ifda news letter volume 4 issue 1

IFDANewsletter

• Intereview with Steve Giguere of Lookfly

• Cork’s Ultimate Domination

• Johnny Chimpo

• Lucy Barnes on quickness

CORK BLIMEY!

IFDA Newsletter Volume 4 Issue 1 page 1

ContentsThe IFDA 3

By IFDA President David Perry

What have you ever done for ME? 5By Gearoid O Fearghail

Cork Blimey 8By Fergus McAuliffe, Robin Giller, Brian O’Callaghan, Deirdre O’Breasail and Ray Considine

How to Look fly 13By Liz Schaffalitzky

Vox Poppers 18

We’re all the ref 19Question by T. Wohr Game

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Chimpo…. 20By Simon Cocking

Dublin’s EUC bid 23by Mark Earley

Playing Ultimate Abroad 26By Liz Schaffalitzky

Improve Your Game 29By Lucy Barnes

We’re all the ref, solution 32Called by Dominick Smyth

CreditsEditor: Liz Schaffalitzky

Layout: Gearoid O Fearghail

Cover Photo: Brian O’Callaghan


Note from the Editor Hi and welcome to the all-new, but pretty much

the same, IFDA Newsletter!

I was a little apprehensive about taking on this task from Mark Earley, who has previously done a great job in putting the Newsletter together and has been much more involved in the IFDA and Ultimate com-munity in Ireland than I have ever been! But thanks to help from himself, and especially from Ger and the IFDA press team, putting together this edition has been an interesting and rewarding experience. Everyone who I contacted about writing articles and getting involved has been only too happy to help, and I really hope that you enjoy what we’ve put to-gether.

We’ve some great articles and interviews in this issue. Learn about starting a Ultimate-related busi-ness from Steve Giguere of Lookfly. Build up your quickness with Lucy Barnes. Ponder the rise of Cork Ultimate. Find out why the Dublin EUC 2011 bid was such a fail. Sit down with a cup of tea and spit it straight back out when reading Simon’s take on Johnny Chimpo dominance.

New font driving you crazy? Finding the layout a bit meh? I’m aiming to make the Newsletter more accessible to the Irish community, and would really love any feedback you have, any ideas for articles you would like to see, and to open up commentary between the newsletter and its readers. We’re not quite at the agony aunt page stage just yet (maybe I can persuade Breffers to take it on), but please get in touch by email or by the IFDA Facebook page and let us know what you think. If you’re interested in getting involved by writing articles or interviewing important people in Ultimate, get in touch!

Liz

The IFDA president makes a joke (Photograph: Eamonn Monaghan)


The current IFDA committee has been busy working away for the last six months. Now seems a perfect time to look back at what we’ve managed so far, and what we hope to do for the rest of our term.

By IFDA President David Perry

As usual, a great chunk of IFDA time has been spent managing tournaments. We worked out the tournament calendar to keep it as man-ageable as possible for all players. Committee members directly ran three tournaments: the Beer and Rose Bowls, and All-Ireland Schools In-door Championships. We also bid out the first All-Ireland Open Indoor Championships, as well as all college tournaments. We worked with Galway and Maynooth and added two new tour-naments to the calendar.

There’s been a lot of IFDA admin work this year linked to our status as a registered com-pany. SJ (Monaghan), our Treasurer, has been

excellent in taking the lead on compiling and auditing the IFDA accounts from the past two years. This is an absolutely essential step on the road to the IFDA being recognised by the Irish Sports Council as an official National Governing Body, which will secure government funding for Irish ultimate.

The committee selected Ireland’s first Nation-al Selection Boards. These were introduced as a way of formalising the process of setting up Irish national teams, and making it as fair and transparent as possible. The National Selection Boards are in charge of picking the leadership for each Irish national team, approving squad plans and generally exercising oversight.

We’ve tried to support newer teams as much as possible. Each member of the IFDA committee was assigned one of the relatively new college teams to check in on every month and assist. We’ve supplied free equipment to new teams where needed, such as Westside Ultimate.

We’ve placed a particular emphasis on pub-licising ultimate in Ireland this year. Ger, the

THE IFDAThe more you know...

David representing France at EUC 07 (photograph: Mark Earley)


IFDA Press Secretary, has recruited a press team to assist in this regard. We’re making use of Facebook and Twitter to spread updates about the sport and engage with existing players as much as possible. There have been press releas-es for the national teams, and the press team is currently working on a press kit for distribu-tion. There are also plans underway to record high-quality footage of the national teams for promotional use, and hold a press day with the national teams.

Linked to the above, Rob (Kane) is leading a website redesign team to make the IFDA web-site more accessible. One of the features will be a new system for ranking teams suggested by David Hammond- it keeps track of scores from all games to calculate the relative rankings of each team across the country.

The IFDA Women’s Coordinator, Caoimhe, has been heavily involved in assembling Ireland’s first Junior Women’s team, which will compete at the European Youth Ultimate Championships in Poland this August.

We have a lot left to do over the next few months. In the short term, expect to see: re-vised and condensed university eligibility rules; confirmation of the venue and date for all 2012 intervarsity events; announcement of a new Mixed tournament; a national team structure for 2011/2012; first aid training for clubs; train-ing weekends focused on Mixed ultimate; and finalisation of the Strategic Plan to guide devel-opment for the next five years.

A few other things to mentionFirst, I think it’s important for players to re-

member that the IFDA provides an emergency fund to cover the cost of preliminary treatment for any injury that you’ve sustained while play-ing ultimate. We’ve intentionally put money into that fund so that players can get back out on their feet as quickly as possible- so, if you’re injured, don’t be hesitant and make sure to enter a claim. The Fund is pointless if it’s not used! Here’s the information: http://www.iri-shultimate.com/ifda/emergency.php.

Secondly, remember also that the IFDA pro-vides grants for anything that can help devel-op ultimate. Got an idea and need money to implement it? Apply for a grant. Information is here: http://www.irishultimate.com/ifda/grants.php.

Finally, at present, ultimate in Ireland relies on the voluntary efforts of its players in order to develop. Any amount of time that you spend spreading word of the sport or getting new play-ers involved helps tremendously. I really want to see this sport develop and grow, and I have no doubt that most people who actively play in Ireland feel the same. With that in mind, I’d encourage you to think about what you can do to help, and do it. Stuck for ideas? Or have an idea but not sure how to implement it? Get in touch with me at [email protected].


WHAT HAVE YOU EVER DONE FOR ME?look at the specific role of IFDA Committee members. Gearoid O Fearghail, IFDA press

secretary extraordinaire, interviews himself to figure out what it is exact-ly that he does.

By Gearoid O Fearghail

Why did you become press secretary?

I enjoy helping to improve the things I take part in and I saw some opportunities which the IFDA were missing out on and I thought that I might be of help. I felt that ultimate in Ireland got no publicity and considering how kitsch it is, it should get SOME publicity. I also felt people didn’t really understand what the IFDA does. I decided to try work as a press secretary, with two specific jobs

1) Get coverage on Ultimate out there for people who don’t know about ultimate

2) Let people know what the IFDA is doing

You have a long history of volunteer-ing for things, don’t you?

I do, it’s true. I can’t think of a single thing I’ve had an interest in where I haven’t put time into running events, improving the community, or whatever. My CV is one page of the usual shite, and one page of volunteer experience!

I’ve worked on press things before, as part of an online community, and there’s a lot of cross-over between them, I’ve found. I’ve worked on TV shows, magazines, podcasts, around a hun-dred tournaments, and been forced into manag-ing a fair few teams. The one thing I’ve learnt

The printers rejected the cards with Gearoid’s face on them...

A little known fact about IFDA discs is their perfect balance (Photograph: Mark Earley)


from this is that there is always a better man for a job. So I’ve gotten a press team of in-terested individuals together. By having four people working, we can get four times as much done.

What approaches have you taken to succeed in your jobs?

Promoting ultimate frisbee is actually quite a hard thing to do, despite my earlier thoughts that it would be quite easy! The biggest issue is a lack of money. Say I decided to give out free frisbees on Grafton Street: My entire annual budget would be spent in 20 minutes! I don’t have a small budget because of any low impor-tance placed on my work by the treasurer, mind you, but just because there’s so little discre-tionary spending in the IFDA ( we only have 120 paying members, did you know!)

So, getting publicity: What I’ve done so far, along with my team of gallant volunteers, is to try and make what contacts that can be made in the media, to make up a mailing list. When events happen, we make up a press release,

try to add some good photos, and send it out to our press contacts. Or at least that’s the theory. For the moment, we’re only releasing a press release a month or so, mainly because writing press releases is a very boring thing.

I also started an initiative to work on a new website, and got some people together to work on it. But it became immediately apparent that I couldn’t afford the time to work on something like a big new professional website while in fi-nal year. But I set the process in motion, and work on that continues, under the enlightened stewardship of Robert Kane.

We’re also working on a press kit full of the in-formation journalists need if they want to write about ultimate frisbee, such as an explanation of the sport, footage and photos of the sport in action, a list of events they should attend to try the sport out themselves, and most impor-tantly, who they should contact with queries.

With that done, the plan is to go harass a load of journalists with a good pitch.


What have you done to tell people about the IFDA?

Last year, the IFDA did a lot of things to help the Irish ultimate frisbee community grow, but no one was aware that this stuff was being done. This led to the attitude that the IFDA isn’t that important, when it really is. If you had asked people what the IFDA did, they’d have se-rious difficulty answering you with anything useful. So I took it upon myself to get a better connection between the players and the IFDA. By the end of the year, people will be know the IFDA constitution off by heart!

The most noticeable and successful thing I’ve done is to set up an IFDA Facebook page and IFDA twitter account. The old problem was that the IFDA only had 1 online method of communi-cation, the mailing list, and only the more ex-perienced players of Ultimate would be on the mailing list (not to mention the numerous issues with actually getting on the list). Compare this with Facebook, the most used website in the world. Since its set up in October, the page has gotten 420 members. In the past month we’ve gotten 100,000 unique views on posts, and 900 likes or comments on them.

Best of all, Twitter can be used to update scores from tournaments. This means that peo-ple who can’t make the tournament can still find out what the score is. I think this has also been a great success this year, barring the now obligatory technical difficulty on Sunday morn-ing. There are also plans afoot to get people more aware of some of the IFDA’s schemes, such as the emergency fund and the grant scheme. It seems people are aware of that these things exist, but no one is quite sure what they do.

What are your plans for the next 6 months?

Well, the main thing I plan to do is to get some publicity for ul-timate frisbee. There has been some coverage already in places, but that’s all been a case of them approaching us. So far, myself and the press team have been working on setting up the systems required, but that should be done by June, and from there on, it’s

just a case of shaking hands and getting the name out there.

Gearóid’s IFDA press team is:

Aoife Delany.

Grainne McCarthy.

Tendai Muzwidzwa.

George Pardoe.

The plan is to go harass a load of journalists with a good pitch...


By Fergus McAuliffe, Robin Giller, Brian O’Callaghan, Deirdre O’Breasail

and Ray Considine

UCC Ultimate shouldn’t work. It’s a small club in the biggest county in Ireland, a county that’s competitive at every major sport. People come to UCC with aspirations of making the football or hockey or basketball team. Even the lesser known sports have an advantage: every-one knows about trampolining or Paintball, but what the hell is Ultimate Frisbee? Sure the vid-eo looks kind of cool and that girl at the club’s day counter is winking at me, but why would I want to play Frisbee over any of the other 60 or so sports on show? With all the competition and the lack of information, how does a club like UCC grow from a handful of casual mem-bers to near 80 players in less than ten years?

CORK BLIMEYHow UCC Ultimate became the top college team in Ireland.

With no teams nearby to play against, how does it go from rank outsiders to first seeds at var-sity competitions in the same time? Is it just another club’s cycle of strength in the history of Varsity’s trophy, soon to fall away for a few seasons, or is it something more? Like I said, UCC Ultimate shouldn’t work. But on closer in-spection it really should!

The club itself was Dave Rosenfeld’s idea. He was coming to Cork in pursuit of Murphys and a PhD in French Literature, and having played at a high level in the UK for a number of years, Dave was an Ultimate fanatic. He was quick, experi-enced and hucked like a demon (and he’ll still give you a run for your money in a pitch-length sprint). Things were slow at the beginning with practices run in groups of six and seven – mostly Dave’s mates I think. The odd exchange student from the states would float in an out of the club with fancy new throws and stories of layout Ds.

The UCC 2007 team (Photograph: Mark Canning)


But for the most part, people met up for a bit of a throw around while Dave devised his coaching plan.

It was around 2003-4 when the club started to gain some momentum. There were a lot of new players coming through at that time: Mark Canning, Tadhg Healy, Kieran and Robin Giller, Brian O’Callaghan, Peter Forde, Fergus McAu-liffe and Dee O’Breasail. Some strong American pickups added to the team so that quality prac-tices with 20-30 players were happening almost weekly. Dave, as coach, did a lot of work on skills and tactics in those years and the club made a real tangible progression. We started to play with structure and became competitive at national level, losing the 2004 Intervarsity final controversially in sudden death to a formidable UCD side. We won a few trophies, mostly at in-doors competitions, but, although there was a

lot of individual talent in the team, we were never able to crack Varsities. In 2007, five or six of the core members of the team graduated, having never lifted that trophy. The player base was growing but it looked like Cork were on a slump again.

In those early years, we put a lot of effort into promoting the club around the country: making sure we went to every tournament and league game on offer, and building Cork Open up to the marquee event in Irish Ultimate. We wanted everyone else to know that Cork were here and were a big part of a Dublin-centric Irish Ulti-mate scene. This was somewhat to the detri-ment of our efforts at promoting Ultimate in UCC, but that’s something that has since been put right.

Though the club lost some of their big hitters in 2007, the increasing attendance at trainings week in, week out provided the base for the emergence of a stronger club. It also focused the attention on developing the club as a whole rather than relying on the same players, both on and off the field, to bring the club forward. A big recruitment push welcomed new members and encouraged them to take up positions of re-sponsibility in the running of the club. Some of the names recruited were Ray Considine, Rich-ard Hobson, Meabh Boylan, Donal Murray, Mark Fanning, and Yasin Mammeri who would prove to be key players and administrators in the fu-ture. This lay the foundation for UCC to become more ambitious both in Ireland and beyond.

In 2008 Leo Yoshida arrived into the Port of Cork (kind of!), and the club made changes in coaching personnel which brought a new per-spective to the way trainings were conducted. Leo was a previous world club champion with his Canadian mixed team TFP, and the team’s performances improved significantly not only because of Leo’s handling and superb abilities on field, but also because of the general con-fidence and belief that his teammates derived from having such a player alongside them. Win-ning the inaugural Intervarsity League meant UCC qualified for their first BUCS UK Open Out-door Nationals from which they came home with

Steven Kehoe bids for the disc (Photograph: Mark Earley)


the Plate. It was good preparation for the Open Outdoor Intervarsities. Though UCC fielded a strong team at Intervarsities, it was not yet our time to take home the trophy, but the loss to Trinity in the final increased the hunger for Var-sity success.

The club had learned a lot from the experi-ence of its dramatic propulsion up the Varsity rankings in the 2008/09 season. The players had begun to develop a taste for success but retained a level of humility due to the painful IV final defeat. Fortunately, the majority of the squad members were still eligible for the 2009/10 season, which meant that they could prepare for the season with their sights set high from the outset. An improved amount of focus and work ethic was instantly noticeable, with each player’s skills, fitness and confidence in-creasing week by week. Success at Indoor IVs in November provided unequivocal evidence that the hard work was paying off.

The week after that success, the city was flooded and the club’s training facilities de-

stroyed. As a result, the squad had to go to great lengths in order to partake in even the most basic of training sessions. Sharing in this demanding experience gelled the team togeth-er more than ever before, so when they were unleashed on the outdoor IV scene, they were unleashed as a unit. After comprehensively retaining their Intervarsity League title, they went on to finish 5th at UK Nationals, narrowly losing their quarter final against the reigning champions but securing a record high placing for an Irish university in the process. The team successfully carried this form into the Outdoor IV weekend, banishing the memories of the pre-vious year by blitzing all before them to take home the Varsity trophy for the first time and finishing the Open IV season unbeaten. The year was capped off with the club named UCC’s Most Improved Club for 09/10. Things were certainly moving up.

One of the club’s greatest achievements that season was its off-field recruitment. The play-ers’ confident, positive attitude proved infec-tious during the recruitment drive, with more

UCC at Uni League 2011 (Photograph: Brian O Callaghan)


athletic beginners attracted than ever before. The potential of these recruits was confirmed by their impressive success at UCD Beginners. Despite the fact that half of the IV winning team were leaving UCC that year, the proficiency of the recruitment drive meant that the club could prepare for the following season with very large and talented squad once again.

The 10/11 season is one that is characterised by two things: continuity and improvement.

The new leadership felt the weight of ex-pectation heavy on their shoulders, and were anxious that the standards on-field and off-field would remain as high as the previous season so that success would continue. Once achieve-ment levels were on a par, the leaders of the club looked to improve as much as possible.

This season the club embarked on an unparal-leled schools development program, which now coaches approximately 60 schools students in the Cork area each week. The Ireland Junior ladies team for this summer is a prime example of the success of the schools program, with 90% of the team members trained in Cork schools.

The club also increased its training schedule to cope with the fruits of the recruitment drive. On many occasions, the club ran 10 sessions a week across 1st team, beginner, ladies, fitness and schools sessions. On an average week, ap-proximately 120 UCC students and school pu-pils were being coached. In total the club ran 7 tournaments, an unheard of amount for a club in Irish ultimate. This re-quired enormous dedication and or-ganisation from many people.

On the field, suc-cesses continued, with the club retaining all IV trophies won in the 09/10 season, and adding the Developmen-tal and Whacking Day Open division trophies to their cabinet. Marked improvement in the la-dies side also occurred, with the ladies team reaching both IV finals for the first time ever. Considering that the ladies side of the club had for so long been very small, this was a great

Steven Kehoe almost gets an interception on Trinity College’s Cian Quinn (Photograph: Mark Earley)

120 UCC s t u d e n t s and school p u p i l s were being coached.


achievement. At the season’s end, UCC teams had competed in every IV final across Open in-door and outdoor, University League, Ladies indoor and outdoor, Developmental and Mixed. The club twice travelled to the UK, holding 7th seed at Mixed indoor nationals, and winning the plate (9th) in division 1 of Open outdoor nation-als.

The highpoint of the season for many people was when the University awarded the club the title of Club of the Year. This was a fantastic achievement considering this award was typi-cally won by the “big” clubs. Names etched on the trophy include, on multiple occasions, Rug-by, Hurling, Gaelic Football, Soccer and Hockey. To have the endeavours of the club recognised in such a fashion by non-ultimate players was something that will stick in the minds of all those involved.

So should UCC Ultimate work? A sport played in a very athletic county that loves to com-pete. A club with access to facilities and re-sources to have many trainings each week and separate trainings for separate teams. A club in a very large college which offers many long term degrees and postgraduate options. A club with training facilities close to college, in a city where everything is within walk-able dis-tance. A club that has developed a large ri-valry amongst its own players partly due to the county mix present in UCC, and also has a huge rivalry between everyone else. Every club will have opportunities and threats to success. UCC Ultimate has looked at both. Mistakes have been made but with planning, reflection, and buckets of hard work and commitment UCC Ul-timate has strived to be the best it can be and recently things have worked.

College clubs are often susceptible to huge changes of membership, (especially one with a large Erasmus contingent), which brings the strong likelihood of change in how the club is run once the new committee are voted in at each AGM. This is difficult for those who have invested so much time into the club into the past, but everyone understands that a large club needs lots of members involved, and new

members need encouragement and a chance to make a difference. Will UCC Ultimate continue with its recent successful? Only time will tell, but with a strong focus on recruitment, training and schools work it, UCC Ultimate is definitely trying.


Lookfly were recently awarded the contract to supply the 3 Irish teams with kit for the upcoming European Championships in Slovenia. We chat-ted with Steve Giguere, the Director of Lookfly, about setting up an Ul-timate-related business, and how it feels to be kitting out Ireland again.

By Liz Schaffalitzky

The impression I get from the bio on your website (www.lookfly.com) is that Lookfly started out predominantly as a hobby rather than a business venture. When did you realise that there was the potential to bring it further?

It did start as a hobby at the end of 2000 but that followed on from it simply being a solution to a problem, that being to get some uniforms for our own team. Once we had some success with that and others teams expressed interest in it, it progressed from there into what was just ‘beer money’ for about a year. The turn-ing point, where it became real, was when my typical day was waking up at 6am, going to manufacturing for 6:30am to collect any orders, dropping them at the printer and then going to work for 9am. At lunch I’d go to the guy who did the numbering and get the shirts from the previous day, pack them up and send them. At night I did emails. It was hectic. The hobby had become a 2nd job. The timing was right when I met my current partner Allison and she wasn’t happy with her current job. She decided to quit her job and see if Lookfly could get big enough to sustain itself. This was about a year and a half later. That was when we registered prop-erly as a company and started to really take it

seriously with Alli working on it full-time

HOW TO LOOK FLYAnd now a word from our sponsors...

while I still worked at my regular job to support us. Any money made went back into improving the business or improving the Ultimate scene.

The Ultimate community is a relative-ly small target population, were you surprised that Lookfly became a sus-tainable business? Do you think there was anything unique about the Ultimate community that made this possible?

Are we surprised? Absolutely! So are most of the people at my previous job with Motorola who keep asking me if I’m doing this ‘full-time?!”. When we started, almost 10 years ago, there was only about 2 or 3 teams that wore technical tops to play in. Top teams like Fusion played

Steve Giguere poses in the sun (Photograph: Tom Styles)


in mirky green cotton t shirts. It was only re-ally Clapham and BAF who started to sport a more professional appearance. That started the ball rolling and people suddenly realised it was much nicer to play in proper gear. To answer your question about the Ultimate community, almost every sport has a culture and sports brands associated with it. I think that the intro-duction of a dedicated Ultimate brand in the UK was pretty cool! People who play Ultimate are often open minded people who are accepting of new ideas and difference ways of thinking. The idea that a company could exist locally, and be dedicated to like-minded individuals in such a small market was exciting. If it weren’t for the support of the players we certainly would not be here today.

While always trying to maintain a ‘no sweat shop rule’ to keep your products

ethically sound, Lookfly has also more recently made an effort to increase its ‘Green’ credentials ( wind-powered HQ, almost paperless company, and also using NewLife(TM) fabric made from recycled plastic). How do you think this has impacted your business? Do the extra costs discourage orders, or is the Ultimate community (arguably comprised largely with middle-class hippies) the ideal place for this type of operation?

The biggest impact our eco-ethical ethos has had on our business has been on our costs. Get-ting fabric made and garments manufactured all costs more as a result. That doesn’t mean our pricing reflects this though. We price all of our gear competitively against other Ultimate brands and that means lower margins. That mean’s doing more(community support, spon-

Steve playing for the GB masters beach team who won silver at worlds in 2008. Their jerseys were all designed and printed by lookfly. (Photograph: UK Ultimate)


sorships, advertising and development) with less unfortunately. We did a small poll recently to find out what our more eco-ethical business model meant to people and to see if it was im-portant enough to our customers to pay that lit-tle bit extra for it. The results were somewhat varied. Most people like our ethos but weren’t willing to pay more for it...yet. Some said they would use that factor as a tie breaker if they were undecided about who to order with. That’s encouraging! Although Ultimate does draw in a certain amount of the ‘middle class hippy’, the fashions in Ultimate are largely led by the student and recent grad population. That group of players doesn’t have the expendable income that the older players might. With Ultimate ex-panding as quickly as it is, the youth population is outweighing the hippies. As a result, we need to acknowledge that and keep pricing competi-tive until we feel we can start to price our gar-ments in such a way that reflects our internal costs. Our manufacturing policies are some-thing we feel strongly about and aren’t some-thing we’re going to change. We do hope that, slowly but surely, more people see the way we do business as a good thing and that hopefully we’re influencing change for the better.

And it probably helps you sleep at night too! You mentioned there your involvement with the ultimate commu-nity, which I think is one of the great things about Lookfly as a company. You sponsor events and initiatives by pro-viding prizes (such as to our own Photo Competition, thanks for that!), run the hugely successful Copa Cobana tour-nament (http://www.thecopa.co.uk/) and you yourself have become a bit of an ‘Ulti-Celeb’ (along with Tom Styles) with Blockstack TV (http://www.block-stack.tv/). Was it a conscious decision to market yourselves in this way?

No. Next question please :). Really though...you’ve mentioned three things that are meant to be (but often get intertwined), totally sepa-rate. I started getting into Copa Cabana be-fore Lookfly. BlockStack was really a Tom Styles

company from the early Noughties that we resurrected to do some fun and more gorilla style media for Ultimate events. (no spelling error there...we aren’t hardcore enough to be called guerilla media). They’re all just projects spawned from a love for the sport. What is con-scious marketing for Lookfly? No. In fact I make a very conscious point to not use either thing as a venue to push Lookfly. It either even came across that way I feel they would lose credibil-ity for the amazing and fun things they are.

You have a very personal and ‘hands-on’ approach to your company, do you think this has helped you to secure cus-tomer loyalty?

I’m pleased you kept this question in after my being so poor as answering your questions. Be-ing personal is a by-product of us being such a small company. We’re involved in every little aspect from the yarn choices and pattern de-sign to the grunt work of putting numbers on to each individual garment. I have to thank Allison for most of the hard work in terms of building customer loyalty. She’s a superstar at keep-ing customers happy with great communication throughout the whole complicated ordering process.

I’m guessing that the lead up to sum-mer and big events is your busiest time in terms of orders and manufacturing, would you consider the winter months your ‘off-season’, or are there specific jobs you work on in that time?

Actually our off season happens during August and September when all of the summer orders are complete, most of the big events are over and the student aren’t back yet. As winter ap-proaches a whole new aspect of the job starts up with the return of the University teams. A scene that is slowly surpassing the size of the summer Tour crowd!

When/If you have time-off, is it still fun to attend tournaments and play Ul-timate, or is it a case that it’s a little


too close to your work? Do you even consider tournaments time off?

It is rare I play a tournament with no Lookfly connection at all. When it happens it’s nice ac-tually. Most years I put the Glastonbury event aside as a non-Lookfly event. I consider it time off. Allison doesn’t. :). We do live and breathe the sport so it can be overwhelming at times. I hope I never find it too close to work or unfun.

You were awarded the contract to supply kit to the Irish teams this year for EUC. How does it feel to be linked to, arguably, the most Spirited country in the world?

Arguably! Ireland has the best track record for spirit, period. About 7 years ago Ireland would sweep Spirit prizes but lose games. Now they still maintain that same level of high spirit and fair play but are competitive. Teams who previ-ously only saw Ireland as a team to share a drink with, are now also fearing that game against

them the next day. In short...we’re stoked to be linked with Ireland. Who wouldn’t be!?

How important are national team con-tracts to the company?

Simple question; complex answer. Each Na-tional team contract has a different meaning to us. We’ve covered off why we love Ireland above. We also do a lot of work with the GB team as you know. They’re the largest squad in Europe, the scene we work in and have the most contact with. They have been really great to us over the years. That’s a relationship that is mutually beneficial. We both help each other develop. We do some work with other countries like Germany as well. We have a good relation-ship with the DFV and enjoy going to events there. We don’t pursue contracts with countries we don’t feel we can establish a relationship with. It’s not important to us to get National team contracts just to have National teams in

our stable. We’ve already got great arrange-ments with the teams that we find important.

You had previously kitted out Ireland for 03/04, but missed out on the op-portunity in 07/08. Was there anything taken or learned from missing out on that occasion that you think lead to wining the contract this year?

We don’t fight for contracts that hard. Frank-ly, our business model doesn’t give us the mar-gins to do that. We feel our service and qual-ity is what wins contracts for us. That goes not only for National teams but for Clubs as well. There’s been plenty of times when teams have tried us, gone to try a competitor and decided that they rather just work with us. It’s easier and better in our opinion. At least we hope it is. If anyone reading this thinks it isn’t, please let us know! The instance you mention was pretty historic. 2003 was such a different time for Lookfly. It was pretty cool to have Ireland

The EUC 2004 Ireland women’s team whose Jerseys were also made by Lookfly. How times sure have changed! (Photograph: Mark Earley)


has our first National squad. 2007/8 wasn’t re-ally anybody’s fault. I don’t think we were ap-proached that year until it was rather late. A problem that the organisers fixed this year and it’s going really well!

Any differences between working with Ireland this time round in compar-ison to 8 years ago?

Haha! Everybody is more organised. I can’t stress this change enough. MUCH MUCH MORE ORGANISED!!! How’s that?

Where do you think the future lies for Lookfly? Any exclusives you can give us?

I wish I knew. We still seem to fly by the seat of our pants. We lead sometimes, like with our 100% recycled gear (that Ireland will be wearing this year!). Other times we take leads from the industry and our competition. Currently we’re looking to improve our sublimation to lower the price, and also work to improve the quality and softness of our recycled yarn. Recycled light weight sports fabrics are pretty new not just to the Ultimate market but on a worldwide scale. I just read that the new 2011 Nike Arsenal shirt was made out of plastic bottles. Furious George and Chevron were wearing Lookfly shirts from recycled bottles last year. We just got proto-types of some base-layers into stock that are 90% recycled plastic and feel a bit like merino wool. Very cool! If there’s anything readers might like to see us work on, just let us know!


In another new feature of the news-letter, we put a question to randomly selected members of the community.

My best ultimate memory so far has to be my first ever point at my first competition this year at Whacking Day 2010 in DCU. And getting the MVP award really made it one of my best sport-ing moments ever!

Lee, South Dublin

Well, my best Ultimate related memory is from Florence, when I was playing with the mixed under 23’s. After dinner, the brilliant craic we used to have messing about in the swimming pool, from laying out into the pool catching the disc, to a good old game of ‘mingle mingle’. One particular moment springs to mind howev-er: Martin ‘Juno’ Kelly (WIT) doing the penguin walk into the pool, hopping out and ingeniously exclaiming that he hoped ‘no blind people saw that’ !! Honestly, along with the other girls on the team, I can safely say I have never laughed so much in a week. I did not come home with cramps or stiffness from playing, I came home with a ridiculously sore stomach from laughing at Juno!

Hayley, Tralee/Cork

Meeting Heather and mischievous hucking on Trinity’s beloved rugby pitch with David Perry

Redmond, Currently Galway

My favourite is from college. Was playing in a big tournament and giving it socks and got a layout D. Our team tradition was when you got a layout D you got to rip off one of the sleeves of our ‘uniform’ tshirt. Very proud moment and wearing that (now that I think about, horrible looking) one-sleeved T-shirt felt like a huge achievement.

Katie, Dublin

European championships in 2007, open divi-sion, Ireland versus Denmark. We were massive underdogs and we won. And it was a really clean game the way I remember it - so few stoppages and discussions. I like that. (Brian’s account of the game is at http://irishultimate.com/re-sources/talking_article.php?HuddleID=84, Ire-land won 19-18).

Seamus,Cork/Dublin

VOX POPPERSWhat is your best Ultimate-related memory?

There was one point that I grabbed a high disc in the end zone and I re-member the entire hall exploding.


So my best memory of Frisbee has to be when I played with Limerick during Whacking Day two years ago. The team was really short on numbers and I was freelance so they were eager to have me. The girls were all wonderful, so welcoming and very grateful that I played with them. We fought really hard all day and got to the final! There was one point that I grabbed a high disc in the end zone and I remember the entire hall exploding (probably not as dramatic as that but it felt like it!). We ended up winning the tour-nament. However there was a problem. Since I had already played Whacking Day when I was 16, and summer league, that qualified me as an experienced player which meant we would be deducted points, losing the final. I felt TERRI-BLE. If I had known I was counted as an experi-enced player, I would have said something, but I didn’t think it counted since I hadn’t played in 2 years. Anyways I was distraught, feeling I had wrecked the team’s chances.

The team were unbelievable. They were just glad to play, winning wasn’t their highlight. We talked to the other finalists and they were so cool about it. It didn’t matter, they had a great tournament regardless, and everyone else there said that it wasn’t a big deal, we just played well and deserved to win. Never before have I been so overwhelmed by a group of people. No one seemed that upset by it, ev-eryone was amazingly kind and reassuring, all that mattered was that Limerick got to play and there was a high-spirited final. The fact that this technicality was overlooked for the benefit of the team and the tournament, is exactly the essence of Ultimate Frisbee that I have come to adore, play and enjoy.

Gráinne, Dublin

This is a new feature to help with those awkward on-field situations where you are always right and the other person is always wrong. Any comments, go to our Facebook page.

The Situation

A game is being played on portapitches on a windy day. A player catches a disc out the back of the endzone, but the wind has dragged the line into an ellipse which marks him. Has he scored?

For the solution to the situation, go to page 32.

WE’RE ALL THE REF


JOHNNY, JOHNNY, JOHNNY, CHIMPO….

As news spread that the Johnny Chimpo Collective and Institute for Higher Thought and Learning has dis-banded, we thought it appropriate to get an insight into a team that di-vided opinion throughout the commu-nity. Mostly between themselves and everyone else. Here’s their take on the labels, the haters, and wearing orange…

By Simon Cocking

Ireland’s most hated team? What a load of bollocks! Sort of. For almost 5 years JC were Ireland’s top team, unbeaten against Irish op-position in all tournaments played in Ireland. And yet…And yet…

You might ask ‘How could this team have been hated? They were simply a cut above the rest.’ However, the two orange flags with numerous black stars symbolising previous tournament wins was probably only the start of reasons why people may not have liked us. Players wearing gorilla suits. The cocky guys, constantly rolling up, and saying things like ‘You’ve been aped!’ didn’t help. The completely unhelpful and un-informative website, with hilarious and enter-taining banter about Super, Broc, and the JC Institute for higher thought and learning. This wasn’t a team you sent an email to, asking if you could play for them: you had to be asked. So yes, I can see why the orange tide may have been unpopular.

To be good, to be the best, there has to be a degree of confidence and even arrogance: You still have to prove it every time you get onto the pitch. And we did prove it, and we did want to do it again. Having won Cork four times we

were still gutted to lose a close semi to Broc (for the first time). Nothing ever lasts for ever, and JC’s days are perhaps done or terminally limited, unless there is an orange renaissance – don’t count your chickens yet! For now though we can definitely say the Chimps are in a fallow period.

Why play in Orange?

Orange was chosen with the same cocky but logical thinking: If we chose a colour that no one else plays in then we will never have to change our shirts.

Why no proper shirts?

After a while this kind of became a badge of honour and perhaps a statement too: Your team may have nice matching shirts, but we’re still going to wipe the floor with you. As time passed it became too late to get them made. I would have liked to have a JC shirt. Instead it was a question of scouring the charity shops for truly horrible items of clothing; disgusting stuff but with that winning orange colour. This led to some magnificently vibrant tops: Hawai-


ian, silk, shiny, all sorts. You were part of the pirate ethos. Players would compete at each tournament to pull out their latest, fantastical-ly tasteless gear. Marko in his reversed Bomber jacket began the trend really.

There was a sense of humour running through-out the whole thing. This was why it was so fun to play for JC. It also made it easier to inte-grate random, high quality pick-ups into the team. They were there for the craic - and win-ning made it more fun again - but there was also generally a good laugh going on. A good laugh, but still incapable of turning down the inten-sity. Players wanted to be on the pitch, wanted to score, get the D. Even if it was already 14-0, playing against Cork 3; like a dog chasing a ball we still wanted that disc.

How many national captains on the team?

In some ways it was never necessary to have a loud demonstrative captain. When you have six people on your team who have captained the Irish open team, as well as a few more who had captained other Irish national teams, the quality was clearly there. Almost everyone who played for JC has also represented Ireland at international level. Several more will probably go on to captain Ireland as well.

A bunch of c@@ts or not?

For now the Cork 07 YouTube video may stand as the watchable highlight of JC’s golden years (thanks Darron Costello). With 3,000 views and counting, it is the most watched Irish Ultimate video to date, and they can’t all of have been JC players. At JC’s prime, to date, we played ag-gressively: high-pressured defence and quick-flowing offense. A large part of the audience was with us for the Cork 2007 final. Even on match point the disc was played quickly and ag-gressively, resulting in one final, glorious, suc-cessfully run-down huck to win the tournament.

We were heavily out-numbered, with only ten players to the opposition’s (FUF from Belgium) fourteen or fifteen, most of whom were a lot taller than our players. We also had four play-ers whose combined ages were over 150 years! Despite this we played well, brilliantly perhaps, aided by Hag having one of his amazing non-hor-monal days. At the end, the organisers seemed truly grateful for such a good final, which natu-rally requires two top teams to be playing in it: Us and FUF. I think people were excited to see good quality Ultimate played here Ireland.

So *shock horror!* JC not a bunch of c@@ts?

Perhaps we shouldn’t go that far. In Ultimate however, Spirit can often be confused with be-ing good losers. JC had no interest in winning Spirit, which is not to say that we were a team that made crappy or bad calls - we didn’t. Some of our more vocal players may have got under the skin of opposition players, and equally we would call what we saw. The thing is, we were about winning tournaments, not friends. To

5 stars for their 5 tournament victories (Photograph: Mark Earley)


win, to be the top of your game, your sport, you have to go in focused. Believing, even as-suming, that you will be there in the last game of the weekend. It’s simply part of playing to win, rather than just showing up to take part. To then brand the team ‘Ireland’s Most Hated Team’ seems to have missed the point.

Irish Ultimate needed to move out of a single team monopoly, when Dublin and Ireland were virtually interchangeable. JC, Irelands non-training all conquering dark side, were neces-sary for Broc, Cork, Jabba and all the rest to rise up against. In time another great team will emerge and be all conquering for a while. For me, I will revel in enjoying watching them play the best Ultimate in Ireland. To hate them would seem like begrudgery.

Thanks for the opportunity to have been a part of this period in the ever upward growth of Irish Ultimate, because this who has ultimately benefitted.

Above: Alan Doyle prepares a heist.

Below: Simon Cocking gets a throw past Accrington Stanley in the final. (Photographs: Mark Earley)


DUBLIN’S EUC BIDAn interview with Dominick Smyth

A reflective interview on Dublin’s failed bid to host EUC 2011 with the head of the bid committee, Dominck Smyth.

by Mark Earley

You were recently part of a team who drew up a bid to host the European Ul-timate Championships here in Dublin. How did that process come about?

Limerick Jim had been interested in bidding for EUC for some time. I had spoken with him about it while I was in office and had been to Limerick for a site visit and meeting with some UL staff about the venture.

At the time, I didn’t think it was something the IFDA was ready to be part of as I felt our resources and man power could be better used on other projects. Jim kept working on the bid and towards the end of last summer, when he began making plans to move back to America, he began the process of handing over the lead-ership of the Limerick bid to some of the other players involved in UL.

These guys did what they could for the bid but I got the impression that they realised it was turning out to be a bigger project than they had imagined. They were very mature and admit-ted as much early rather than let things drag on.

Unfortunately that left the European Ultimate Federation in a bad position. They were eager to find a host for EUC and currently had a venue and a proposal from Ireland but no one to make it happen. As President of the IFDA, the chair of EUC asked for my thoughts on finding others

to take charge of the bid, or even the possibility of him flying over to work on it.

My conversations with him got me thinking and started me talking with some others in Dublin.

Once the idea was formed and a team was together what were your next steps?

I’d say the first issue we talked about was “Where”. The ground work had been done for Limerick but the guys I was talking with, Paul Cronin, yourself [Mark Earley], David Perry, were all in Dublin. It didn’t make a lot of sense to us to take on a project in Limerick while we were here and so we looked into other possible locations closer to home.

Paul suggested Tyman Park in Tallaght, David suggested UCD and I was keen on DCU. We were all happy with any of these venues as they were places we could work with and were accessible to us for planning and meetings. We agreed to look in to each venue in terms of pitches, ac-commodation and food options. We all figured these were the three big things we’d need to know about before we went any further.

What was the most difficult part of the process?

While we were ready to put leg work in to re-searching all the possible venues, our time line was changed due to one of the other bidders being ready to submit. We thus found ourselves with only a few weeks to put all the critical in-formation in place.

Budgets for: pitch hire; rooms; meal plans; en-tertainment; ceremonies; awards; show games; player packs; first aid; sponsorship. While none of these on their own were too difficult a topic


to research and cost, trying to do all of them in a short space of time made the project very real and very daunting.

Obviously the group was very disappointed with the bid’s failure. What do you think were the main rea-sons behind this?

To be brutally honest I think it was the cost of accommodation. Everything else that we were able to provide was top notch. Having an excess of pitches on two adjacent sites; University campus as tournament central for information and events and a perfect canteen able to cater for

800 people at a time.

Unfortunately Ireland is quite an expensive country and the cost of student rooms and local hotels, along with the number of rooms avail-able at each price level, counted against us when direct comparisons were being made.

What did you learn, both personally and as a group, from the experience?

One of the nice things I learnt was the power that hosting an event of this magnitude brings. It was very eye opening to see how external parties responded to the prospect of the event

We had suppliers ready to offer a variety of reduced and free merchandise for exclusive rights to the event; Previously unavailable pitches were now there for our use and we were on the verge of bringing a captive audience of 1400 from all over Europe to Dublin.

In terms of lessons learned about bidding, I’d say time is all important. Working with venues and accommodation suppliers to have enough space available requires giving them a lot of notice. By planning ahead, organisers are in a much better position to find the best prices, ne-gotiate with potential suppliers and not have to worry about deadlines looming over their head.

Do you think that Ireland will be ca-pable to host a major tournament in

the future?

I think Ireland is definitely ca-pable of hosting a tournament but unfortunately I think the prices will make it unlikely. We can only hope that some location (more than likely a university or boarding school) while be so in-terested in the event and the number of people coming in that they would be willing to reduce their prices.

Dominick was recently caught up in an Ultileaks scandal, but close aides deny allegations that this affected Dublin’s EUC bid. (Photographs: Ultileaks)

I think Ireland is capable of hosting a big tournament but unfortu-nately I think the prices will make it unlikely.


If so, what advice would you have for a budding TD team?

It has to be a team. There are so many things to be considered that no one person can look at all of them while putting the bid together. Something that you did for our bid, which I think would have been invaluable had we won, was get input and comments from the multitude of players that would be attending.

I’m not saying you will be able to do every-thing people ask for but there are people out there who can suggest things that even a well rounded team may not have considered.

My final piece of advice is to be mindful of the type of competitors you are catering for. Trim-mings are nice and will no doubt be appreciated but if the big three of fields, food and accom-modation aren’t taken care of, no amount of window dressing will make your tournament a success.

Okay, what did you think were the main stumbling blocks during your bid-ding process?

Just the one - time. We knew going in to it that everything would be rushed but I don’t think we realised the time delays we would en-counter setting up meetings, getting responses from people and shopping around for options.

The lateness of our inquiries meant that the accommodation office in DCU already had other bookings, which meant we had to look at a larg-er number of hotel rooms but because we had to have a budget asap, we weren’t in a position to haggle or shop around.

The more time a bidding group has to look at their options, the more likely they are to get the best prices to achieve the most of what they want to achieve.

If you could change anything about the bid, with the wonderful benefit of

hindsight, what would it be?

To be honest, given the position we were in when we started putting the bid together, I was really happy with how it all turned out. There were some things beyond our control but we had covered a lot of facets of what we felt would have been a very good event. So no, I don’t think I would have changed anything.

Finally, having seen the Slovenian bid win and now begin to work towards the tournament, what are your thoughts about the job they’ve done thus far?

We got in touch with Nejc, Klemen and Ana as soon as we could after the hosting was an-nounced. We tried to share some of the insights we’d been able to make and also let them know some of the plans that we had had. They lis-tened very graciously and I trust they have done what they felt was necessary with what we shared.

To be completely honest though, once the bid was awarded elsewhere, I kind of stopped pay-ing attention. I had training to do, work outs to complete and trials to attend. I’ve been lucky enough to get selected to the Open team that will be competing so all I care about now is working hard with the team and getting over there to represent Ireland.

The tournament will be what it will, the pitch-es will be located and positioned as they are and food will be served at appropriate times. I’ll be there as part of a 60 strong Irish contin-gent and we will do everything we can to repre-sent our country and enjoy ourselves while we are there.

Many thanks for your time. Take care and good luck on the pitch!


This editions interview is with Rory Kavanagh. Rory began playing Ulti-mate in Ireland with Pen15 in 2005, playing with DCU, The Binge? and Johnny Chimpo along the way. He played with Ireland Open team at EUC 2007, and has been selected to play for Ireland Open again this year. Rory took some time out from his busy schedule of growing facial hair to be interviewed for this piece.

By Liz Schaffalitzky

You moved to Barcelona in 2009, what were your expectations of playing ulti-mate there?

I knew I wasn’t moving here for the quality of the ultimate, if that’s what you’re asking. I had been in touch with Shane Reilly, of DCU and Binge? fame, who was on Erasmus here when I moved over. He gave me a brief introduction; Barcelona had two club teams in the city, Pa-tatas Bravas and Peixets (Who were relatively new). Both are at al lower standard than the clubs in Dublin. Shane played for Bravas and recommended I do the same. I had never played against either teams before, only their neigh-bours Disterics from Girona, and thought if the standard was really bad, I could always com-mute there for a good game. When I arrived I wasn’t expecting very much in the way of stan-dard of teams and players, but I was excited at the chance to play in a different environment and learn from different styles and ideas.

PLAYING ULTIMATE ABROADa look into the Irish Ultimate Diaspora

Do you think now that those were fair assessments?

Yes. Bravas have a lot of history and there’s a very big social side to the team, and not the getting wasted and scoring everyone way of Irish Ultimate, more that the team is more than a club to some people. They are quite laid back in many ways, there was no definitive style of play, most players showed up 15 minutes late for training and training would consist of a few non-related drills that would have nothing to do with the game at the end of training. The problem is that because the team was so suc-cessful for many years at winning domestic tournaments, they never really had to define a style of play or become more rigorous with their trainings. More recently as other Spanish teams have caught up, Bravas have become a bit lost and have found it difficult to adapt. So when I arrived, the assessment was correct: trainings

were fun but flakey, and well below the stan-dard of the teams I had trained with in Dublin.

You say ‘when I arrived’, have things changed since then?

Things have changed. Last year, myself and two fellow Bravas set up a new team. I stole the model of Dublin Ultimate, and created a high-ly competitive open grass team, that allowed players to continue playing with their own clubs, but also giving them a chance to train to compete at a higher level. We had some issues with Bravas when we were getting started, but we’re up and running now with weekly train-ing and Tom’s Tourney and Windmill Windup this summer. We named the team Catalyst, because we wanted to change how ultimate was played

2 pints please (Photograph: Mark Earley)


here and because of the play of Catalunya in the name. There was a gap in the market and I think that we have created an outlet for com-petitive Open players that didn’t exist before.

In terms of the scene in Barcelona, would there be many other ex-pats playing there? What language do peo-ple train and play in, Spanish or Cata-lan?

There are loads of ex pats playing here and quite a high turnover of players as well. The majority play with Bravas because of their rep-utation. About two thirds of Bravas were not born in Spain. There are the usual waves of yank students who come in for a semester or two, but Barcelona is a very international city, so there is a great mix of European and Latin American players who live here. Most Bravas training sessions are done in Spanish, with big chunks explained in English to accommodate. Beers after practice are usually a mix of Eng-lish or Spanish depending on who’s there at any given day. The Irish have been represented in the past by Donall McCann and Shane Reilly, and currently myself and Kevin Timoney. I run Cata-lyst in English. Peixets, play in Spanish (I be-lieve) and Disterics and the other clubs outside of the city are all exclusively Catalan

What’s the make-up of the rest of the player base in Spain? Is it similar to Ire-land with the strong university base, or

is there more of an emphasis on clubs?

There is not one single university team in Spain! Only clubs, and usually there is one in each city with a few exceptions. This means that unlike Ireland, there is no annual influx on new players to the community. Instead clubs grow organically and randomly throughout the year. Since most clubs have somewhat of a monopoly in their city their numbers a quite healthy. Bravas (Both A & B teams) have 71 reg-istered members. Each club will usually play Open Mixed and Womens. Just after I arrived, a Hat League aimed at new players was started to attract new players to the sport and has been quite successful and growing, but I have no idea why there is a complete lack of University level ultimate.

I’m guessing that indoors probably isn’t something played in Spain due to the weather and player base then. Is beach therefore more popular than in Ireland?

Nope, no indoors, lots of beach. The great thing about beach ultimate is that it’s free. There’s not much grass here, and if you want a playable pitch you have to pay. Bravas train


every Sunday on a huge beach in Castedefells, about 25 mins from the City. Sundays are great, training in the sun in the afternoon, then a swim followed by a beer in Bañosca. Slightly better than cold muddy pick-up in Herbie followed by an overpriced pint in McCloskeys.

But only slightly. What do you reckon Spain’s chances are for EUC 2011? They’ve entered teams in both the Open and Mixed division. Are their teams based in particular city, or did everyone have a chance to try out?

I know very little about the set up for Spain at EUC. All I’ve heard is bad feedback from my teammates about the selection process. Lots of painfully detailed surveys, and measured fit-ness / endurance tests, followed by a very long period of silence. There are some very talented players here, and they have the potential to do quite well but given their lack of experience at EUC I would say they will find it tough will suf-fer from a lack of structure and composure at that level.

Apart from over-priced pints in Mc-Cluskeys, is there anything else you miss from Ireland ultimate-wise that you can’t get in Spain?

In general I miss the structure that Irish Ulti-mate has. We are still a small community, but there are structures in place that will help us to continue growing. University teams churn out talented players in a highly competitive envi-ronment year after year. This is something that is really missing here. Also, the National Teams set up is something that is very commendable, the IFDA and the individual’s involved have done a great job in putting structure behind national teams, which will allow the players on these teams to grow and learn at the highest levels.

As well as the following;

1. Heckling

2. Having lots of grass to play on.

3. Phrases like “Put it in the mixer!”

4. Post Training Chicken Fillet rolls with Taco Sauce

5. Post Tournament Zaytoon & Buckfast

6. Playing Tour “We beat Leeds!”

7. Brian McDevitt wrecking the buzz.

The age-old tradition of Irish slagging: something they will never get right in Europe. Thanks for your time Rory.


IMPROVE YOUR GAMETraining for Quickness

The great Lucy Barnes, coach of LMS, Ireland Women 08, and previous cap-tain of Brute Squad (ranked 4th in the World) talks through the importance of quickness and how to build it into your game.

By Lucy Barnes

Why Quickness?

The fastest player on the pitch tends to get a lot of credit, as they’re streaking deep to catch a huck. The best thrower on the pitch likewise, as they break the force or send the aforemen-tioned huck. Even endurance gets its credit as the player still fresh at the end of a long week-end is able to take over and dominate finals games. These elements of the game are criti-cal, and in consequence aspiring players spend a lot of time working on their throws, speed and fitness. But here I want to highlight another ele-ment of the athletic toolkit that ultimate uses, which perhaps gets less attention: quickness.

What do I mean by quickness?

It is not just another word for speed- how fast you are running in a straight line. What I mean by quickness is how fast players are in a much smaller space: the first three steps of ac-celeration, deceleration, as well as the ability to change direction quickly.

Why should you care?

There are two main reasons: first, the player on the opposing team who I least like to guard is not their fastest player (use your body to take away their long cuts; sell them a fake and be

open by miles on offense), nor their best throw-er (stop them getting the disc in a strong posi-tion; put on a good force). The player who is hardest to guard is the player who has superior quickness. On offense, it translates to being able to set up the most convincing cuts- both by selling good fakes with changes of direction, but also in getting a metre or so of separation from the first few steps: even a faster play-er will struggle to close that distance over the length of the average cut. On defence, quick-ness is even more critical. Quickness allows you to react to any fake your offensive player makes, as well as to have the confidence to dic-tate in one direction with the knowledge that your first steps out of the turn will allow you to win the race back to where you pushed the cut-ter. On the force, quick feet allow you to cover more of the field. Second, working on quick-ness will make you a better athlete - developing the strength and coordination to get quicker is a base for speed, better throws, not to mention injury prevention.


The Building Blocks

Where does quickness come from?

Some part of quickness is implied by what people just consider to be basic athleticism: balance, coordination, and body control. But just like throwing, fitness and running speed, while people will start out with different levels of quickness, it can be trained. It may sound stupid, but thinking about whether you look like an athlete on the field can be helpful in devel-oping running, jumping, turning form that will make you quicker. So, do you look like an ath-lete?

1. Balance

Eventually we want to be able to move in any direction, from any position, and an important part of doing this quickly is not falling down. Balance has a lot of different elements, but core strength, especially in the glutes and hips, helps. Although quick feet do not necessarily need a lot of power, a critical part of quick-ness is balance, and balance starts with core strength - so quickness starts with the core.

The second part of staying balanced is put-

ting yourself in a position where you can use these big muscles to help you: this is your ba-sic athletic stance. Knees bent, on your toes, weight centred, ready to go in any direction. As you put this stance into motion, two things that you can never do too much of is getting low to the ground any time you want to acceler-ate or turn, (by bending your knees, not leaning over from your back!) and following your head. This second part may sound silly, but your head is heavy, and your body is set up to want to move in the direction you are facing. So get your head turned around to where you want to go as early as possible, and follow it. When ac-celerating for your first few steps, you need to be looking forward (not at the disc, wherever that may be!).

2. Footwork

No matter how good your stance and your bal-ance, you will clearly fall down if you try to accelerate without moving your feet. So quick-ness requires a lot of attention to footwork. Again we can break this down into two parts.

First, being able to move your feet as quickly as possible through the steps that you need to make; and second, training the muscle memo-ry to make your steps the most efficient ones. An example here probably illustrates the point best: think about the motion that you make in transitioning from back-pedaling, to sprint-ing forward in the same direction (your player is heading deep, and at first you can keep up while facing him and the disc, but at some point you need to turn 180 degrees and run with him). How can you make this turn as quickly as pos-sible? From our first point, you need to be able to get your feet turned around quickly, and to push through the first few accelerating steps of your forward sprint. From the second, you should be able to turn 180 degrees in two steps: the first opens up your hips to their new direc-tion, and with the second step you are already sprinting off. Without thinking about this, and working on it, it’s likely that you spend two ex-tra steps as your hips gradually come around, turning a few degrees with each step.


These two elements- balance and footwork- are the building blocks on which quick feet, good acceleration and turning, are based. The final element for quickness is to realize that both of these elements, plus acceleration and deceleration themselves, can be trained and improved. Below are a few exercises and drills that may help -- there are all kinds of things you can do so these are just a few examples. A big part will also be played by thinking about your stance and your footwork at all times when you’re playing, and even in warm ups and fit-ness and games.

Some Drills for Quickness

CORE: GLUTE MED

The glute med basically keeps your knees in line and are a really critical piece of all the movements that you need for quickness. So: Lie on your side with knees bent and feet together (supporting your head with your arm). Keeping your back straight, and not rolling backwards, open up your top knee from your bottom, keep-ing your feet together. See here for a video:

http://youtu.be/ucfqiQI8X5Y

BALANCE

start out by just balancing on one foot... ba-sically anything standing on one leg (for exam-ple, yoga poses) will help! Here’s an example:

FOUR CONE DRILL: this is four one-legged half-squats, with the non-standing leg pointed out to four imaginary cones at the corners of a box around you. So stand on your left leg, point your right leg to `north west’, squat down and come back up. Then your right leg goes to point ‘northeast’, ‘southeast’, ‘southwest’. Focus on staying balanced, and don’t put your right leg down between squats. Here’s a video:

http://brutesquad.multiply.com/video/item/64/4_cone_drill.avi

FAST FEET:

there are so many drills you could do, the most basic of which is just skipping (with a rope). Ladder drills are also really good for this. If you don’t have a ladder or a skipping rope, you can do jumps over a line, and other variations- per-haps something like this:

DOT DRILL

Imagine 5 dots arranged like the 5-side of a die. You are going to start with your feet apart and jump through the dots:

(1) facing forward at all times, starting legs apart, jump to the middle “dot”, then split to the far pair of dots (“split-together-split”)

(2) on your left foot only, go around the dots in a figure 8; repeat on your right foot only, and with both feet jumping together

(3) split-together-split, but with a 180 turn when you reach the far dots (so, start split; jump together; jump split; jump turn; jump feet to-gether; jump split; jump turn, and you’re back to the start. A video is here:

http://brutesquad.multiply.com/video/item/72/dot_drill.avi

Roger Beatty works up a sweat on the ladders (Photograph: Mark Earley)


The Situation

A game is being played on portapitches on a windy day. A player catches a disc out the back of the endzone, but the wind has dragged the line into an ellipse which marks him. Has he scored?

The Call - Out of Bounds.

Rule 2.1:

The playing field is a rectangle 100m long and 37m wide.

2.3: The perimeter lines are not part of the playing field.

Thus, the fact that the line has moved does not change the dimensions of the pitch.Something I would consider (and this is prompted by years of people shouting “check feet” on unlined pitches) is what adjustments the receiver had made on account of the line. Did they make an effort to get their foot down before the line or did they simply catch and land without any thought.

If they made an effort, and it is feasible that their effort could have got them in if the line was correct, then I would be inclined to return the disc to the thrower and resume at whatever the stall count had been.

If they didn’t make any effort, or if no amount of effort would have got them in on correct lines, than I would stand by the call of out of bounds.

Called by Dominick Smyth

Do you have an interesting conundrum to challenge our refs with?

If so, send it to [email protected] and the best submissions will be put in the next newsletter.

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