Tour 3 (Cardiff) - Clapham complete the clean sweep

Post date: Aug 7, 2013 11:11:37 PM

Clapham sent 14 players[1] to tour 3 in sunny Cardiff. Due to torn l...igaments we were only playing with 12 players at any one point. Early advice was keep your shirt on. No sun's out guns out for us this weekend[2]. So with the fair skinned creaming up in 50+ and others getting the tanning oil ready we prepared ourselves for the first game against Brighton on Saturday at high noon.

Clapham - Brighton

We started slowly, getting broken before putting a goal in. We quickly brought it back and started trading. Brighton had a great deep game, which we failed to do something about until roughly 10s, as we were still struggling with sorting out our own offence. We then denied their deep shots and finished the game off with a run, 15 - 11. Brighton mentioned afterwards that their goal last season was to get 10 points on us, so less than year late they made it. It won't be this easy again ;-)

Clapham - Fire

Again we came out slowly, again we went down a break early, and again we fought it back and started trading before pulling away. We were still not happy with our offence, but had cleaned it up a bit. Our defence was still not dictating the way it can, and Fire took advantage to score some easy goals. We were really making life hard for ourselves, the final score was 15-10.

Clapham - GB U23's

This was the big game for both teams on Saturday. We had both guaranteed a semi final, this was for bragging rights. In classic Saturday fashion we started the game off by going down 0 - 3. The GB team was very athletic and played some tight defence which put us under more pressure than we'd previously had. We were tired at the end of the day in the sun and after two games that we let go on for longer than necessary. We struggled to come back into the game, and found ourselves trailing late in the game. We knew we could do better. The pressure on GB mounted, our defence pushing them into smaller and smaller spaces. Sol had a great grab over 3 GB players, and everyone was imposing themselves on defence. The pressure was on and we got the breaks we needed to win the game. There is no doubt that GB played the better game in the first half and it was our will to win that pulled it out in the end 14-12.

Saturday night

We went out to eat some Japanese[3] and everyone did what they had to do to be fit on the next day[4]. Again we had a late start and were determined not to come out as slow as we had done in the games today. Tomorrow was knock-out time!

Semi-final, Clapham - Emo

Emo had had a great season so far, we had met them in the knock out stages of every tour, and I believe with this semi-final appearance they have pretty much qualified for worlds - congrats. In this game we did not come out slow. Our O quickly put the first point in upwind and then the D clamped down straight away. We dominated the first half, and emo had a few nice grabs to put a few points on the board, but we finished the game with relative ease 15-5. It saved us a lot of energy, if only we'd played like this yesterday...

Final, Clapham - Chevy

Somehow even after the great semi final performance we went down again by a break early. Chevy had a nice poach set[5] which forced several cheap turnovers helped by the wind and we went down 8-6 at half. Jaimie politely told us to step up our game[6] and the team agreed, it was time to go into the next gear. Chevy rested in the shade and punched in their upwind O to make it 9-6. We were tired, but knew that if we wanted it enough we could claw back and win this game. We switched it up a bit and tried some zone, which worked well for a while. Again the pressure was mounting and Chevy were staying in the game by virtue of some individual great plays, sometimes over several defenders. We knew this couldn't last. Finally Dom got a D which got called back, but the pressure was on! Jaimie got a crucial run through poachy D and put it deep to Giacomo straight away. We earned ourselves break after break, and had our chances[7] to close the game out. But we didn't. It was 12-12, game to 13 and we were receiving upwind. We worked it comfortably half way and Chevy missed one of our guys going deep for an easy finish 13-12.

[Author: Rob Schumacher]

1) Britney, Cian, Dom, Enda, Giacomo, Jaimie, JJ, Magnet, Nick, Phil J, Schuie, Sol, Thrash, Voodoo

2) Not officially anyway

3) Food, not people

4) Including but not limited to: Ice bath, rolling, massage, beer, Cardiff night city tour

5) The author approves - he likes doing the same lazy defence

6) Not frothing too much

7) Yours truly did not catch a D in the upwind endzone to go up 2 points, instead the disc was caught by someone else