Week 4 Game Wrap Up

Monday night saw our fourth week playing together as Team Bread! We were up against the UTAS team. From the outset it was understood that this was most likely going to be the toughest opponent we had encountered so far. Neither our team nor UTAS had yet to lose a game in previous encounters.

In a somewhat true-to-form fashion we started a little slowly and UTAS got the jump, gaining a small advantage. After we got into gear we traded points for while before making a strong surge throughout the middle part of the game. Scoring 4 goals in a row pushed us into the lead which we managed to maintain throughout the rest of the game.

That said, with some creative play and solid defense UTAS made a bit of a comeback towards the end of the game. As the siren went the score was 9-8 (or 10-9??) to us. Due to a strange rule the game ended on the siren, rather than finishing the point. I suspect if the traditional rules had been used then we may have ended up with a tie.

From our point of view there was some extremely impressive play on display. Tim managed three amazing layout Ds. One in particular was taken out of the air a split second after leaving the hand of the thrower he was defending.

Taking Tim’s lead MonsterSteve also stretched those long arms for some awesome defensive plays. The rest of our team were also solid on their players causing the opposition to struggle for options at times.

Offensively we saw the expected solid cutting from Jessie, Taiters and Maz. Tarik managed to inexplicably pop into space all over the place as usual.

Impressive, patient handling from Stephen Joyce, Joe and Maz kept things moving and Joe managed to pop into the end zone to score a few points here and there as well.

To their credit UTAS never let up on us. Visionary Pat Dunne was quick to shut down our long options and was consistently a threat inside our end zone. Huddy consistently managed to find the Cowley Bros who were running round all over the place as usual. We never felt safe in the game and the UTAS offense caused our zone defense to grind to a puffing halt quite readily (I’m a little unfit ok!).

Finally, Elvin contributed massively to the game with loads of encouragement from the sidelines and frantic finger tapping to gather some statistics about our performance.

From my perspective there were some takeaway improvements we can make, largely highlighted by the solid UTAS defense.

In particular:

1 – Elvin rightly pointed out that we had some beautiful passages of play whereby we were stringing many passes together however these only ever occurred in the middle of the field rather than right into the end zone. We need to be more patience on our offense near the end zone and rely on the passing game that gets us there in the first place.

2 – Similarly, at times when we get bogged down near the end zone we need a few options on how we can introduce some flow. Dump cuts and subsequent swings to the break side are a great example of how we can break up the cycle and get some free space. (Having a timeout would be useful also!).

3 – Occasionally it appeared that some of our players hadn’t listened to the call on the line, or the play that was being called mid-point. Communication is key to prevent people cutting in the wrong order and clogging the cutting lanes for those people designated.

All in all it was a very enjoyable game. I continue to appreciate the vibe of our team. Everyone is in it to learn, improve and enjoy their ultimate. A great bunch of people to be experiencing a great sport with.

Cap’n Out.