Beachfest, Sandbanks, Poole, UK, June 4-5 2005

This is Keen's match report:

So, we got in as NOLO but turned up as UCL Alums, with Jack Laloe representing the current young blood. It was looking pretty good.

However, Day 1 was a lesson in taking things too easy and expecting too much from too little practice together (read: no practice together).

So, after a thrilling start against the GB Masters club team Age Against the Machine (eventually finished 5th), where we were head to head into the cap and lost by 3 points, we proceeded to drink beers in between matches and duly underperform - granted in between bouts of grand fun and derring-do. We were in a tough pool which included the eventual championes MLF, whom we actually did some good work against. The nadir was when Bristol Plastic Factory creamed us 9-4 in the third game of the day. Grim, grim, grim.

NOTE: Remember this, because the happy ending depends on it ...

A few jokes and some sobering up later, we walked straight into the fourth game against 20th seed Skumy to keep our 13th seed and the right to stay out of the bottom 8. We duly did the business and served them up a neat defeat, barely breaking a sweat.

The most fun of the day was then had at a private Lovers campsite BBQ with enough food to feed a refugee camp and booze that even Easy was too tired to really make a go of. Pasta did his best with some Hoogarden Gran Cru but it had been a long long day in soft sticky sand, and we called it a night at 11pm. Great laughs, though, and it warmed my heart to see old friends again around a fire on a clear night in the woods, randomly abusing everyone (of course), and listening to Chris play guitar songs that nobody knew the words to.

Day 2, the first game was against MILF from Southampton, to take 12th place. We stormed it with a zone D and some very sweet O. The still air allowed my hucks to actually land within 15 feet of target, which Chris G and Jack L, and even sunstroked Baggy, scored with to great shouts of acclamation along the lines of 'Thank God, we don't suck anymore!'

The next game for 9th place was against DHB / Exeter Uni and it should have been glorious. However dropped pulls and bad throws from just about everyone, especially me, meant it was a truly depressing failure by cest moi of keeping my cool. Apologies for shaking the heavens with my curses of rage, everyone, but it was a truly dismal display.

The only way, and I mean the ONLY way Beachfest could end with a high for us was if we could regain some dignity against Bristol Plastic, whom we were meeting again in the match for 11th place. And, oh yes, did we ever!

Showing the kind of ballsy, hard-running, Fuckit Huckit spirit, with the legendary Jedi-strength magic of a 5-of-spades zone, we absolutely blitzed BPF. They were deer in the headlights, and we were the NRA. True proof o character all round, and especially notable was Easy and Chris G anchoring the team with bloody-minded determination that literally dripped from their pores. Chris' layout blocks reminded me of brutal Winter League battles back in the day when he'd regularly leave pints of blood on the pitch, while Easy dominated every matchup he had turning most of them into cowering bowls of 'How-the-fuck-did-he-get-that?' BTW, I think Pasta actually got faster as the day went on ...

Jack L continues to impress for a rookie, and gets props for playing the entire tourney with a busted foot. The rest of us had various degrees of pain but Pasta was dealing Vitamin I, and we were all mostly used to it anyway. :)

Final score, 11-2 to UCL and 11th place overall.

Thanks to Difranco, Easy, Chris D, Pasta, Baggy, and Jack L. It was a helluva weekend ... Next: Britopen!

Cheers and POST-match beers,

Adam Keen