Skunks at SWOUIR Plymouth 09

Just to officially to announce how well the first team did this weekend, we finished 3rd which entitles us to compete at division one nationals, an event we as a club we have not reached in quite a few years! 

The road there was not as simple as we would have liked, but we certainly proved we deserved to be there.

We started the weekend as 5th seed, and had a pretty simple pool with some easy games to start off, vs monkey see 1, Uriel 4, Disco 2 all with comfortable wins. The first score of the day was a Callahan set up by our tight zone trapping them in their endzone. Smatt got a second Callahan in the second game too, which is always enjoyable. The following scores are approximates.

Mythago 1 were next to be played and top of our pool. They snuck a few points through our zone which were well deserved but with our switch to hard man D we comfortably shut down their options, turned posession every time and scored point after point comfortably taking 4th seed off them. 6-2

Blt 2 were the last game of the day - and after such a strong victory previously it was fair to say we went out a tad arrogantly and to Blts credit they played hard and gave us a bit of trouble as we weren’t really playing structured O. However, another win to finish off the day.

After a little faff over showers at the centre and tims outlandish idea that a 7 car convoy would definitely work we all made it to tims family house for Chinese, the co-ops finest and celebrations chocolate. In true skunks tradition there was no amazing enthusiasm to head to the party, mainly due to someone not telling the team there was fancy dress. Although for some reason Ash had a sombrero... We headed across anyway and took over a corner with a few games of circle of truth. The first team made a move about 11 for the car journey to Helen t’s house were we all made friends with her mental dog played a board game or sorts.

Sunday morning had the last of our pool games vs frills 3, not much of a warm up for the next game frills 1.

A hard game, with their superior D shutting down our options and our iso passes repeatedly failing to connect. They had some simple scores one after another showing the benefit of a well drilled, closely connected team. Having about 12 players to our 8 didnt help much either,

We left this game a little disheartened with a crushingly low score line on our part to be little proud of. With a little too long between games it was fair to say we were a little glum by the start of the next game vs uriel who put 2 easy points on the board straight off. However Eds positive attitude and max leading our spear head of an offense we quickly brought the score line to even and then ahead. Their iso worked well with an unexpected switch to low release breaks rather than the floaty iso passes we were expecting and looking to shut out. We traded points, but luckily our points clearance kept us ahead at the final hooter. 6-5.

Having taken 3rd place we were raring to take on blt1 to take second seed. Our reliance on max as first pass was our down fall and with little options occurring it was a hard game with blt taking the win. 

A loss which not only meant we didn’t take 2nd place, but meant we had to play another 3rd/4th playoff, again against mythago. We’d be playing poorly to get to this position again and mythago had been clawing their way back up the rankings hoping to have one last stab at breaking into the top 3.
We were expecting a hard game, and personally i was a little bit nervous. With no need. 

With a change of tactics, for no real reason GT was freed from handling and snuck his way into the endzone. A pinpoint high stall count hammer from max found GT and kicked off our scoring tally, with GT clocking up every single point. With our hard man D getting turns each time. I don’t think we’ve ever had so much fun winning a top end game, even allowing us a shade of cockiness with Smatt assisting a “side-boob” pass on contested stall count 7.5. (Dont ask, or do! It’s not found in many playbooks) 

The game ended on a bit of contention with an argument over something in the final minute, i’ve got no idea what it was about as I was too busy taking a last second score off a high left-handed catch from James on the endzone line. Don’t know if it counted, but personally it was good to score the first and last point from such a successful and very enjoyable weekend. 

Thanks go to Max and Smatt who acted as on pitch captains for me, and the rest of the team for working so hard and keeping our heads up at points where they could easily have fallen. Bring on nationals.