, which individual players do you reckon will make game-changing contributions (for better and for worse...)?

MR: I find it hard to go past Mike Neild as the dominant player at the moment. After his World Champs experience he is in red-hot form, outplaying some of the biggest names in World Ultimate. If Mike fires, and he receives good service from his team, then he'll be hard to stop.

But Ultimate isn't about individuals. It will come down to the best team. So while Mike or John McNaughton or even Dan Walls might play the game of their life, the semis (and final) will be won by the best team. That said, games are a lot easier to lose than win. And I reckon there are a bunch of guys out there who can lose a game in spectacular fashion. I'll be keeping a close eye out for players who look like they are having a howler. The frisbee field can be a very small place with no-where to hide...

DMB: Very tactfully put, Mat - it's easy to see why you're a multiple Worlds Spirit winner. And speaking of Ultimate matters on a global scale, is there any particular experience from your recent Vancouver expedition that has changed your approach to the game as we play it here in Brisbane?

MR: I think the feature of Worlds which impressed me most was the amount of contact that occurred with almost no fouls being called. I believe there are 2 reasons behind this:

1. In most cases the contact did not actually influence the outcome of the play. Contact occurring in the contest usually happened after the catch ... So there's no point in calling anything (and being great players, most catches were completed). Also, contact occurring during cutting was more often initiated by the cutter than the receiver. The cutter would often run a tight line close to the Defender then jag away into the space.

2. Foul calling is perceived to benefit the D team rather than the O team because it disrupts the flow and slows down the game, allowing the Defence to re-orient. Offence is all about creating chaos and exploiting the gaps.

There seems to be a general shift in the individual interpretation of the contact rules by both O and D teams. I think it makes for a faster, more spectacular, and perhaps ironically, fairer game. By comparison Brisbane (and Australian) ultimate seems quite slow and stuttering, with more disruptions and more disputes. And I just hate disputes.

DMB: Superb stuff Mat. Many thanks for sharing your keen insights into the game here and abroad, and for taking the time out of your day to drop by the Dojo bathhouse.

The Minor Premiers are...

2008-08-29T10:09:00.009+10:00

At the Annerley Junior Football Club last night it was the big showdown between the two top-of-the-table teams, DojoMojo and Slippry Bugs. Each team was eyeing the Minor Premiership and a theoretically easier semi-final match, and the sense of occasion was high! So, what happened when these two illustrious teams met under the bright lights of Field 1???

Dojo forfeited. Yep - it seems that all the talk about winning with six players last week left those kenshi with a long drive or a lonely heart (Dan B is reportedly wallowing in the depths of despair after his former "housemate" Matt ran off on his honyemoon with someone else) believing that they could stay home in front of the fire with the slippers on, safe in the knowledge that their teammates would triumph nonetheless...

But of course under the draconian rules our diabolical LD Jon has had chiselled into stone, a team that cannot put five players on the line by 7.30pm forfeits the game. Suggestions of using the ceremonial Dojo katana to slice Steve Hjelm in half (he could still hop faster than most can run, and could easily get by with just half a brain - some say he already does) were also considered to be against the Spirit of the Game, so with just the four of us cleated up we had to concede. Dave Watson arrived about 15 minutes later...

So that's that. Minor Premiers for BPL Season 2 2008 are Slippry, and Dojo plays its semifinal against Passion next week. Yes, that's the same team we rolled with six players last week, but watching them beat a full-strength Messy Bugs last night they looked an entirely different team. Still no more attractive in those faded pink shirts though.

Rounding up the regular season, placings are: 1 Slippry Bugs 2 DojoMojo 3 UQ Passion 4 Messy Bugs 5/6 UQ Lovers/Rawhide (not sure who won their game to decide the placings last night). Next week sees a 1v4 all-Bug semi and 2v3 Dojo v Passion. Will Dojo still be missing most of its key players? Will Passion be keen to regain some cred? Which Bug-team will the winner play in the gala Grand Final? If it's worth reading it'll be here on the DojoMojo Blog.

Oh yes - and Andy Lankowski's fan club really put in a big effort this week to give him 14 MVP votes, trumping Hjelmie's 12. So that leaves the season's in-house MVP table as such: Matt E (3.5), Stefan (2), Dave W (1), Mike (1), Andy L (1), Stephen C (0.5). With just two games to go at most, only Stefan could take it away from Eastburn, so would people please stop voting for Coopers... Due to the forfeit there's no MVP poll this week.

Waving the Gunbai with Johnny Mac

2008-08-25T10:32:00.004+10:00

Scholarly as ever, John McNaughton arrived at our Dojo "Sumo Showdown" over the weekend with textbooks in hand and could be seen between bouts busily memorising what appeared to be the notes from his elective subject in pre-Socratean sophistry. Not sure what that has to do with his course in Human Movement (or some such Phys-Ed pursuit), but those ancient Greeks did invent the Olympics after all...

And as if that preamble isn't obscure enough, once the winning Rikishi had been awarded we then got down to dissecting last week's game. Here's what John had to say:

DojoMojo Blog: John, as usual it's a privilege to have you join us here by the Dojo Dohyo. It's hard to believe that's really Dave Watson and Dan Blacklock wearing Mawashi and grappling each other, isn't it? Anyway - onto last week's game. When you looked to the other end of the field before the first point and saw just the six Dojo guys standing there, how did you expect the game to play out?

John McNaughton: The six were no slouches, most having played several Nationals, but I thought we should take the game comfortably. The Dojo didn't look very fired up, Passion had recently been talking about getting more fired up and playing better, and we had essentially our full roster present. I thought it should be a comfortable victory against a team that probably wouldn't fight hard if they started going down.

DMB: That's funny, because we've already admitted that we were thinking the same thing. But something strange happened and we quickly started turning the run of the game in our favour. A few points in, it seemed that the quick disc movement from the Dojo offence was actually rushing the numerically superior Passion D. Is this how you saw it?

JMcN: You were certainly rushing us, but I feel that our D positioning was quite average. Dojo has become excellent at taking short opportunities, maintaining possession, and looking to create flow generated by handlers, and our poor handler marking certainly didn't help us to defend this. I think your perception is true, but for analysis' sake, I would add that one of our D weaknesses (inexperienced handler defenders) played into your strength, allowing this to happen.

DMB: Sounds about right John. And then you tried something I don't think we at the Dojo have ever seen before - a team doing drills at halftime (admittedly doing drills anytime isn't really a key part of the Dojo Way). What were you trying to change about the way your guys were playing?

JMcN: Really? I think more teams should try it. We ran a very simple defensive drill, one on one, to try to teach people to play proper man on man defence. We'd been getting roasted open and under all game, so I was trying to get people to wake up and learn to cover a position. Unfortunately, it didn't help a lot - we came out with a couple of quick points (playing junk) and then didn't change after that.

DMB: Indeed. Perhaps you should also try our own patented email-warmup technique? At the very least no-one can say it doesn't work... Still, there was plenty of first-rate action on field, and it was a shame we couldn't get any video from the game. The Buzz Burwell / Dan Walls collision would have provided some excruciating viewing afterwards... Any other moments stand out as particularly memorable from the night?

JMcN: I actually missed that moment... I thought Dan's IO backhand huck, length of the field past a poaching lane defender, was one of the best throws I've seen this year. Sensational. A good D from Andy on a Buzz scoober that saved a goal, Dan Walls taking a couple of excellent catches under pressure, Matt E had some excellent throws (low percentage but accurate and completed).

DMB: Yep - we certainly got away with more than our share of low-percenters. It was also clearly evident to us that a fair degree of frustration was building in the Passion camp through the game, and Buzz Burwell, that purveyor or fine entomological anecdotes, had some interesting words to say in the post-game huddle which seemed to sum up the Passion sentiments quite effectively, if somewhat less than elegantly... Without giving everything away, what will you guys be changing next week to avoid having that happen again?

JMcN: I think our warm up (or lack thereof) is a problem. We've talked about it for the last few weeks, and haven't actually changed anything. Most people do some stationary throwing before a game, and that's it. We may institute a team warm-up, including both the physical and skills-based, and see if this brings results.

DMB: Well, with a born leader of immense charisma and magnetic manliness like you at the helm John, we've no doubt that Passion will be back playing your famously dangerous style of Ultimate very soon. Thanks for taking a few moments out from your studies to discuss the game with us. Sorry you also had to endure the unpleasant sight of Andy McLean getting a wedgie and a slap in the face from Lee O'Dwyer here at the Dojo Sumo Hall...

Story of the Season!

2008-08-22T11:30:00.009+10:00

Last night on Field 2 at AJFC, 6 DojoMojo players took to the field against 14 UQ Passion boys and won convincingly. Easy to write, not at all easy to do.

The final scoreline was 15-9, and despite being down two points early and playing savage-minus-one the whole time, we managed to take the half, see off an early second-half challenge from the men in pink (which brought the score to 8-8), and somehow find the legs & lungs to pull away and win by 6. And this against a team which features undoubtedly the two best throwers in Queensland and a fleet of top-shelf receivers.

How did we do it? Steve Hjelm admitted after the game that at the outset he would have been happy just to get more than the 2 points the 6-man Messy scored against us last week. He wasn't the only one who thought it might get ugly for the kenshi. But we went into the game realising that we couldn't hope for anyone else to turn up (Watto for instance was busy watching synchronised swimming in the Olympics) and resolved to play a very simple game involving lots of quick disc movement on offence and a zone D which aimed at first taking away the long throws and second clogging up the middle.

It probably wasn't until the halftime break that we realised that we were actually the better team on the night and could win if our legs & hearts could hold out. So the 6 of us gritted our teeth, generated blocks all over the field, forced Passion to make risky throws and didn't allow them to effectively set up any form of defensive structure. It was simple doggedness and commitment.

All sounds a bit serious for a Dojo story, doesn't it? But the truth is that it was one of those very rare moments when a team becomes completely, intuitively cohesive and plays with an intensity and fluency that they themselves find surprising. The game didn't quite turn into a descending array of information, but a threshold was definitely crossed, and it's an experience those involved will be able to draw on in the future when things get tight.

For this writer, it's impossible to make an MVP call between Dan Walls, Steve Pettit, Matt Eastburn, Steve Hjelm, Andy Lankowski and Stephen Cameron (a group henceforth known within the Dojo as "The Several Steve Subset") this week. Every player worked every position, zipped the disc short, sent it or pulled it down long and made the D plays stick. Nonetheless, our MVP poll is a tradition not to be broken so you'll find this week's on the right. Voting for multiple players is possible and very likely.

With any luck, we'll resume our usual light-hearted service with a ringside chat with John "The Cheese" McNaughton at our monthly Dojo sumo contest over the weekend. Perhaps we'll hear John's views on Buzz's call of the night in the post-game huddle...? Oh yes, and even though we had the video camera at the field last night, there was no-one to hold it so no film this week... The near-Homeric odyssey above will have to suffice this time.

And lastly, we've discovered that commenting for non-blogger types had been disabled here at the DojoMojo Blog, so those with something to say will be pleased to know that this situation has now been rectified and commenting is encouraged from one & all, anonymous or otherwise...

[PS - MVP standings updated again with Dave Watson taking out the honours last week, so it's: Matt E (3.5), Stefan (2), Dave W (1), Mike (1), Stephen C (0.5).]

It got Messy...

2008-08-15T16:12:00.012+10:00

For the second week in a row, DojoMojo used its new shirt-colour-change tactic to devastating effect, leading to a what must have been a BPL record-breaking blowout win of 15-2 (!) over an unfortunately short-handed MBB: Messy crew.

The Messy lads were missing their top guns, currently on assignment overseas representing Australia at the WUGC in Vancouver, and attending some sort of medical junket in Ireland. Reduced as they were to 6 players, Messy had no answer to the Dojo's unrelenting defence and patient offence (which produced only 3 or 4 turnovers all night).

But why just read about it when you can watch some actual footage and see for yourself? Big thanks especially to Mrs Dan Walls for holding the camera whilst under a blanket on the sideline (and for keeping the footage of Dan looking manly between points to a minimum...).

This first clip is from an early point in the match where a contested block was quickly followed by a simple throwaway, setting DojoMojo up with an early break-point opportunity that wasn't wasted:

Dave Watson managed to complete a spectacular thumb hammer goal (just off camera) to Hjelmie a few points later. Here he is making do with your run-of-the-mill, over-the-top scoober option:

And yes, that's Matt Eastburn and Wetnose busily diminishing the Spirit scores for both teams in the endzone. After that little venting session (unfortunate as it was) the prevalence of heavy, accidental/negligent contact from earlier in the game thankfully dried right up.

Messy had no option but to play zone defence all night, which, if there had been even the slightest breeze, might have generated a few more turnovers. But as it was, the Dojo handlers (yes - that really is Steve Hjelm in the back 3 for a while) were able to patiently dump & swing their way to the goal with cutters finding holes through the middle of the zone.

How about that pull just making it past the halfway line (not to mention the force-anywhere defence)? At least Dan wound up catching the goal...

The last point of the game was typical of all the others, with Dojo earning a turnover on D, then steadily taking the disc all the way downfield to score. Not spectacular, but it worked.

With any luck we'll track down Wetnose himself and invite him around in the next few days for a contemplative Shakuhachi recital beside our miniature waterfall and a chat about the game.

And of course the MVP Standings are now: Matt E (3.5), Stefan (2), Mike (1) and Stephen C (0.5). Stefan is away for the rest of the season, and with 4 games still to go we could still see the likes of Dan Walls or Dave Watson emerge from the shadows to steal the season MVP title. Vote for this week's MVP (voting for multiple players is just fine) in the poll to the right!

Roll the videotape!

2008-08-13T13:40:00.009+10:00

Well, the title of this post may allude to jurassic technology, but here at the DojoMojo Blog we're not about to hide out in our immaculately groomed gardens and carefully polished timber shoji-screened rooms pretending that Gen Y never happened (although most agree we'd all be better off without it...). Nope - we're embracing the magnificence of YouTube for the entertainment of all. Below is our first attempt at posting some video footage of Dojo action - shot last Thursday night during our stampeding of Rawhide. Will it work? What does "embed html" mean? Let's find out:

[It might be a bit naughty to edit posts once they're on the blog - who doesn't hate Greedo shooting first? - but it was noticed that the point below is in fact a "hack" point. For the uninitiated, this means that every Dojo player on the field handles the disc at least once before the goal is scored. Nice.]

And here is why Dave Watson won't be allowed near the Dojo video camera again any time soon:

Whippin' It Good

2008-08-12T10:22:00.006+10:00

It was an unmitigated delight to spend an evening at the Dojo's very own sushi bar with Jon Good last night, knocking back the unagi-don, yasai tempura and a big sukiyaki number. Whilst polishing off the last of our warm Otokayama sake, Jon was at his loquacious best as we recounted the events from last Thursday night. Here's how it went:

DojoMojo Blog: Jon, it's a delight to have you here at our brand new sushi bar. I can't believe how much grilled eel and warm sake a lean chap like yourself can put away. You truly are a man of many talents. But enough idle flattery - how about our game last week? What a turnaround from our previous "clash of the boutique teams" round! What happened, Jon?

Jon Good: I think the biggest factor was that Dojo seemed to have finetuned their email-based warm up, whereas Rawhide didn’t have a full line until the very start of the game. It’s a sign of our age range: too many baby and work related duties - I am one of the youngest players on the team!

DMB: Yes - many have conjectured that the team name "Rawhide" is derived from the sparseness of hair on the scalps of many of the players. Indeed - you sport the rawest hide of all, Jon! It's all a clever ruse, I'm sure, to make the younger teams take it easy against you until BLAM! - you layout right past them. Of course, these smoke-and-mirrors tricks were perfected by the Dojo ninja forebears hundreds of years ago. What did you think of our new pre-game psych-out strategy of lining up in white shirts, only to switch to black when "game on" was called?

JG: I don’t know what washing powder the kenshi use, but the brilliance of the white burned out my corneas; then switching to black rendered the whole team invisible to me. You were truly the silent assassins.

DMB: Excellent. But enough about us - how are Stu Ausin, Sean Flanagan and Joel Smith being punished during the week for leaving a team full of semi-rookies to fight it out against Dojo with just a few experienced hands for guidance? Oh yeah - and does Tim Ferguson still play for Rawhide??? Haven't seen him an a while...

JG: Stu, Flan, and Joel are all married and/or heavily hen-pecked, so the Rawhide collective rest safe in the knowledge that the women will do all the work for us on this front – similar to our cutting on Thursday night, where Beth seemed to be the only one doing the hard work. Ferg decided to opt out of this season: some may say that family prevented him from committing to the team; others may say that a wording change in the concessional league fees rule prevented him from only paying $15, claiming he was travelling from Airlie Beach each week. I think those who know our friendly capitalist know where I stand!

DMB: Hmmm - sounds like another Ferg-gate scandal brewing there. That man certainly has a bamboozling spreadsheet for every occasion... But it was good to see Stew McGoo adopting the position of wise old mentor for the newer guys. What is it about Stew that makes him the perfect man for this delicate job?

JG: As you know Stephen, McGoo was the main driving force behind Leo Baekeland inventing plastic back in 1905: McGoo had already been working on tactics in anticipation of the sport finally being invented by those New Jersey school kids decades later. You simply can’t buy that level of experience. Also, without JDR, Joel, and Ferg there on Thursday night, there were no other people to talk over during timeouts – a rarity for Rawhide.

DMB: Ahh yes - if only we feeble-minded non-fluid-dynamicists could understand a word Dr McGoo was saying we would all see the game as it truly is, just a descending array of numbers... But anyway, my last question, and it's a critical one for all those following this BPL season, is how is Rawhide going to win back the growing support it was finding on the Brisbane Ultimate Blog tipping competition?

JG: As the regular season draws to a close, those needing to gain ground on the tipping leaders may be forced to back the underdog. I am also thinking of bringing in a rule for next season involving some kind of collective age handicap – this will make us much more competitive in the tipping competition!

DMB: Well, some underdog-backing would certainly mix things up a bit, and amazingly Pete Allen managed to get one tip right (out of 6 from the past two rounds) when his Lovers team somehow managed to roll Passion last week. John McNaughton once again has some serious explaining to do...

Anyway, thanks again Jon for sparing us some of your time and pithy comments here at the DojoMojo Blog.

Keep them doggies movin' Rawhide!

2008-08-11T15:50:00.006+10:00

It was a case of move 'em on, head 'em up, set 'em out and ride 'em in at AJFC Field 2 last Thursday night, when the Dojo "roped, threw & branded" an under-strength Rawhide crew.

The Rawhide boys sorely missed playmakers Stu Austin and Sean Flanagan (despite the best efforts of stalwarts Jon Good & Shawn Robb), struggling to put solid points together on offence and then finding the new Dojo Way of jealously holding the disc on offence too much to rope in...

As ever with matchups between these two so-called "boutique teams", the spirit was high with many high-fives shared between opponents for quality play and the couple of contentious foul calls resolved without incident. We've also captured some video of the game, so once we work out how to use the technology we'll have some key points posted right here for the amusement of all.

Anyway, we all know Rawhide can play much better than this and we're looking forward to a much rougher ride against them next time. By why wait until then to have a chat over some specialty-of-the-dojo unagi-don and miso with Rawhide impresario and BPL boss-man Jon Good? Check back shortly to read what he has to say about Joel Smith's cooking and Tim Ferguson's party-planning expertise...

Oh yes, and Matt Eastburn took out the MVP again for our game vs. UQ Lovers, so that leaves him out in front of the standings (3), ahead of Stefan (2) and Mike (1). He is an electrical engineer, so it's only natural that he knows how to rig these votes... This week's poll on the right.

Look how far they've come...

2008-08-04T17:24:00.010+10:00

Even though he still hasn't dropped by the Dojo kendo hall for a nice chat, Dave Watson AKA the Golden Boy of Queensland Ultimate has managed to find the time to dig through his immense photographic archives to track down some of the earliest recorded images of some current (and not-so-current) Dojo stars.

We're going back to the days of UQ's Field 7 being the solitary home of Brisbane ultimate circa early 2000's. See if you can recognise a blonde-headed, Danish-descended kenshi with a funny surname in this image:

Yes, that's right - it's a much younger (and Dave claims faster) Steve Hjelm. Looking good Hjelmie, and happy to keep a low profile looking slightly shifty in the back row as usual. But speaking of shifty, have a look at Sean Flanagan second from the right in the back row (behind Jay Sansness of whom more shortly). There's something very "Today Tonight" about his look back then, wouldn't you agree? Also looking happy in the front left is Helen Spurling who stopped smiling (and playing) only a year or so after this photo was taken and pretty much immediately after she was struck in the sternum at point-blank range by a Buzz Burwell huck. Ouch.

The question here is not why Jay Sansness is in every team photo, but who that mysterious and goofy-happy looking Dojo-er is at the right-hand rear. And the answer is Dan Blacklock. You'd think that after all these years he'd have stopped living in a share house with other frisbee players, but no - not Dan.

Sansness again. But of greater note is that this image not only contains every male McNaughton that's ever thrown a frisbee but it also contains a younger, happier Andy McLean. That's him with the question mark over his head to the right hand side. Note that he's showing a lot of big hair promise even in these early days. Also, Dave has noted that the individual to the front left of the photo is in fact a much younger-looking Matt Eastburn. Hasn't Matt changed.

Ever the frisbee historian, Dave leads us to believe that this particular winter league, fought out on the cold, dark, pre-desertified UQ fields, was won by a team chock full of Dojo talent...

Like Ninjas in the Night

2008-08-01T10:33:00.002+10:00

A pared-down, GC-free Dojo hit squad quickly took apart the fresh, fast, but highly inexperienced group of UQ Lovers on the suitably dark AJFC Field 3 last night. The UQ lads played with all the enthusiasm and rapid running one would expect from a bunch of boys who are smack in the middle of Zoo Magazine's target market, but it wasn't enough to get close to the newly-clinical Dojo Way.

An early tussle saw plenty of quick UQ popping through the Dojo fence, but a switch to our patented "Wax-on Wax-off" D saw the flow of UQ goals stop dead. From there it was just a matter of completing passes on O and baiting throws on D to see Dojo walk away with an easy 15-6 win.

UQ were very much missing the Vancouver-bound Al Don, as well as the experienced hands and leaping legs of Chris Cunliffe (will he ever turn up?), leaving just Pete Allen, not exactly a veteran himself, to run the show and whip the rookies into shape. And that's way too much to ask for with BPL as competitive as it now is.

So, next week we're fronting up against Rawhide, a team which dealt with the old huck-happy Dojo ways in brutal style last time round. It seems they lost out to Messy Bugs last night though, and with all that disciplined car-polishing the Dojo lads have been doing of late we're expecting a much different outcome this time round.

This week's MVP poll is on the right, as usual, with the standings now at Matt E (2), Stefan (2) and Mike (1). It's going to be tough this week as this writer can't think of a single player not deserving of recognition.

Mate against Mate, State against State

2008-07-29T10:49:00.005+10:00

Halibut is officially over for another year, with the trophy again being snaffled by a bunch of southern mercenaries despite the best efforts of the top local outfits.

But who cares about a bunch of blow-ins (with the fiendish John McNaughton shamefully tagging along as a gun for hire) nicking the prize? It's not by accident that the trophy is WAY too big to be accepted as carry-on luggage. It can and will never leave Brisbane.

No - the real interest in this year's Halibut was the mini-tournament within the main event between the Dojo players scattered across the various teams. Coming in at fourth place ("stone motherless last" seems just a bit nasty) was Dan B with his Mellow Yellow outfit (finished 8th overall). At third is Coopers & Dom with the still inexplicably named iCarrot (finished 5th overall), and runners-up are the big GC group of Stefan, Mike, Matt, Santiago, Phil, Lee (AKA McLovin) and Andy McL with their team the Slamtown Flatball Club (3rd overall). And of course that leaves the self-gratifying author of this blog at the top of the table in his efforts with Mind the Gap, a team composed largely of, well, let's say "mature" players who showed that having a mobile creche on the sideline (and the Mums & Dads on the field) is no obstacle to making the final in a serious tournament (eventually finishing 2nd overall, losing the final 15-10, as I recall).

Not sure who won the party (competitive partying has always mystified this writer), but the Slamtown lads & lasses looked the goods on Saturday afternoon.

Back to BPL rounds as usual this week if the weather stays clear and bitterly cold (for Brisbane). Dojo are hot favourites to repeat their opening-round win over UQ Lovers and Dr Phil Stocks is hot favourite in the least-likely-to-turn-up stakes. Stay tuned.

Fields are wet but cleats stay dry

2008-07-24T13:03:00.002+10:00

It's official - our omnipotent LD Jon Good has canned tonight's round of BPL, so we've updated our listing of this season's rounds (in the sidebar to the right) accordingly...

The disappointment of missing out on a game tonight is somewhat mitigated by the fact that most Dojo kenshi, and our ultimate brothers & sisters from all over the eastern seaboard, will be hitting the fields at Kalinga Park over the weekend for the annual Halibut tournament. Our GC contingent (Stef, Mike, Lee, Santiago, Matt, Phil, + ringin Andy McL) will be featuring with the unusually named (even for a frisbee team) Slamtown Flatball Club, whilst others (Coopers, Dom) are playing with iCarrot (I haven't asked), Dan B is joining Mellow Yellow, and Stephen C is back again with Mind the Gap.

Oh yes - and Matt E took out our MVP poll for Round 4 vs Slippry Bugs, so that leaves the standings at Stefan (2), Matt E (1), Mike (1).

Mud Sticks But Slippry Slips

2008-07-18T10:41:00.005+10:00

Everything the Dojo players have been working on over the past few weeks finally came together on the muddy AJFC field last night. And by "working on" we mean simply receiving (and perhaps reading) email tirade after tirade from Sensei C. Just goes to show that emailing is every bit as good as real training.

Even Stefan got the message after an early rush-of-blood throwaway, so we must be doing something right.

Anyway, the short story is that a disciplined and determined Dojo rolled through last night's game against Slippry Bugs to win 15-6. Some might say that those two "d" words aren't really in keeping with the Dojo Way, but times change and clearly natural charm and stunning talent are no longer enough to stay at the top of what has often been described as Australia's best frisbee league.

Short completions, rapid resets and a variety of impenetrable zone D's characterised the Dojo approach to last night's game and it really stuck. A few long bombs were of course thrown in just to keep the Slippry D guessing, including one pure magic arcing huck from Matt Eastburn to an apparently levitating Steve Hjelm. If only Dom had his video camera handy for that one.

We're expecting a visit from the Slippry leadership to the Dojo bathhouse sometime later today (we're always happy to share our post-game recovery facilities), so expect to see that conversation posted in the next few days. There's also the latest MVP poll for your voting pleasure to the right - vote for as many players as you think deserved it!

And BTW - current MVP standings are Stefan (2) and Mike (1).