Memories...

If you are lucky, or depending on your point of view unlucky, you will have had a chance to see most of the pictures that I took while I was in Australia. Anyone who knows me knows that I like to use my camera. While on my vacation I took 12 rolls of film (I’m old school) and we took 337 pictures on Courtney’s digital camera. That only adds up to over 600 pictures. Sure, a lot of the pictures we took are pretty much the same thing but that would only account for maybe ten percent of the pictures and besides, the only way you would find the duplicates would be by looking at every picture anyway so if you want to see the pictures make sure you have some extra time.

Fortunately for you readers I won’t be posting all of my pictures on this blog. Once I get my act together I’ll try to post all my pictures on some photo site but for the moment that seems like a daunting task. Right now I’m just going to share with you my favourite picture of the 288 that I took. I can’t even tell you what about it makes it my favourite, it just is. Enjoy.

DF

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Finally some pictures from Australia...

Rottnest Island. The Indian Ocean looks so nice.

Me getting tackled by a player from Chilly

On the rocks of Mrs Macquaries Point, the Opera House in the background.

A view of the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains

Mark and I tasting wine at the Brokenwood Winery. Their wine was very good.

Walking through the huge dunes near Anna Bay

A cuddly Koala at the Blackbutt Reserve.

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Quick Recap

Here’s my quick little summary of what went right, what went wrong and why we finished were we did.

The fields were perfect. Along with the fields in Finland in 2004, these are the best fields I’ve ever played on. Anyone who complains about the fields having a negative affect on their game is looking for excuses, simple as that.

The weather was interesting. It was sunny almost all week, except for a 5 minute stretch of rain when we played Fakulti for the second time. From what everyone said about Australia, I thought that the sun would be a major factor but it wasn’t as overbearing as I expected. The tournament was very good about providing protection from the sun so I didn’t sunburn once while I was down there. The temperature was comfortable, varying between 25-32 degrees but there was very little humidity so it was very manageable. I expected the combination of the heat and the sun to be overbearing but it really wasn’t. The one consistent weather factor that affected play was the wind. I can’t say exactly how it compared to the wind in Hawaii but I think on average it was similar, if not stronger. This ended up being a factor for us when you consider that we aren’t the most skilled team out there.

The tournament was guaranteed to be weird from the get go because there were 21 teams. There is no simple way to do brackets with such an odd number of teams. I think the best solution would have been a ten team pool and an eleven team pool playing round robin games and then taking the top four teams from each pool and moving into quarters, semis and finals. The tournament chose four pools of four teams and one pool of five with the top two teams in each pool moving on and everyone else dropping down with no chance of crossing back up. I think it was a ridiculous format. Some of the pools had two clear cut dominant teams but some pools had three strong teams and one of those teams was going to get screwed; Deathstar had to deal with Fire of London and Buzz Bullets in their pool and Magon was pretty much eliminated after their first game when they lost to us.

The format also meant that one pool played four games in two days and everyone else only played three. Not a big deal you say, I beg to differ. We had to play Clapham and Tibets, two hard running games, the day before going into the power pools while Sub-Zero only had to play Too Bad. That gave 16 man Sub-Zero the chance to recuperate and get back into the tournament after having a tough first day and put us in a position where we went into the power pools more worn down than anyone else. What followed was our flattest day of the tournament as we were completely exhausted. We lost two games and it put us behind the eight-ball. Anyway, I thought it was a stupid format as it made the original seeding far too important.

We were held back by our lack of skill in the wind, lack of fitness and less than ideal team cohesion. Don’t get me wrong we have some super-skilled players on our team and that skill carried us past many teams in the tournament… but this is World’s and we play against some of the best players in the World and we weren’t as skilled as the top teams. Buzz Bullets had a ridiculous amount of skill and that carried them past us in the windy conditions… that and the way they cheat by pretending to not understand English. At the end of the week we finished behind a bunch of teams that were plain and simple more skilled than we were; overall they had crisper throws, better catching ability, more confidence in their throws, etc.. Our skill let us down in zone offense. Normally we do well against zones and this week we pretty much sucked. Everyone got too tight around the disc allowing the defense to clamp down tighter on us and it was just a bad scene, ‘nuff said. The fitness issue is tough because you never know that you aren’t in good enough shape until you bonk. And bonk we did after the Clapham game. I guess we can debate whether we should have thrown in the towel or whether it was worth it to come back and win but regardless, the following day we didn’t have the fitness to beat a Thong team that didn’t deserve to win and a Fakulti team that only won because we didn’t have the legs to stop their offense. We needed to be in better shape to go deeper in the tournament and we just weren’t. Of all the places to screw up that is probably the most frustrating. As for the team cohesion issue it wasn’t a huge issue but when you throw a bunch of new guys in the mix it just isn’t going to be as clean as with guys you’ve been playing with for multiple years. We did great and everyone got along and had a good time, which is important, but it’s tough to be a great team when you’re spending the week building your team. I think we did as well as could be expected with respect to this but the reality is that it isn’t good enough when you play against a bunch of guys who practice together every single day for the past few years.

Our athleticism, ignorance of reality and our enthusiasm carried us through the tournament. We had speed to burn and that helped us when we were turning the disc over to no end. Against Magon we kept getting D block after D block to keep us in the game while on offense we kept turning the disc back over. If it wasn’t for our sheer speed and athleticism we would have lost that game. Same for the Clapham game; we just out ran the Brits in the second half. Ignorance truly is bliss when you are down 9-5 to Clapham. We just kept playing and got back into a game that we had no business being in, let alone winning.

We dropped far too many discs and threw away far too many passes to finish any higher than we did. Regardless of strategy strengths or weaknesses, it ultimately comes down to catching and throwing and we failed to do that as well as we should have. I personally had a poor game against Thong. I had one stupid turnover that came as a result of a brain fart but they beat us by only one point. Had I not made that mistake we might have won. At least I don’t feel as bad a Frank who dropped an easy score because he tried to catch it with one hand instead of two. We just need to be able to bring a higher level of focus so that we don’t make mistakes like that anymore. (And don’t think that I’m blaming Frank for that loss either, it was just a memorable drop. Aside from that Frank played great). Read more!

If it's Monday Morning I must be in....

Perth... or Sydney... or San Francisco.... or back home.

I'm back home now. My brain has no idea what time it is supposed to feel like so getting back into a normal sleep schedule might not be so tough... I hope. The stangest thing about the flight home is that, time wise, we arrived in San Francisco before we left Sydney. The vagaries of the date line.

Probably the best thing that happened to me was the ridiculously loud party in our condo that prevented me from falling asleep before I has to leave Perth on Sunday morning. I don't know how many people where there but they all decided to sing "Living on a Prayer" and other classics at the top of their lungs while jumping up and down on the floor right above my bedroom. They finally all left at some random hour but by then the damage was done and sleep was out of the question since we had to wake up at 4:00am to go catch our flight. I did take one final glance at the upstairs area before I left and the beautiful condo that we arrived at a week earlier had been reduced to a disaster zone thanks to the party. I just hope the fools who decided to host the party had the decency to clean up the place before we turned it back over to the owners. For the record I refuse to pay for any clean up costs or damage that may have been incurred.

The funniest part of the party was bumping into Sam Kennedy at 4:15am as we were pulling out of the parking lot and he was just walking up the driveway. Now wasn't that a party...

Here are my comments on the men's final. We didn't watch any of the other ones because we wanted to surf the Indian Ocean instead (more on that later). Buzz Bullets vs. Thong. Mark predicted a score of 15-13 for "Fuzz Mullets". I said it would end up 17-12. I should have gone with the larger margin that my gut was telling me. We knew that the Buzz Bullets were good because they killed us and rightly so. They were by far the best team that we played; they were extremely skilled, patient, clinical, etc.. Thong didn't impress me that much. Everyone that I talked to who played against Thong couldn't figure out how they made it to the final. I stand by my opinion that Thong lucked out into the final.

The final started out with Buzz taking the first three points. The rout was on. Thong managed to score a couple to make it 5-2 Buzz but Thong did not look good. The final indication that Thong just wasn't going to be able to make a game of it was when Pottsy from Thong threw a hammer 20 yards out of bounds in the face of the Buzz zone. It looked like Buzz started putting in their second and third string players after half which made the score look slightly more respectable at 17-8. But Buzz Bullets ran away it, it wasn't even close. Even though Thong was on average much taller than the Buzz Bullets, the speed and athleticism of the Buzz players more than negated any height advantage the Aussies might have had.

Mark, Dolan and I still can't figure out the zone that the Bullets were using by did it ever work. No one was running hard in the zone, the mark was completely unconcerned with chasing the disc too fast, but Thong could not move through it. It looked like a lazy 1-3-3 zone mixed with a bit of FSU. The Bullets obviously had the zone dialed in because there were virtually no holes for Thong to move through (even we had more luck going through that zone). The Bullets were in no rush to force anything and were quite happy to chase the disc across the field because it wasn't going upfield at all. I guess they didn't need to force anything because after a while they knew that someone would try something stupid like throwing a hammer into the crowd.

Congratulations to Buzz for killing everyone they played. They were the class of the field and deserve to be the World Champions. Any and all American/Canadian teams that claim that there should be an asterisk next to the Buzz Bullets win because the "top" American/Canadian teams weren't in Perth can just stop right now. The Buzz Bullets deserve the title and even had the so called "top" teams like Furious and Sockeye been there, I'm not sure that they would have fared much better against the Buzz Bullets.

Tomorrow I'll see if I can find the time to recap our tournament; what we could have done better, worse or what went just right.

DF Read more!

Links to some pictures

I never got around to uploading any pictures due to our little technical issues in Perth. Dolan put a bunch of his pictures on-line so here is the link to them. Enjoy.

http://www.imagesensation.com/dolan/australia/

DF Read more!

And So it Ends...

Sorry for the lack of posts. We are having some technical difficulties with our internet connection in that it crapped out. That unfortunately precluded me from giving as many updates as I had hoped.

So in a nutshell we finished 8th. We made it through the power pool with one win and a pile of losses. That set us up with a meeting with Buzz Bullets in the quarters. We started that game out well taking the first point. Buzz then went on a 12 point run and ended up winning 17-5. They are essentially a proffessional ultimate team in that they are pretty much fully sponsored by a Japanese company called Bunka Shutter. All their players work for the company and they practice every day. All that to say that they are very, very good. That combined with tough, windy conditions made a win for us all but impossible. On a personal note I was ready for those little guys and played well; the team, not so much.

Then we had to play Fakulti again in the consolation bracket. We were leading, I think, but then blew it when they started to play zone on us. Again the wind was too much for us to deal with and we lost. As a team we just aren't at the level that some of these teams are at in tough conditions like wind. Give us fair weather and we can beat anybody.

That set us up for our 7/8 game against Double Wide. We started out slowly against them but came back in a big way to tie the game at 12-12. It was our fourth game of the week that went to double-game point. Unfortunately we ended up losing this one as well leaving us in eighth place.

We played well some times and we played badly sometimes but all in all I think it was a pretty good week. We showed that we could play with anybody (except Buzz Bullets but they killed everyone). We can take a few big wins home with us and hopefully build on that.

In the end Buzz Bullets won the final over Thong 17-8. No one is sure how Thong made it all the way there but they did... and we should have beat them but we didn't. Funny thing is that everyone I talked to who lost to Thong says that they should have beat them but didn't. So either Thong lucked out and got everybody's "bad" game or they really are that good but nobody say it coming. Personally I think they lucked out.

So now It's time for me to go to bed and spend my last night in Perth. Problem is there seems to be a raging party in our Condo so we'll see how that goes. The word circulating at the fields today was that "Mephisto is hosting a party". I don't know how that got started but as more and more people show up at our door I'm starting to get a bit worried that it might get a bit out of control.

Time to rest my sore muscles with some sleep now... I spent most of today getting worked by the waves while surfing. Some of the waves were taller than I am and I'm a much worse surfer than I would like to be. It was good fun anyway.

I'll recap everything when I get back; I'll tell you who played well, etc. and go into more details once I have a reliable internet connection.

DF Read more!

made it to the quarters....the hard way

After going 4-0 in the opening pool, Mephisto moved into one of the two power pools, with half of the top 10 teams. (I can't remember what Dan wrote in the last post and i don't feel like checking, so if you've read this already, please move on to the next paragraph). Their pool consisted of Thong (AUS), Faculty (AUS), Chilli (AUS), Fire of London (UK) and Mephisto. The other pool had Buzz Bullets, DoubleWide, Subzero, Clapham, and another team that I don't know.

Anyway, Mephisto started out Day 3 against Thong. (btw, Thong is an Australian flip flop, not the underwear). I wasn't there, so I don't have the details, but word is that they had a somewhat comfortable lead, but Thong came back to tie it up and Mephisto lost on double game point. For our non-ultimate readers, this means they lost by 1. That afternoon they came up againt Faculty and my source says that they came out flat and never quite got into the game. They lost by a bunch.

Day 4 started with more of the same - Australia and a loss. They played Chilli, the Melbourne team who were incredibly tall, fast and athletic. Mephisto was down 6-2 when i showed up and brought it back to 6-5. A couple of quick turnovers let Chilli pull away again and Mephisto never managed to catch up. Chilli won by 6 or so.

This led to the most important game of the tournament so far. Fire of London was also winless in the power pool, and the winner of this match up would head to the quarterfinals, while the loser would be bumped down to the 9-16 bracket. Mephisto got off to the same start that they have pretty much every game...down 2 points early. However, they made a quick comeback and led by 3 for the better part of the first half. In the second half it Fire looked like they were going to make a push to catch up, but Mephisto started to pull away and didn't look back. Mephisto by about 6.

For anyone interested in other Canadian teams - during the Fire of London game, Camelot was playing Dischords in the game to stay in the top 16. They were playing on the "upper" fields, which meant it was both windier and the wind created upwind/downwind points instead of the crosswinds that the boys were dealing with. I watched that game until it was 6-6, but decided that it wasn't going to be that exciting due to the windy conditions before heading down to the boys' field. I would be proven wrong though, as Camelot took a 2 point lead but then ended up losing 15-9, putting Dischord in the top 16.

Mephisto is currently about 30 minutes away from start time of their quarterfinal. They drew Buzz Bullets of Japan, who earned the number one seed of the other pool, winning all of their games. I believe that they are the only undefeated open team left in the tournament. hopefully Mephisto can use their height mismatches to their advantage and stop the quickness and precision of the Japanese, but it's going to be a tough game for sure.

Someone will post the outcome of today later! (our today - meaning Canada's tomorrow)

Courtney Read more!

Clapham, Schlapham....

So what do you do after you give Clapham a 9-5 lead at half....

...well you go out and win the game on double game point!!!! We are now 2-0 this tournament on double game point. We clawed back to take the lead on Clapham 12-11 and then traded points to 14-13. This was a huge character win for us... HUGE!

The best part is that we played our whole roster and they played only 10-12 of their guys. There were some huge layout blocks blocks by Paul Sue and Garvin that really helped turn the tide in our favour. Dolan was Mr. Assist as he kept pumping out big throws to Sam and Ben in the endzone.

Clapham, from the colonial town of London, England, was ranked first in our pool and 5th overall so we stole their rank. We move on into a powerpool with Thong and Fakulti, both from Sydney, Australia and two other teams that I don't know yet from either Buzz Bullets, Chilly, Fire of London or Nomadic Tribe.

Time for dinner and a shower... and maybe I'll permit myself one celebratory Victoria Bitter... but no more because we have still accomplished nothing yet.

DF Read more!

Another W in the bag

Just got back from our Monday morning game. I love how it is 10:50am on Monday here but you're all watching Sunday Night Football back home.

We beat Tibets this morning 17-9. They are a young team from Japan. They were really fun to play against, partly because we beat them, but mostly because they were just a really fun bunch of guys who speak no English. The reason we won was because their average height was about 5'3" and our average height is about 6'. Sam just arrived in Perth yesterday and he showed no signs of jet lag as he dominated the little guys with ease. They just couldn't deal with our hucks while our shorter guys did well to stick with their short guys and shut down their handler iso game. The team is really starting to come together now.

Tonight is the big game against Clapham. I hope that Clapham beats Magon today because that will guarantee that Clapham and Mephisto move on. If Magon upsets Clapham that will create a possible mess at the top.

DF Read more!

2-0

We beat Redbacks this afternoon 17-2. Nothing really to say about them; we were decent, they were not. 2-0 after day 1. Our big day is tomorrow. We need to beat Tibets in the morning to guarantee that we move on to the next round. After that we get to have fun in the showcase game of the day against Clapham from Great Britain.

I'll try to post some pictures before I fall asleep tonight.

DF Read more!

And They're Out of the Gate...

The weather in Perth is beautiful today. It must be in the mid twenties, dry and sunny right now. It's a perfect day to start the tournament. I guess officially the tournament started yesterday with the opening ceremonies and the first game. For anyone who cares Team Fisher Price from Vancouver barely beat the home team Sublime by a score of 16-14. We didn't watch most of that game as we were off practicing...

...and a lot of help that did us today in our first game. We are off to a flying... no make that a running... no, a stumbling start. Don't fret too much because we won. We beat the New Zealand team Magon by a score of 15-14.

They took the first 3 points of the game as we were showing a lot of rust with our decisions. After being behind 5-2 we tied it up at 5 only to let them pull away again. They took half 9-8 after we crawled back a bit. They took the first point after half to go up 10-8 but then we went on a bit of run to go up 12-11. We traded points the rest of the way and won 15-14.

We did everything in our power to try to hand the game to them. We had no trouble getting open but we kept throwing to their poaches, overthrowing hucks, and just plain playing like poo. We cleaned it up just long enough to win the game.

On the plus side we did work through a lot of issues that we needed to work through and I attribute a lot of the rust to us not having an opportunity to play real ultimate for a few months. Time to go play the Redbacks. Hopefully this will be easier.

How Shaggy won MVP and took the All-Blacks scarf that Magon gave away as a prize is beyond me as I was clearly the best player out there and deserved that prize...

DF

This is now Courtney posting - I think that it's significant to note that when the girls showed up to the game, the score was 5-2, which is right when they started to turn things around. Coincidence? unlikely... Read more!

Death From the Right

No, no one died... but that is where "death" comes from on the streets in Australia. Your first thought when you step out into the street to cross is to look to the left. Of course down under you'll never see anyone coming from the left, they all come from the right. It's a bit tough trying to change your instincts... especially when everything that you have learned about the rules of the road will get you killed here. You can tell who the Canadians are because they cross the streets slowly.

So we did the Hunter Valley wineries on the 8th. It is spectacular up there. I thought it was nicer than the Sonoma Valley. We went to Tyrrel's, Hungerford Hill, Brokenwood, Peppertree, Tamburlaine and Lindemans. Tyrrel's, Brokenwood, Peppertree and Tamburlaine were all really nice, Lindemans was a bit too big and commercial while Hungerford Hill was pretty much crap. My top three wines were Tyrrel's 2005 Lost Block Unwooded Chardonnay, Tambulaine's 2003 (?) Semillon and the Brokenwood 2005 Cricket Pitch (I forget what blend it was exactly but I have notes somewhere). Mark did indeed go too hard, Dolan did get dragged into it and Courtney had more wine then either of them with a lot less whine.

The following day Courtney and I dropped Mark and Dolan off at the airport and went up to the Blue Mountains. It is really spectacular up there. It is pretty much big hills with huge cliffs and gum-tree forests as far as the eye can see. We did an amazing walk under some cliffs at Wentworth Falls and we walked down the Giant Stairway at the Three Sisters. We didn't realize it at the time but the stairs go 300 meters down the cliff wall to the valley floor. I'll post some pics soon to show you how beautiful it is out there. Plus the best part is that at the pub two pints of beer only cost $6.00.

Yesterday we were in Sydney. It ia a gorgeus city. The botanical gardens are unreal. They are full of all these exotic plants and birds plus you get a view across a small inlet of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It's an definite must see. If you've never been to Sydney, it is worth the trip just to see that. We also walked around a few other places and took a harbour cruise. We randomly bumped into Eric, Bago, J-S, Kiki and M-E while we were having lunch in the Rocks which was a bit weird but fun. Again, I'll post pics soon.

I'm now in Perth. Qantas is the best airline ever, I was so pampered and I was still in Economy. The North American airlines can learn a lot from them.

Today I'm going to meet up with Mark and we are going to figure out our game plan for the tournament. Then we have opening ceremonies. I'm running out of time on the computer connection I have so I need to post now. I'll post some more later tonight.

DF Read more!

Report From Day Something or Another

The good news is that my luggage decided that it wanted to vacation with me in Australia after all. It arrived in Newcastle on the evening of the 6th. Not long enough for me to start worrying about what I was going to do for new underwear (I packed some extras in my carry-on) but long enough for me to start figuring out the cost of replacing everything that I had packed... it wasn't a pretty number but thankfully it is a moot point.

So Newcastle is a spectacular place. I'm sure Australians would try to tell me that it is a dingy harbour town but I would have to disagree. The area around here is pretty spectacular. Once we get some pictures on Dolan's computer I'll try posting some to the blog. In the meantime I'll just tell you the places we've been.

On the 6th we went to the Blackbutt Reserve to see some local animals; koalas, wombats, all sorts of 'roos and wallabies emus and a variety of other things. I tried to scare a Kookaberra (I have no clue how to spell it) into flight so Mark could take a picture of it but it just stared me down... it was quite intimidating for a creature that's about as big as a size 14 shoe. And did I mention that Koalas are really cute. I'm still trying to figure out how I can smuggle one back to Canada.

Yeserday we went up to the Port Stephens area. We went for a walk in the dunes and. It is pretty much a 1 km wide by 50 km long stretch of the Sahara along the coast that goes from Newcastle north. It's more like a coastal desert than 'dunes'. It was quite spectacular.

Today we are going up into the Hunter Valley to go try some wines. Smart money says Shaggy gets drunk, then intimidates Dolan into trying to keep up but both of them lose to Courtney who will drink more than them but still be sober by the end of it. As the driver I shouldn't drink but I'm debating doing so because I figure it might make driving on the wrong side of the road feel more natural.

Since I got on the topic of driving I feel like I should mention something about it. It's just weird driving on the wrong... sorry, opposite side of the road. It's getting more comfortable but it just seems so wrong. It might be better if I had a cool can't-get-it-in-North-America car like the Ford Falcon. The easiest way to describe them is that they look like a modern El Camino.

We came down here for an ultimate tournament and that does remain our focus throughout all of this. We have been very good about working out everyday in order to be at our peak come game time.

More later.

DF Read more!

Hello From Australia

So we made it to Australia in one piece. It was a long process but we are here. Sleeping for about nine of the fourteen hours that it took to get from LA to Sydney helped a lot but the jet lag still hit pretty hard. After one good night of sleep I think that I'm over the jet lag, we'll see tomorrow.

The one problem is that by tomorrow I will have run out of clean clothes already. It's a good thing that I packed some clothes, my jerseys and my cleats in my carry-on because my luggage seems to have decided it wants to go on it's own vacation. Hopefully it shows up soon... correction, hopefully it just shows up. I'm not going to worry about it too much right now because I refuse to let that ruin my vacation. It will be hard to keep that mindset going if my luggage doesn't resurface but I'll worry about that later.

Australia is very pretty... or at least the small part of it that I've seen so far. Courtney, Mark, Dolan and myself made it up to Newcastle about three or four hours after arriving in Sydney. We met up with Chris Warris after having a nice lunch and a few drinkns. He took us on a quick tour of Newcastle. Yesterday remains a bit of a blur as the jet lag had me worn down by 5:00pm but I'm sure it will all come back to me later.

Dan Read more!

We're number 6!

I don't know what to make of it but it looks like we will be ranked sixth going into World's. The teams ahead of us are Chilly (Aus), Sub-Zero, Doublewide (US), Buzz Bullets (Jap) and Clapham (Eng). I don't know where they come up with the rankings but I can't begin to try to predict whether we should beat our seeding or not. That's the beauty of World's, you just don't know how you stack up against the other teams so I could see us winning the tournament just as easily as I could see us finishing near the bottom.

Now don't get me wrong, I have every intention of having Mephisto power to a strong finish. I want us to beat our seed but we have no way of knowing how strong some of the other teams will be relative to us. Every team will have different styles of play and it will be interesting how we cope with them and how they cope with us. For instance I'm betting that the Japanese teams will have trouble with our height and deep game but on the flip side we will have trouble dealing with their handler skill and quickness. Another thing that will make a difference in the course of the week is how deep some teams will be. 6/7 days of tough ultimate will exhaust players who play too many points. I don't care how good a team's top player is, after six days of playing 3/4 of his team's points, that dude won't be able to function at 100%. Teams that will dominate are teams that can manage the fitness of their strongest players and to do that you need your depth players to get you to the last two days with a lot of wins.

Another factor in a long tournament like World's is injuries. In 2002 we showed up with 23 guys and by the end of the week we had lost 10 guys to injury. Players will get injured, the teams that succeed are the teams that will deal with those hiccups better than the others. I'm hoping that we don't have the same injury nightmare that we experienced in Hawaii but you never know.

Now we just need to wait for the schedule to come out to see which teams we get to play.

DF Read more!

First Post

So my flight to Australia leaves far too soon. November 3 to be specific. The fact that I’ll have a mere 12 or so inches of leg room for the 20+ hours of flying is a little disconcerting but I’m sure the person in the seat ahead of me will be considerate enough to not recline their seat into my knees.

I’ll try to post in the days before World’s start on November 11 but who knows how much time I’ll have for that… plus who knows how much you care about reading about me hugging koalas, getting pummeled by the surf and trying to avoid all sorts of poisonous creatures.

But once the tournament starts be sure to tune in for all the latest highlights. I’ll post all the scores and juicy details from Mephisto’s games, like how many times Angus swore in French… oh wait, that’s not our problem down there. I’ll even try to give scores from other games and, shudder, even other divisions but I’m sure there will be better sites out there just for checking up on scores.

Time to pack my fancy new luggage and pray that I don’t forget anything vital behind… “don’t forget the jersey, don’t forget the jersey, don’t forget the jersey”… Read more!