Key Learnings from AOUC

Adapt

About 2 weeks out from AOUC, Huy from Adelaide had to pull out for financial reasons. This left the team very short of handlers, and despite my hopes, I realised quickly that I would pretty much have to handle all weekend. All my frisbee life I have considered my self as an offensive receiver, and in recent years, an offensive receiver who can throw as well. However at ‘lower’ levels of frisbee, the experienced players always come back to handle so I have been doing that for a few years now.

I have always felt that I don’t make a good permanent handler because I am too impatient and just want to jack it. However, with the team we had at AOUC, taking into account the number of tall receivers (and the fact that I was the shortest guy on the team), I realised I had to adapt my game for the benefit of the team and handle. Being captain meant that I was able to handle with lots of confidence and take the risks that I felt needed to be taken. I made sure to look to jack it long early every game to our tall boys – to make sure that the other team knew it was a threat. This made getting open under later in the game easier. It felt very relaxed and composed with the disc, especially off a stoppage near the endzone, where I felt that my break hammers and flicks worked really well. (especially with the HoS connection to Wood)

Layout D

I got more layout D’s this weekend then I have ever in one tournament. The three main factors to this for me where:
- The occasion: at such a high level event and in the role as captain, the desire to get that disc back, especially after having turned it myself, was so great that I just wanted the D so bad that I got it.
- Marking handlers: being the shortest guy, I found myself marking handlers much more than usual and I feel there is much more chance for layout D’s closer to the disc than deep, especially on wayward swing passes and when you can poach off the swing into the cutting lane.
- Female throwers: when women have the disc and they are throwing to a guy, they tend to underestimate how much ground a guy can make up.

Feldrunner (German)

We tried using the Feldrunner as our standard offence. In the early games, we didn’t get to use it much because the other teams didn’t score a lot so we were rarely on O. It took us a while to get it right. We made it hard for ourselves with poor throws to the dot – sometimes we threw flat throws right past the defender, sometimes wobbly hammers above the dots head and sometimes we just threw it too far wide. Eventually we got on to the key point which is putting the disc into the space beside or behind the dot and trusting them to go and get it. I found that using Waz as the dot was the best, as he had the height and then the throws to be the most damaging. We also talked about using the Polish variation, where the dot cuts to the back corner and another receiver cuts in form the opposite corner to fill the space. While we never actually used this, I think it is a really good variation which can be useful.

Japan are good!

Although I was hoping to see some of the Buzz Bullets players there, it seems there were none, and none of the players had played mixed together before – it seems the team was just a combo of some open and women players.

Japan played an odd zone where they had a girl on the disc and a fence about 10 metres back which was spread wide across the field. It meant you had a lot of time with the disc, but there wasn’t a lot of space to throw it into. We probably should have used “give & go” more, but we just seemed to force it forward to our tall boys and they capitalised on any errors.

On offence they move the disc extremely quickly. Getting any stall count started at all felt like a victory! It must take a lot of work from the team to get them to a point where they can time there cuts right for such quick disc movement. It will be interesting to see if any Aussie club puts the effort in to develop such a fast game and is able to use it as effectively and consistently as the Japanese.

No Spirit Prize!

There was no spirit prize or scoring for the tournament. While this didn’t make the games seem less spirited, I would have though that WFDF would make it mandatory for all WFDF events to record Spirit scores. And I think they should develop a standard method for scoring Spirit. There has already been a fair bit of discussion about this at the following links:

http://www.ultitalk.com/index.php/topic,192.0.html

http://groups.google.com/group/aus.sport.frisbee/browse_thread/thread/13514973b1c06eb2#aec7f2b987a6519e

http://zazman.blogspot.com/2006/12/spirit-score-guidelines-proposal.html


Rules ‘Discussion’

There were two lengthy rules discussions during the 3-4 play off and the final. They were both regarding the “Play on” rule, i.e. in attempting a pass, the thrower was fouled by the marker, called foul, and then the pass was completed. The thrower therefore called “play on” and play SHOULD continue.

However the tournament rules (which by a weird series of events I helped put together) caused some confusion during the 3-4 play off (on the game winning point) which led to further confusion in the final.

The tournament rule and the relevant WFDF rules are below:

Note the key difference between WFDF and UPA rules:
1. A throw released after a pick/foul is called goes back to the thrower no matter whether it resulted in advantage to the team that called the infraction.

WFDF Rules:

18.3. If the team that called the foul or violation gains or retains possession as a result of the pass, play shall continue unhalted. Players recognizing this should call "Play on" immediately to indicate that this rule has been invoked.

The point of discussion was the section in red. This is from the standard rules used at AFDA events and is really just a note for people to be aware of. It is slightly misleading and doesn’t actually tell the whole story, however it is not a rule, just a note (in my opinion at least).

Anyway in the 3-4 game they resolved it by saying it had to come back no matter what, which caused problems when we had the same thing happen with us in the final and Japan wanted it to go back. In this case it was a long throw that gained significant ground, so sending it back to the endzone line where it was thrown from would have been a significant disadvantage for us.

I was not on the field at the time but got caught up in the debate when the Japan captain started saying that the tournament rules said it should go back (as had been decided in the previous game). I got into a discussion with the WFDF rep from Japan who was up on the main stage about what should happen, and having been involved in the tournament rules, I was certain that they didn’t specify that it had to go back. After telling my players to send it back (because the discussion had gone for too long) and then saying they should just keep the disc, it was finally resolved with us keeping the disc downfield. The outcome was right, but the process was not. In hindsight, I should have just checked that the players on the field were aware of the rules and the situation and then let them sort it out from there. That is one part I am not looking forward to seeing on the DVD!

Captaincy

Having never captained a team at a higher level than Div 2 league, I was slightly hesitant about leading Australia. However thankfully I have had some really good captains over the years (and some bad ones) which meant I had a fair idea about what I did and didn’t want to do. I was also lucky to have Waz and Rachel who helped out with warm-ups and tactics discussions so I could focus on the big picture issues. In huddles I mainly ‘let’ Waz talk in detail about our strengths/weaknesses and then would try and add just one main point for people to remember. I also tried to make sure everyone kept the focus on the fact that we were there to have fun and enjoy ourselves, as well as trying our hardest to win. I think the real test of a leader is what they do when things start going wrong, which didn’t happen too much at AOUC. In hindsight I wish I had called a timeout late in the Final to just try and compose us all, but I will just have to remember that for next time!

MVP system

They used an odd MVP system where at the end of the tournament (before the final) each captain nominated 2 men and 2 women as their best players (choosing a number 1 and a number 2). This was then compiled and given to each captain again to vote for 5 people from each gender as MVP (not in any order – just ticking boxes). This was then used to determine the MVP. I only really felt that 1 player was particularly memorable from all the teams (Derek from Philippines) so just based my votes on which teams were strong – so Japan got a vote each for their guys because their guys were good etc. This system meant that people who were valued by their team got recognition, even if they weren’t flashy or did 1 or 2 good things in a specific game, which is how normal MVP votes can be given out. I think the end result gave some good MVP’s – Derek, Waz and a Japan guy, so it could be a good system for an Aussie tournament to try and use.

AOUC 2007

Yesterday I returned from Captaining Australia to Silver at the Asia-Oceanic Ultimate Championships in Taiwan.

I also won the Longest Throw contest (84m) so am offically the Asia-Oceanic Man Distance Champion!

Attending the event were: Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Philipines and Hong Kong.

We beat everybody convincingly except Japan, who we lost to in the pool game and in the final (15-11 after being at 11 all)

I have yet to fully process what happened over the three days so this is just a brief fact/picture post.

Rachel and Mel did some great write ups for each day which can be found here:
Report: Day 1
Report: Day 2
Report: Day 3