Tournament Report - Open Indoor Regionals Manchester 27/28 January

Shaun — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:21:00 GMT

Saturday 27th January Fusion West made their way to Manchester for the first tournament of the season and the Wests debut on the national scene. The venue was Manchester City football clubs training ground, an indoor tournament on 3G artificial turf, now hailed as the future of indoor ultimate. Saturday was devoted to pool play games with the 16 teams divided into two round robin pools. Seeded 7th coming in to the tourney the team would have some tough games ahead to make it to the quarter final stage. With a squad of ten we decided to choose two lines to play alternate points, the line scoring the least points ended up with plank punishments.
    First up a game against MFS from Southsea a team made up of Fire players and some random friends. We struggled to even get a few passes going and quickly found ourselves 3-0 down no thanks to Lewis's disc skills, Gaz's hard running and the 8ft monster they had in the endzone. Fusion regrouped and the Ford Focus line got us back in the game and in front. At the 10 minute mark MFS already looked tired and Fusion took the win 8-7. Next up Hulltimate, Fusion found their rhythm demonstrating a breed of offence unseen by most of the onlookers running out 16-3 victors. The Mole racking up the goals and scoring Fusions first callahan of the year. By this stage it was clear we were one of the teams to beat and the crowd were baying for our blood from this moment on. Our third game of the day was against The Brown of Newcastle, a decent side that we will no doubt be battling against for A tour qualification at the upcoming tour 0. They fought hard and gave us a few scares but again we were too strong over the course of the game, the Far Flung handler pairing of Shaun and Cos demonstrating the fine art of the one-two to cruise through their defense on the 'short-ass' line. We won by two points in the end, i think it was 9-7. Fusion continued their stride towards the knockout out stage with a comprehensive victory over Man Chest Hair, final score 11-3 (i think). The penultimate match of the day put us up against reigning champions Fallin' Skies, a collection of Aberdeen old boys, familiar foes from university tournaments of the past. Their patient offense proved hard to break down. So far we had forced turnovers by pressuring teams in to throwing away but the experienced Aberdeen side would not succumb so easily. We traded for the first part of the game until Fallin Skies pulled ahead by 2 or 3? We battled hard and clawed it back to within a point but in the end time ran out for the come back to be complete. 8-7 Fallin' Skies. As Aberdeen had already lost to MFS 8-6 it looked likely we would finish in a 3 way tie at the top of the group. With the factors of seperation still to be determined we decided we may need to increase our points difference to take the top spot. The aim was to be clinical and efficient in our final game against York. 19-2, in a 19 minute game. Derryk still found time to flare it up a little and throw through his and his markers legs.
    Sunday. In the end point difference only mattered for results between the tied teams. It meant that if we won our final group game we would finish 2nd behind MFS. However the final group game was not as easy as we maybe expected. Catch those, a team of Merseyside yougsters came out firing, eager to prove a point and perform a relative giant killing. Having already played MFS and Fallin' Skies and lost by a single point (or two) to each they were dying to get the scalp they deserved. And almost did. After a Tim Kelman point block on the first play of the game we traded for the first few points then went down with the crowd clearly behind the underdogs.Eventually we turned on the D machine and ground out the win through experience and some good old fashioned fight. Perhaps it didn't help that we'd been up till 4am the previous night...
    Quarter final time and time for Fusion West to again show everyone what they're made of. This game was full of layout blocks and quite simply some of the most sublime offence you will have ever seen, Conor relishing his role as iso and dominating in the middle of the field. 12-3 i think. Our semi final opponents Jeremy CodHand would be no pushovers. The crowd had them as favourites having topped their pool against Top Shelf Sleaze (St Andrews) and pretty much destroyed everyone else. A few familiar faces from the A tour and GB squads added to their air of invincibility. This was an intense battle and one of the best indoor games Fusion West had ever been involved in (out of 9). At 1-0 the sideline ran on to the pitch to celebrate Fusions first score, at 1-1 CodHand spiked the disc. The tone was set. Relentless pressure on D and the sort of fluid offence seen all weekend put the westerners up early. Pwebb made blocks and assists all over the show and Adriano put in some sweet io backhands as well as showing his skills in the air against......no one, continuously getting open all game. CodHand never found their way back in to the game. Fusion make the final, 10-7.
    The final would see a rematch between the young Scots and the aging Southerners MFS who had beaten St Andrews en route (who had knocked out Fallin Skies in the QF). MFS were out for revenge but it was Fusion who took first blood with a pitch length blade assist from Joe Norat. However, Fusion again struggled for turnovers against the patient offense style employed by MFS and found themselves a couple points down. Despite endzone heroics from Shaney (a huge layout grab from a cross pitch throw) we couldn't claw ourselves back. This wasn't the best game of ultimate from either side. Due to the late schedule (it was now 8.30pm) most of the teams had left and the two teams on the pitch were tiring. MFS won by two. A dissapointing end to an otherwise awesome weekend but a great start to the Fusion West Season.

Team: Jim, The Mole, Adriano, Timothy, Wing Commander Shaney McShane, Conor, Shaun, Derryk, Cos, Philip.

MVP: Shaun

Dans la maison........

Website Launched (kind of)

admin — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:57:00 GMT

The new fusion web site is now in operation. So far it doesn't do much or tell you alot but that should all change fairly soon. For alot of the features you are going to need to be signed into the site so you'll need to get yourselves logins by registering (see 'Join' link in top right corner).

If you come across any bugs/problems let me know: short_kiwi_guy@yahoo.com

Philip

fusionultimate

Tournament Report - Open Indoor Regionals Manchester 27/28 January

Website Launched (kind of)