Dingo Tracks - May

The Australian Mens Ultimate Frisbee Team Monthly Newsletter – May

May is a big month for the Dingo boys:

- We recovered from Nationals where the majority of us played four days of mud churning Frisbee.

- We have 2 training camps in Sydney during May, 1 at the start and 1 at the end.

- We also participated in the first of two National Ultimate Frisbee League (NUFL) events which was also held in Sydney.

- We played our first game together as the 2008 Dingo team, very exciting and a great opportunity.

- On top of this action all the boys participated in their own local team and personal training program.

Its all been happening, we are building.

One of the exciting aspects of the first camp at the beginning of May was the return of our two internationally inclined Dingos, Brett Matzuka and Andrew Glover both returned home from overseas in time for this training camp. Brett arrived back in the country on Saturday morning in time to chime in with a few great blocks during the second session.

Aside from the large number of blokes who finished the weekend on the sideline through injury issues this was a great camp. Some good strategy development occurred and we spent some quality time exploring our nutritional and psychological preparation under the tutelage of T. Booth. I think I would have been alright in the visualisation session if Tim didn’t keep telling us it was alright if something strange happened like a pink elephant arrived at the visualised game. As it was I had to keep catching forehand bombs over some gun elephant playing for Germany.

NUFL 1 provided the best 80 men in the country with an opportunity to play against each other while representing their club teams in a round robin style tournament. The Dingos where on show at this event playing for both their local club teams and in a Saturday afternoon showcase game against an All Star team composed of top quality players from the Mixed team and other great players from around the country.

The game was very tight in the first half with the All Stars getting up early with some excellent long connections before the Dingos steadied to take the half by 1. The second half had the Dingos switching right on and running out to win the game with only another point or two put on against them. We are very grateful for this opportunity to play as a team and look forward to a rematch at NUFL 2.

Our final camp during May is this weekend and it promises to be a fast and furious 2 days. Our Defensive and Offensive leadership teams have been solidified and have now created a series of team structures that we will continue to refine over the next 66 days. Most players are deep into their fitness programs and I anticipate a lot of speed and strength to be on display on the field.

With the last 2 weeks having seen some passionate and strong words from our team leadership and some inspirational visual and verbal stories from team members we are all very focussed on completing May with high intensity and dedication to our team mates and our team.

Thanks for reading and continue to follow us on our push towards Vancouver and some good things.

Cheers

Mike

NUFL 2008 – Let loose the (dingo) dogs of war

OK - so I just saw Owen's post. I still stand by my comments below which were written before I'd seen what he put up.

With less than 24hrs before the first NUFL game things are really starting to heat up in the preparation for Worlds. The five teams for NUFL 1 – Country, Barefoot, Fakulti, HoS and Firestorm are all very strong squads and each will be led from the front by a posse of bristling Dingos.

One of the ongoing challenges facing the Dingos in the lead up to Vancouver is the ability to play against quality opposition as a full squad. This was demonstrated quite graphically at the training camp last weekend when, despite the fact that this was the first time we had the full pack of 24 dingos together, by the end of the weekend there were only 16 fit dogs on the paddock.

Tomorrow afternoon will be a great opportunity for the men’s team as a Dingos-Allstars game is scheduled for 3pm. This promises to be a cracking match. It will be the first opportunity for the ’08 dingos to play together as a full squad, the majority of the men from the Mundis will have a hit out against their Dingo cousins, and just to add a little spice there will be quite a few players who narrowly missed out on both teams and will have plenty to prove.

The Allstars haven’t been selected yet, but here is my take on what the team could look like going off who has been registered on the afda tourney page:

Mundis: Al Don, JD, Adam Mortimer, Seb Barr, James Yorston.

A bit light on from the Mundis (Tex? Chilly/SA boys??), but these four should provide a solid base for the All Stars. JD is always a pain to mark, Al will be stepping it up and representing as you would expect from a newly elected Australian Captain, Seb and Adam will be generating a lot of the handler movement around the disc.

Best of the Rest:

Likely team members – Woodly, Cletus, Reuben, Jimmy T-H, Sacha Vidler, Tom Tulett, John McNaughton, Tom Watson, Fatty Faulkner, Kai, P Liddicoat.

I’m sure there will be a few other players out there on the team, but I reckon the above could do the job adequately (ie put up a bit of resistance and then roll over for the Dingo humping they were destined to get). The HoS boys – Wood, Rueben and Cletus along with Jimmy “n’ankles” Todd Hill will give some needed height to the Allstars and it will be good to see them tussling with the big Dingos like Ant Dowle, Tatham and Mike Nield. There is certainly plenty of speed with Fatty, Twatson, Kai “Quads” Wing Young and Yorston all quick across the turf. Cupcake, Johnny Mac and PLiddy will bolster the handling skills alongside the Mundi lads. Sacha Vidler will inject some much needed venom (verbal, physical and spiritual) into the Allstars and you can be sure he’ll be keeping the Dingo defenders on their toes.

There are a bunch of players here who must have only just missed out on a spot on either one of the rep teams and I’m expecting big games from them. Tom Watson apparently tore it up as a punching bag against the Mundis last weekend so watch out for him. Likewise, Rueben, Woodly and Johnny Mac should be fired up for the contest.

Keep your eye out for the mouth-watering explosive powder-keg of a Liddicoat v. Liddicoat match up. Mmmmm powder-keg. Other match-ups that will be good to see will be Johnny Mac v. Hobbit, Glover v. Quads, Lavis v. Don and Fatty v. whoever is holding the disc.

This should be a really impressive game. I’m expecting a close and hard fought first half, but the Dingos will pull away in the second half and should win 15-9 if you want me to put a figure on it. To see if I’m wrong, come down to Centennial Park at 3pm Saturday May 17^th.

See you there,

Jonno.

PS The above smack talk and posturing is all speculation. I have no idea who will be on the All-star teams so sorry if I’ve offended or missed anyone. If you want some personal smack talk, come see me any time you like.

First game together

The Dingos are well into their 2008 campaign.

We have our first game as a team this weekend. The Dingos will be playing an All-Star game during the NUFL1 tournament.

The All-Star team should be a great opposition with many Barramundis and up-coming talents on board.

The Dingos are aiming to put into practise their tactics, role structure, playing time management, and sideline noise.

Spectators are welcome to attend: 3pm Saturday at Centennial Park, Soccer Field 3 (this is at the western side of the Park, on Grand Dr).

The All-Star team is:
Al Don (Captain)
John Damiani
John McNaughton
Max Wheeler
Adam Mortimer
Nick Renwick
Seb Barr
James Yorston
Lachlan McDonald
Mark Isherwood
Sam Schroeder
Stephen Johnson
Kai Young
Matt Faulkner
Rueben Berg
Stu Austin

We can only hope the All-Star team has a better uniform than the Dream Team that played Victoria in the AFL tribute match last weekend.

The Dingo April Newsletter

The Dingos started April by finishing March, and we finished March with a 2 day training camp in Sydney. This was our first official training camp post selection, we did manage to fit in a cheeky bonding camp during February however this time the cleats were out and there were no sand dunes, ping pong tables or clay blow pipes in sight.

We had a number of administrative tasks to knock over during the training camp and we successfully completed the following:

elected Matt Dowle to be our vice captain and work with our previously elected captain Jonathon Potts

welcomed our new coach Rueben Berg to the Dingo team

voted on a couple of Kenny’s uniform options (the green shorts look to be the go this time around)

made some key decisions about our pre-tour of the states, 2 weeks in San Fran, Vegas and Colorado hopefully playing some great U.S. teams

discussed some extra support team members who will join us on our pre-tour and at the tournament. Alex Chadwick, Emma Booth and a yet to be appointed local North American physiotherapist will all be involved with getting the team physically and mentally prepared to play at our peak during late July and August

shared progress with our individual training goals from March and outlined our personal focus areas for the month of April.

One of the things of note that came from the camp for me was that everyone there over the weekend felt like a Dingo. At the bonding camp back in February there were rookies and returning players, leaders and learners – all selected to play for Australia however not all yet Dingos. On the field and during team discussions at the first training camp all the blokes there held the same value as Dingos, we all carry the hopes and prospects of each other, we all need to believe and work hard to succeed. It’s was a good feeling.

Since the start of April the Dingos have been back in their regional areas building for Worlds (and Nationals on the side) in their own special way. The gimps have been getting to know their Swiss balls better, many blokes have been in the gym (or the park with big rocks) working on their cores, rotators and extensors, the track sessions have started and training reports have been going up on the training blog and spreadsheet.

It is a little hard to be fully focussed on either worlds or nationals during April, as I think most of us have the attention of our hearts and minds split a little on each (the proportion may depend on how competitive your nationals team is). None the less if you are watching you will see the vast majority of the Australian Mens team working hard down in Coffs Harbour next weekend.

• Steve and Tim will making it happen Wollongong style.
• Paul will be cutting all weekend I expect with the Sublime boys.
• Anthony, Matthew, Pete and Ken will be running lessons on field 1 with Fakulti.
• Abra, Gus, Gav and Dave will welcome Tubs back on the Barefoot team thanks to some focussed rehab of his damaged knee (frisbee lifestyle injury I think).
• Jonno will be involved in a kind of imposing Canberra team, explain that.
• Tim, Chris and Tats will be doing the business for the I beam boys.
• John L will be defending the national title with one of the two Chilly teams.
• I’ll be seeing what we can get out of the youth (Frisbee wise, not age wise) of Queensland on a Firestorm team.
• Joel is hopeful of being back on the field and leading Karma from the front.
• Dan and Owen will be working desperately to defend their number 1 seeding with Heads of State.
• Brett and Andrew are currently overseas and so will be drinking protein shakes, running around in circles and throwing forehands into the wind somewhere.
• And Pottsy will be coaching the Newcastle women and doing a lot of swimming in order to get his ankle right and keep his enthusiasm to play managed.

So that is the Dingos in April, we’ve been training, thinking, I know I had at least 1 dream, and generally laying the ground work for what we hope will be a great year of achievement for our team, and all the Australian teams heading over to the World Ultimate and Guts Championships 2008.

Thanks for reading. We’ll be back with some more news in May.

The Dingos will see you at Nationals.

Mike

A pretty good day

A brief report on our exploits today in Seattle:
 
We played three games against Sockeye (Seattle), aXe (Portland) and Furious George (Vancouver).  First games as a full squad with the arrival of Lachie and Mike, although we were missing Gus (finger) and Chris (hammy).
 
Our household got up pretty early (mostly) and got ready to go.  Eventuallt Tom emerged and we started to harass him about him making us late and the fact that we were all ready.  All good until Johnno decided he had lost our car-keys.
 
Ten minutes and much ribbing from Tom later, we found the keys and were on the road.  40 minute drive out to the fields, we stopped at a supermarket for directions and to buy lunch.  Tom's car pfaffed around, we hit the checkout with armloads of food and Tom was still wandering around the aisles.
 
"Are you gonna buy some lunch, Tom?"
 
"Have you got enough for us?"
 
"No, buy it with your car."
 
"..."
 
"Tomatoes, cheese, turkey breast, bread..."
 
He wandered off to try and work it out and then returned a minute later.  "We'll get Anna to sort out lunch."
 
Aah, married life.
 
I'll leave it to someone else to describe the games in more detail. We beat sockeye 15-11, after a 8-5 half and looking like we might win it by even more, but happy with that win against a top-notch consistent quarter-finalist team.  First win by an Australian men's team against a genuine UPA Nationals-level team.  Mamy more to come.
 
The format was 90 minute games, with 105 minute cap in 120 minute time-slots - pretty tough on its own, but the weather was oppressively humid which made getting water into us an imperative.  By the end of the day we had lost Matt and Lachie to the effects of heat stress.
 
Second game was against aXe, and we started pretty flat, trading for a few before asserting ourselves.  Apparently we had a 10 point run, that saw us end up 15-6 winners.  Lunch break and watced the end of a tight game between Sockeye and Furious that ended up witha 1 point win.
 
Lunchtime, enlivened with more stories of Tom and Steve's cleat fetishes.  Tom can name the cleat makes and models of everyone in the team, their condition, why that player wears them and what their alternate cleat is.
 
Owen, trying to catch Gack out: "So, what're my alternative cleats Tom?"
 
T: "I don't believe I've seen you in any other cleat."
 
O: "Ohmygod, that's right!  I don'jt have an alternative cleat!"
 
Then Tim recounted a story of waking up in the middle of the night last night and discovering Steve clutching a cleat to his chest.
 
"I just woke up and wanted to check out Jonny G's (our host) new Nike Speed TDs."  That's a fetish.
 
Last game was against Furious with a pretty short roster, pretty evenly matched game, both teams pretty knackered but still some great play, we let them take half 8-6 after being 6-6.  Then they lengthened the lead a bit before we came back to be 13-12 and just needed to complete our offeces to win the game.  A couple of offensive errors later and we had lost 16-14, but to have won 2 and lost a tight one was a great result for the day.
 
We also claimed the overall victory with based on the three-way tie results.  Yeah dingos!
 
We headed for a dip in the Skykomish River beside the park and then to a Korean BBQ restaurant with some of the Sockeye boys - fantastic!
 
Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to climb a big hill.
 
Pottsy.
 
 
 

Dingos to play demo at NRL Game

This Sunday, the Dingos will be playing a demo at Brookvale Oval 2pm-2:30pm, prior to the Manly vs Wests NRL Game. Apart from good fun for the team, it could be a great chance to publicise the local Manly Ultimate Frisbee League.

Watch this page for photos and comments on the event from the dog-stars.