You Can't Always Get What You Want

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.

Natural Enemies

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.

Keep an Eye Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

A&B voting is back on the right!

Now THAT was Old School

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!

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.

It's Japanese for "Rice"

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?

Whippin' It Good

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!

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...

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...