Instead of going to the tournament as Pyramus and Frisbee, we dressed up as PIRATES and FRISBEE, and were all set for some seriously piratical play over the weekend.
We were seeded 30th at the start of the tournament, so made it our mission to improve on that seeding, and have huge amounts of fun.
We arrived on Friday night to find that Millie and teammates had staked out a claim to some pirate land. We joined forces and tented up, before joining in the general drinking theme of the evening. In anticipation of the early 9:30 start, we made sure to get to bed before daylight.
Come morning, we were woken by certain members of the team at 8am. This prompted many to crawl out of their tents, and go for breakfast at Morrisons over the road. The captain's meeting confirmed the schedule, and let us know that games were 55 minutes with no cap.
Our first game was against Team Dave, and we took to the field in full pirate regalia. Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave and Dave were all shocked when we scored the first point. They quickly responded by scoring a few of their own. For the final point we had the full team on the line, plus a couple of kids who had been watching from the sideline, so 14 people in total vs the 9 Daves. Unfortunately, Dave put a good disc into the endzone, which Dave managed to pull down. The final score was 19-4. (Team Dave went on to win the tournament so we weren't overly concerned with our standard of play.)
The second game was at 1230 against Team Al. (You may notice a theme with the naming of these teams.) We continued with pirate aplomb and Tom spanking the opposition with his sword. There was a lot of good play against Al, and we had them worried enough to make them switch their D to a zone to counter our horizontal stack. Unfortunately, we just didn't manage to convert enough of our opportunities and eventually lost 15-3. The score didn't reflect our quality of play as well as we'd have liked.
The final game of the day was at 1530 versus Flyght Club. We went into the game expecting that we were in with a chance and might be able to snatch a win. We traded points for the first few leaving the score 2-2. We then just couldn't cope with the pressure of being level, feeling that we needed to be in a position to come from behind - the traditional PAF way. This meant that we then stopped scoring, and let them fly away to a 9-2 win.
It transpired that Flyght Club had beaten Team Al, and were actually very close in standard, so with hindsight we weren't really in a position to win the game, although we could have scored more in both games. The results of the day meant that we were going to be playing teams of a closer standard to our own on Sunday.
Come night, we were set for the evening's comedy provided by Mat from the Jokers, and beverages provided by the bar. Bearing in mind that we had a 9am start, we again set a curfew of daylight on the team to ensure that everyone got enough sleep and was well rested for the first game.
It chucked it down about 7am, leaving me praying that it'd stop before I had to leave the tent. Fortunately, when I reawoke at 840 it had stopped raining. Unfortunately, only one other member of the team was awake, meaning that we'd have a difficult time playing. I set off for the bathrooms to wake myself up. 5 minutes later we had 4/5 people and headed over to the pitch to start warming up and wake up. At 2 minutes to 9 we noticed that we didn't have any opposition, and started to hope that we might get points for them not being around. At 5 past, I started wondering who we were supposed to be playing so went off looking for a team. The team that I thought we were supposed to be playing turned out to be playing someone else on a different pitch, and claimed that as Lucky Huckers weren't there they'd taken their seed, and we were supposed to still be asleep. I relayed the news to the team, who then scattered to tents and the clubhouse for breakfast, after telling them that our next game would be at 11am on pitch 6.
We repirated up for 11am, and discovered that we were playing the Jokers. The Jokers handed over their jokers telling us that we could play them at any time during the game and they'd affect the style of play. Following their lead we added our Ace...
After a few points we played a joker leading to a Flair point, which a few of us had seen played against the Thundering Herd on Saturday - leading to Daisy scoring a layout point off a no-look hammer. There were a lot of no-look passes, behind the back passes, scoobers, thumbers, hammers, and even a bounce pass (by me - Yay!), and many attempts to catch the disc behind the back, under the leg, no-look, and layouts. Eventually, we scored with a thumber leading to a gratuitous layout from Frenchy.
The Jokers retaliated with their own joker - the egg and spoon point. Break your egg and you're off the pitch, if you lose your egg you can't play until it is returned to the spoon - leading to some annoying turnovers despite a catch. The Jokers were surprised to see that our eggs just weren't breaking, and we managed to move the disc downfield slowly and steadily to finally score.
We threw our Ace into the mix, and played a Pillage point. This meant we were again fully pirated, pulled, ignored the disc and all of the opposition, except for the beardie long-hair, who was attacked by the full team and carried from halfway to the endzone resulting in a Pillage score, but no points for us. While all this was going on, the Jokers scored.
Those of us left on the sideline after a point, decided that we'd go treasure hunting. So followed the captain in full gear onto the pitch to X. Once there we dug for treasure, finding a pile of pieces of eight. (Photos available here...)
The final score at the end of the game was 10-5 to us. We'd won, in our most enjoyable game of the weekend.
The final game was against Switch to place us 25th or 26th. Buoyed by the news that we'd got the Aussies all out, leaving England ahead by 6 runs, cheered us up and we took to the field with joy. The game was very hard fought, with a lot of huge long points, but yet again we just couldn't convert our opportunities, throwing away near the endzone. Switch put a very strong force on us, forcing us to the sideline again and again, which we returned in kind. Regrettably, they managed to outpace us to the line and disc too many times, and despite our hard force they managed to score repeatedly. We lost about 9-2.
We finished up in 26th place, a gain of 4 over our original seeding, and only 2 places behind ABH(Wing Attack) who ended 24th and Thundering Herd placed 19th. I'm very encouraged by our abilities and the fact that we fought hard in every game. I think we should be able to give the Herd and ABH a decent run for their money any day, and we're more than capable of beating them, when we play well.
All up, a great weekend, and I look forward to playing in some more PAF tournaments.
Nick
Cap'n Kaos
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