Tour 0 warm up

As a warm up for Tour 0 (next weekend in Bournemouth) Revolution, Tooting Tigers, and Burro Electrico played some friendly matches last Saturday.

This season I am back playing with Revolution.

Our first game was against Tooting Tigers, Clapham's feeder team.

The number 3 dominated this game: I had slept for 3 hours, we had 3 subs, we warmed up for 3 minutes, and we scored 3 points. Tigers obviously won.

The second back-to-back game was against Burro Electrico.

Burro is a new team based in South London. There are several guys from Thundering Herd, Flaming Galahs (both mixed teams) plus some random others. All chumps of course :-)

They had 14+ players, and we finished the game with 9. We lost in sudden death.

In the last game Tigers beat Burro by 4 points (I am told).

Worlds: 6 days to go

What are players doing the week before worlds?

Some people are just chilling. They have done all their disc and fitness training and there is not much else to do, other than some jogging to maintain shape and allow the body rest.

Some people are already in Canada doing a bit of tourism checking out Vancouver and British Columbia.

Some teams have gone to Canada one week or more ahead of time to train, bond, and perhaps attend a preparation tournament. I know that the New Zeland players (both open and women) are doing just that. What sets them apart is that very few of them have played together before. The one week before worlds is all the training thay are going to get as a team.

As for me, I am going to push with fitness and disc work up to the last minute.

Fitness: This year I started the serious fitness work a bit late and I am going to use all the time I have. Tuesday will be my last full-intensity training day. Only five days before my first game, which is less than for most people, who probably have been in chill-and-don't-get-injured mode for one or more weeks. Incidentally, unless the schedule changes again, Italy's first game will be on Sunday the 3rd against Canada. Tough.

Disc: Again, I am going to work on throws up to the end. Even at the airport, if I find someone to throw with. I have been training with my club team, playing summer league, goaltimate, whatever I can find.

Update: The schedule has changed. On Sunday we'll play against USA and later in the day against Sweden. Still very tough.

Update No. 2: The schedule has changed again.

Bibione - Final thoughts

Oops... no blogging for a while. Where was I at... ah yes Bibione. It was a blast! And for the Splash players it was a double blast!

I found the tournament overall really good.

Positives:

• The beach is nice, massive, and with a fine soft sand (no need for sand socks!)
• The accommodation is cheap and superb. We stayed in a nice spacious "Villetta". I.e. a small house inside a holiday village.
• Four days of Beach Ultimate!
• 45-mins games in 1-hour slots! Finally a good duration for a Beach Ultimate game!
• Cheap: All this for around 100 Euros.
  

Negatives:

• The fields, the campsite/village, and the place where the dinner and the party were held are a bit far apart. There is quite a bit of walking to do.
• There was a dinner and a party organised for the Saturday night, but many people were expecting more organised evening activities in 4-day tournament.

The organisers are aware of these points for improvement. I am sure they'll do their best to address them next year.

Other stuff:

• The tournament is smaller than Paga and Burla. There is room for teams of all levels. All the teams in are in one big division the initial pool games will place you in the bracket in which you belong. The top 8 teams showed some solid mixed Beach Ultimate.
• Besides Italian teams, the tournament attracts several central/eastern European teams. There were several teams from Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Switzerland.
• This year 27 teams entered and the format could only be weird. We played one game more than most teams and we also played twice against three teams, which is more than unusual.