Editor: Hazard (he/him)
Nationals is over! Very well done to Clapham for winning the tournament (again), and to Alba for winning spirit of the game. These articles are simply going to be giving each team a space to write a few thoughts on the tournament, in order of finishing.
Open is also the only division in which any team accepted spots to represent the UK at EUCF (the European Championships). Both Clapham and Smash'D will be heading out to Belgium. Best of luck to them both, but also well done to all teams for a fantastic weekend.
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Other Coverage
Full results can be found on the schedule.
The ShowGame are doing weekly podcasts every Friday/Saturday covering all the action.
Hogi filmed some games this weekend. You can see his watchalong on Twitch, or watch the game footage on YouTube.
Ulti.tv filmed a lot of Nationals, and streamed it for free to the public on their YouTube. You can support them and find out more on their Patreon.
Photo albums can be found with Ultimouat, Graham Shellswell, maio2zaiparen, and the ShowGame
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Results
1. Clapham Ultimate
2. Chevron Action Flash
3. Alba (Spirit)
4. Devon Ultimate
5. Smash'D
6. Ka-pow!
7. Bristol Open
8. Leamington Lemmings Open
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Recaps
1st Place: Clapham
Andy Lewis: This year Clapham celebrated it's 20th proper season. The expectations both internally and externally to take a 20th National Championship were high, expectations which were almost immediately tested by a hungry Alba squad. The entire game was dominated by D rolls with the CU O line feeling the most pressure since 2019. After a shaky start (7-3/4?) the O line got their feet under them and the D line managed the claw back enough breaks to win by 2!
Ironically, the game before this saw a very different O line performance where Bristol posted the best hold rate against the CU D line. A hard and loose game against Lemmings Open rounded out our pool games in an enjoyable way!
We drew Devon in our Semi, who I suspect were perhaps already thinking ahead to the bronze medal game and didn't summon the fire that has made scraps with Devon greatly enjoyable in the past. We won fairly comfortably at 15-3.
We did manage to watch the end of an incredibly tense game between Alba and Chev to see who we would play in the final. While a repeat of our Alba game would have been greatly enjoyable (if stressful) it was also fantastic to play CU's old nemesis of Chev. While the game started well for us, Chevron did manage to claw back a few breaks after half. However, we managed to regain control of the game to close out the win and inevitably get blasted in the face by Connor McHale's Champagne. On to Bruges and see you there Smash'D!
2nd Place: Chevron Action Flash
3rd Place: Alba
Andrew Warnock (he/him): It was the one that could have been, or maybe should have been for us. Frustrating close moments, but moments of absolute class summed up our nationals. Trading throughout the first half in our first match with Lemmings probably wasn’t the best way to start, but that was due to Lemmings being surprisingly good, and us shaking off the rust at the first tournament in a couple years – we eventually won that game 15-7.
Next up was the Clapham pool game. I’m not sure if anyone genuinely thought we could win it before the match, but we talked about it as a “free shot” with nothing to lose and then we kinda went out and f***ed them up in the first half with breaks galore from both sides. Honestly one of the craziest matches I will ever play in, definitely the best Alba has ever played to that point. With a few points to go, and still up, we realised that if there was ever a doubt before, we were a serious outfit and we fully deserved all the hype there was around us going into Nationals. In the end Clapham won the game 12-10, and deservedly so with some stupidly big grabs and D’s from the usual lads like Justin Foord and Ollie Gordon (#CatchesWinMatches). Gutting loss, but actually not too important. A semi-comfortable win against Bristol on the stream set up the inevitable semi against Chevron.
This one was different because we were expecting to win it. There were more nerves, a big ol' sideline and questionable decisions on both sides, but holy s**t was it exciting. Having played in the game I remember surprisingly little of it, the first half had mini peaks and troughs for both teams, and I think Chev took half by one (??). But towards the end we started to make a few extra mistakes, and apparently one of us dropped the pull but I have no idea who that was, great banter though. However, a D roll from us sets up a universe point… obviously that was going to happen. And like the 2 universe losses to Chev before this, we got a turn and didn’t quite put it in. Chev score, and we’ve now lost 2 incredibly close games, against the 2 best open teams in the country. We were gutted, and still will be till next year.
The 3v4 we played Devon and won – lol. We found out after that game we won spirit, just a testament at this team’s ability to leave absolutely everything on the pitch and still come away as the good guys. Next time we’ll do that but also have a Nats trophy alongside it.
4th Place: Devon 1
Matt Bolton: Devon's season priority was reconciling an influx of players on the O line with a new system over a handful of split-team league games and relatively few trainings. The weekend's results show we didn't nail it - relying on an absolutely mutant D line to shore up errors and miscommunications, and getting blown out when that didn't work. We fiddled with stuff after the Chev game, then again after Clapham but next season we can begin again from the ground up.
Clapham - 3-15 Oof. The issues we'd been worrying about were all laid bare in this game - sucks to suck.
Our 3rd vs 4th place game against Alba ended up 6-13. This was an enjoyable match that started very close with a couple of monster points heading towards half, before getting progressively less close as Alba built momentum.
5th Place: Smash'D
Chun Lee: I will keep this short and sweet, like my fellow captain Jake Betson. Overall it was a great weekend for us, we played some really good games and had such a great time on and off the field.
In terms of the Devon game, we were looking forward to it the most and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Regardless of the controversial calls and the 11-12 sudden-death loss, it was a very enjoyable game and we learnt a lot from it.
We now have Euros coming up which will be a lot of fun, but more importantly it will also be a good opportunity to get playing experience against top teams, which will allow us to continue improving as a team.
6th Place: Ka-Pow
Lucas Main and Max Rex: Our goal for 2021 was to get a squad of players out playing Frisbee regularly with their mates, to give it our best college try in the league and if we made it to Nationals that was a bonus. Having achieved these goals, we needed a new goal, why not create a common enemy that wasn't sprints or our own captains. We decided we wanted to ruin Devon's weekend, nothing against them, just happened to be our first game and the perfect scapegoat to rally a team around. An arch nemesis established, we went into the weekend in good spirits, despite missing ten players from the squad. Losing an additional three players during play on Saturday didn't help, so we had to build chemistry through the tournament – it might not come through from reading the score lines, but we were definitely able to achieve that.
Saturday morning loomed and despite breaking Devon on the first point of the tournament we couldn't quite gel together quick enough and lost handily to the experienced monster squad from the coast. Smash'D was next and used their adrenaline-fuelled angst to get the better of us. Then, just like a stall 1 hammer, out of nowhere we are 6-5 up against Chevron leading by a break in our final game of Saturday. Ka-Pow! had done what it wasn't able to do all season, score more than 4 points in a game against the squad from all-over-England. It was short lived as we started to lose steam and Chevy clearly decided it was time to put an end to the shenanigans. Saturday ends with 3 people injured, 3 loses and laughs all around as we reflected on what was a very successful day, results notwithstanding.
Sunday morning of a tournament weekend dawned - something some of us hadn't encountered for almost 2 years. Easily our closest game of the tournament, as Bristol pushed us all the way earning the right to play universe point, but we were able to hang on to get our only win. Our second game against Smash'D in the 5th vs 6th game showed how much we came together through the weekend. Both teams were going all out for the win, and it was close the whole way through. Smash'D were able to get a couple of key late breaks which sealed the win. A final result of 1W-4L is not bad for a team of about 70% rookies who were all very different people from when they rolled into Nottingham on Friday night.
Nationals was a great success for the Ka-Pow! team. It gives us a great foundation for what is hopefully a more "normal" 2022 season where we will be able to pursue a higher finish and qualify for Euros.
7th Place: Bristol Open
Jake Waller (he/him): Despite exceeding our own expectations (and seemingly every round of predictions) in making it to Nats, we weren't stopping there. Trading half a dozen points with Clapham, and managing the highest offensive conversion rate against the Clapham D-line of all the teams there, was a definite highlight. The multiple Clapham defenders that got skied by Chris Diles for a huge goal will be glad that match wasn't filmed!
We gave a good account of ourselves against Alba on stream too, and saw off Lemmings twice more after first beating them in the Cup semi-finals. Ka-pow! was the only game we came away from with significant regrets, as a sleepy start gave us too much to do, despite taking it to universe.
All in all, we have to be happy with matching Bristol's best Open Nats finish on record, but we're determined to improve next season. Doing so without the departing George Imbert will be a challenge, but one I know this group is up for!
8th Place: Leamington Lemmings
James Selley and Dan McLean: After a clutch qualifying game against EMO, Lemmings at Open Nationals suddenly became a reality, and to say we were excited would be an understatement. Coming into the weekend, we knew we'd be fighting an uphill battle against the best teams in the country, if not Europe, and we were determined to bring it to them to show we deserve our place in the top 8.
On Saturday, results went to seed with our closest score line against Bristol (who have proven to be our nemesis this season). Performance wise, we showed our competitive intentions with respectable score against Alba (tying at 6s before half at 8-6), before a final score of 15-7 which really set the precedent for the rest of the tournament and showed us how tough it would be. From here we had a close game with Bristol (as was in our league game), and wrapped up day one with what was both our most anticipated and worried about game... Clapham... We knew where we stood with them, but we still wanted to get out there and show what we had, with some of us putting in some of our finest performance of the weekend against the best of the best in front of a passionate sideline.
Sunday was always where we thought we might be able to squeak some results. Our SF saw us match up against Smash’D in what was James's favourite game of the weekend. Although Smash’D came out winners 13-10, the way the Lemmings squad rallied in the second half (from 8-4 down) showed the quality of play we were capable of, despite multiple injuries. A re-re-match with Bristol closed out our weekend and credit to them they were clinical to the end. While we still demonstrated some top class ultimate, Bristol ultimately proved to be the better team this season.
Reflecting on Lemming’s first ever Open Nationals it is obviously disappointing not to have got a W on the board but our performances and scores show we deserved our spot at the table. In the year of the rat it’s been a fantastic learning curve for the squad and a brilliant season for the club. Getting to nationals was a huge achievement for the club, and something that we'd like to make regular occurrence, as Lemmings can only go up from here!
