Frisbee: Flaming Galahs (mixed)

I recently moved to London and started playing for two new teams. Flaming Galahs is the mixed team I now roll with...

This has been a lot of fun so far. Regular trainings, regular pubbings (not that I go) and a team of mostly unfamiliar faces to make friends with. Coached for a short time by an ex-Durham player who was senior when I was junior and has gone on to nearly great Ultimate things but prefers to do great Life things (like sorting out the Middle East) instead.

We've got two teams in tour this year and I've been solidly on the 1st team (I believe). My girlfriend is also recently to London and also plays on the 1s. It's always interesting figuring out a new teams style and discovering who the loudmouths are. Apparently they'd never played 3-4s before (I love 3-4s) and Tom (the coach) was having a hard time convincing them it could be effective. As it is we've played it for at least half the time and we're just about getting there. Some people still don't intuitively understand it, but we're drilled enough to make it work anyway.


We did alright at Tour 1 (got into the top 16, which was our aim) but literally threw away an opportunity to take it up to the next level against a great team. Game to 13, win by 2. We're 12-11 up. O-line is on going downwind and throw it away from 5 yards out. They roll us all the way up to 14-12. Probably a defining moment of the season. That said we were helped out by having the GB captain/coach playing for us that tour but not the rest so we probably didn't really deserve to be up there anyway. Next tour we got kicked out the top 16 by a south coast team that punished had a great long game to which we could find no answer. Pretty annoyed by that too.

Nationals is tomorrow and at the last training we had 9 people turn up. Out of a squad that fields 2 full teams. Not quite sure what happened there.

Anyhow it should be a good tournament - we've injured a few of our guys and so I might get the sort of pitch time I'm used too (these London teams seem to be captained y old people who feel that 20* is a good minimum squad number). We've got a good team and I expect us to hold seed at the top of our pool on Saturday and then see where Sunday takes us. Hopefully up.
*slightly exaggerated


Predictions for overall movements
All total guesses obviously

Going up
1) BAF from 9 to 5
2) Galahs 1 from 18 to 14 (gotta back yourself, right?)
3) Oxford Mixed from 21 to 17

Going Down
1) Bear Cavalry from 4 to 7
2) Curve 1 from 12 to 15
3) Bear Cavalrey 2 from 23 to 26

Keep an eye on Flump Fresh who were stacked last time (too many good guys want to play for that team) but the 1st team may have taken their best having lost players to Clapham. So could go either up or down (just like everyone else then really I guess).