As said, I wont be doing full coverage for UKU Club Ultimate this year. However, I attended this one, and thought there were some really interesting storylines to point out. If you'd like to write one of these in future, please get in touch!
Schedule
Women's
1. GB Women
2. GB Women's Masters
3. Bristol White
4. Deadly Buzz
5. Iceni
6. SMOG
7. GB U24 Women
8. SCRAM
9. Hydra
10. Reading Women 1
...
Open
1. GB Men
2. Chevron Action Flash
3. Clapham
4. Devon
5. Ranelagh
6. Alba
7. Pelt
8. GB U24 Men
9. Ireland U24 Men
10. SMOG
...
1. GB Men are dominant
Five games, five wins. No team scored more than 6 points against them (Ka-Pow!, Clapham and Chevron). Sure, Clapham and Chevron may have been weakened by some of their best players being on GB Men, but that's still an emphatic performance.
2. GB Women are mentally dominant
Sadly, the Women's team did not go undefeated, despite taking the title. A sudden death loss (10-11) to GB Women's Masters means that they had to fight through the brackets the hard way, before winning the rematch 13-7. It's not a great sign to see the senior team lose (although it is nice to see the Masters team are still very strong). What is great to see is the response after the loss. GB Women are going to face a lot of tough games at EUC, so this experience will only have strengthened them.
3. GB U24 < Ireland U24, for now
Last year, the Ireland U24 team had some fierce match-ups with the GB side in the Open division. While they didn't meet this time, they did end up with similar results and only separated by a single seed. An unfortunate match up against Ranelagh means that Ireland were unable to come higher than 9th. But it looks like this is a game to watch out for at WU24UC. On the Women's side, I believe this will be Ireland's first U24 team, at least for a while. Despite that, they managed to top a bracket and finish 11th. It was more GB U24's impressive performance (7th, with some impressive victories) that kept a distance between the two sides.
4. Bristol are shaking up Women's Ultimate
After taking Gold at Spring Break Vienna (a European tournament with some very impressive teams), it was interesting to see how they'd do here. The answer is that they'd have a very dominant performance for a split team, finishing as the highest club team in 3rd. And also tumble down the seeds a bit, lose in sudden death to GB U24s and Red, and finish 13th. Ah, the beauty of split squads. It would've been interesting to see a full strength (minus national players) Bristol team take on GB Women, but we'll have to wait for another time for that.
5. The Irish refuse to give up, or be consistent
Post-pools, the top Irish teams (Ranelagh/Pelt) seemed to be in the most commanding position in the event, with wins against Chevron/Clapham respectively. Sadly (for them), they then both lost their crossovers, against Clapham/Chevron respectively. Yup, that took me a while to get my head around too.
6. Any Irish women's team you haven't heard of is to be feared
This might be my personal unfamiliarity with the Irish team, but it seems like Ireland keeps sending over a team with a different name to UK tournaments. And, each time, no matter what they're called or where they come from, they seem to do very well. Deadly Buzz fairly comfortably beat every non-National team in every game they played, although they left early before a rematch against a now-gelled Bristol Red.
7. Alba are good now
Rising 14 seeds this weekend (20th -> 6th), you could say Alba had a good time. They've been threatening it for a while, but the lads from Scotland finally entered a focussed open team into a tournament. Scotland has been focussing on mixed for a while, but with the emergence of SCRAM (7th in Women's) and the reinvigoration of Alba, it looks as if they're looking at other divisions again. As the season progresses, this could well be a team that has its eyes on an EUCF qualification spot.
8. Thundering Herd know how to name a Women's team, but not a Men's one.
Thundering Herd - Mixed
Thundering Her - Women's
Thundering He - Open. Wait, nope, they went for Thundering Him instead. No, I don't regret spending one of my points on this.
9. Ranking Events are starting to take on a new structure
This was my first time at a ranking event, and it is still taking a while to capture people's minds. There were a lot of references to "Tour", with the similar competition structure not helping matters. However, it seems as if that is finally starting to change. A Mixed Ranking Event has just been announced (Highfield Mixer) will be taking place after the third round of Open/Women's events. I wouldn't be surprised to see this continue, with local Tier 2 weekends being more flexible for venue availability. With that said, Ranking Event is a mouthful. Not that I have an easy answer. Also, as much as the flexibility of teams moving around was very nice and ensured competitive games, I did miss not having a C Tour trophy to fight for.
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