Strange Blue Tournament Report

Aye Aye Open Tournament

This is a true and accurate account of the Adventures of Strange Blue at the Aye Aye Open Tournament which took place in Norwich on the 23rd and 24th February. All mistakes and any omissions are entirely the authors own - for which I humbly apologise. Apologies are also due for the length of this report - but I am bored and my housemate is watching Gosford Park.

The Day started early for some, although a certain member of the SB Party team was getting practice in early by attempting to stay up all of Friday night and hence missed the 7am leaving deadline. Luckily James Myatt was more than happy to go via New Hall to pick her up and we got underway.

On arrival in Norwich, after a quick cup of tea (thereby delaying the inevitable moment) we headed to the changing rooms to get into our kit. Unfortunately for us our 'kit' consisted of Spice Girls costumes, complete with dresses, wigs and false breasts (with walnuts for nipples). Also slightly disturbing were the looks we were getting from the Rugby team that were in the changing room at the same time... although I think one took a bit of a fancy to Sandy in his demin miniskirt.

We checked the Captains Pack and it turned out that SB were somehow seeded 6th out of 24... they had obviously never seen us play indoors. However, fully decked out in our war-paint we launched ourselves into our first match:

Aye M.C.A v Strange Blue: SB win 7-8

The first point of this match provided a most unusual line-up. One of each of the Spice Girls on the SB end and 5 mustachio'ed constructions workers on the AyeMCA end. To the casual observer it may have looked like a drag convention, but as AyeMCA were seeded 20th, to us it looked like it was going to be a walkover. We took a little while to get used to playing in dresses and wigs, but with a couple of big early scores from Jassy and some great grabs in the endzone by Rob we traded point for point. The 15min long match seemed to fly by and before we knew it was 7-7 and the hooter was blowing. Kermode managed to send up a sweet knife to Rob in Sudden Death and the Spicers took the Match.

Surrey Scorpions v Strange Blue: SB lose 7-3

Roused by our success in the first match and with our slight misgivings about wearing drag mostly over - we threw ourselves into the second match. Unfortunately the Surrey Scorpions managed to play better than us, their hucks seemed to always end in a score, whilst our throws seemed to always end in the wall. Disaster struck during this match, with James Myatt becoming entangled with one of the Scorpions and ending up in the wall. James had to come off with blood on the pitch (and his elbows and knees). Luckily he managed to knee the other bloke in the face at the same time. However, despite Myatt's brave attempt at tking out their main handler and us running our wigs off they soundly beat us 7-3.

Aye Aye Old Boys v Strange Blue: SB win 4-7

This was the match that Berry was dreading - and rightly so! After ditching the Old Boys to play for SB, he was in for a lot of ribbing from the sideline. Shouts of 'traitor' were common, but despite the cajoling everyone played out of their skins and SB smashed the Old Boys 7-4. We were awesome on D and big in the air, along with smooth and chilly O. Mark was cool calm and collected and delivered some beautiful IOs with pinpoint accuracy. We later heard that the Old Boys had just come back from eating burgers and so not upto their normal speed - but seeing as they went on to come 2nd in the whole tournament this was an epic win!

Curve v Strange Blue: SB win 6-7

Curve informed us that they hadn't won anything all day - luckily I am really bad at tossing and kept up my tradition of always losing and therefore they easily won the toss and chose to receive. Curve were in white - and even tho James 'Sporty' Kermode looked like an extra from a Streets video in a white boob tube with exposed midriff and a pair of chavy trackie-b's one of Curve still told him to wear a different colour. So he popped on Rob's pink cardigan and we were ready to go. It was a close fought match and went down to the wire again, back in Sudden Death at the hooter. Curve luckily dropped a knife in the endzone that we made the most of and Mark knifed it straight back into the safe hands of Rob and we took the win.

Flyght Club v Strange Blue: SB win 3-9

After a full days play we were a bit tired, but clearly not as tired as Flyght Club. Maybe it was our wigs - or the flashing of underwear as we laid out all over the pitch that put them off, but we managed to complete some total pwnage on FC. Everyone in the team got involved with some big scores, massive D's and a couple of cheeky pitch-length knives. I think the awesome sight of John Kruger with full goatie and black 'Posh Bob' charging down on their handlers probably gave us quite an edge. One casualty of this match was my left nipple - I managed to crack the walnut and had to continue the match with one slightly deflated boob.

After 5 matches and four wins under our belt we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves and getting ready to go out and party hard. First, however, Rob was nominated to represent SB in the Charity Fantasy Frisbee match. He performed magnificently and did SB proud with the best catch of the game (a left handed fully extended layout hammer score).

The Party: We chose to ditch our minging sweaty outfits for the party (the theme was Retro Sports) so we all donned 70s headbands and made our way to the venue. After watching England pwn France we turned up to find a pile of schedules for the next day, hot off the press. After a quick scan - it turned out that we had in fact won our whole pool, meaning we couldn't come any place lower than 8th. AWESOME!! But better news was to come... it turns out that because we were so insanely awesome we didn't need to play a cross-over so our first match on Sunday was scheduled for 11:06!! A round of sambucas was bought to celebrate and we got down to the real business of the weekend. The party was in the infamous LCR a sticky-floored dive, full of drunk students and drunker frisbee players. Altho when we arrived there was no-one on the dancefloor - Megan and Jassy soon rectified that and the rest of SB followed with some amazing dancing moves to match the retro music and dodgy DJ. As may have become clear from the last party report i gave, I am not very good at remembering what happened - i know there was lots of drinking and dancing... Sandy and Rob undertook a VERY creditable 3 pint challenge in 27 seconds and when the night began drawing in Mark Stephens somehow managed to keep his head (no idea how after the gallons of booze he had put away) and shepherded everyone back to our hosts house. Except me and Berry who had somehow got lost in the throng of dancing bodies. When we emerged from our Vodka RedBull haze we found ourselves alone on the dancefloor with Jim Jagger (our host) and a burly security guard attempting to chuck us out.
SB first on the dancefloor and last off. Double Get In!

Now seeded 12th this first match of Sunday morning was out 5th-12th crossover and our opportunity to move up to the top 8. Far Flung played with a similar style to Mojo so our match the evening before was good preparation. This was an incredibly close match. We started ahead and then they had a come back which left us two points behind. The whistle blew as we battled to put in the equalising point. We were disappointed to lose a top 8 position by so little but that's how it goes sometimes.

Game for a place in the Top 4
Danger High Voltage v Strange Blue: SB lose 9-2

Even with our long lie-in we came out sleepy, sleepy and slow. I had picked up an ankle injury the day before (which probably wasn't helped by 5 hours of hard dancing) and so was out of the team. With me and Myatt out with injuries the rest of SB had to step up to plate and put up a creditable show, but we were soundly beaten. The writing was on the wall when pulling the first point Mark somehow managed to throw the disc out the back of his hand, Danger HV took advantage of the turnover and chalked up an immediate score. They then came at us with a zone and despite a couple of successful long hucks into the endzone and some awesome dancing/flailing D from Sandy, they kicked our sleepy butts.

Game for Top 6
Surrey Scorpions v Strange Blue: SB lose 10-7

This game saw us matched up again with the Surrey Scorpions, which we needed to win to ensure we kept our seed. We came out very hard and hungry for revenge. The match was pretty to watch with points being traded equally between both teams, everyone was playing out of their skins - and eventually the only way that Surrey could win was to take advantage of the girl mismatches and despite our valiant D they took it away before our eyes.

Game for 7th
Warwick Bears v Strange Blue: SB lose 11-10

This was another epic game and we were fighting for 7th place. We led the game early on, with beautiful smooth play, lots of lead passes and excellent movement of the disc. Mark was on fire and calling all sorts of random plays on the line that were massively effective. Megan managed to sky the tallest player on the Warwick side for a sweet D in the endzone and then Rob Schumacher managed to pull off an awesome CALLAHAN to leave the Warwick handlers with egg on their faces. The Bears managed to claw their way back and as the hooter went the score was 10-10. Sudden Death...again! The final point seemed to last forever (especially for us standing on the sideline), but eventually Warwick managed to jam a hammer into the endzone and won the game. This was one of the hardest fought matches of the whole tournament with everyone giving it 110%. Even though we lost, I think everyone enjoyed the game.

Conclusion: If you are still reading by this point, then hopefully you are feeling as exhausted as we were. Rob was voted MVP (although it was a close-run thing between him and Mark), everyone played their socks off and a finish of 8th out of 24 is amazing, especially as we were dressed up in every game. SB were somehow robbed of the Best Dressed prize (by a team whose costumes we didn't even see) and despite continual dancing, being first and last on the dancefloor and some sharking we were even robbed of the Party prize. I guess we need more practice.

Thanks to everyone, for their massive effort, especially as we lost two people to injuries. Big word-up to Jassy for running all of our calls and to everyone for being so cool as to actually wear the Spice Girl costumes for the whole weekend.

Ok Gosford Park is thankfully finishing now, so I shall end this (at last). Bring on Next Year!

Stu