Thursday, 28 July 2011

Rookies, Rookies, Rookies

In the wake of an exciting new addition to the league calender - the mid year draft league, and with season 2 for 2011 looming it is a good time to talk about BPL rookies.

LD Graham's draft league provided both an opportunity for the North to show its superiority in pretty much everything, and for a good number of men to try playing up at the BPL standard for the first time.

The transition from the Mixed play in the BUML up the BPL is a challenging one for any player to make. The game is faster, the standard of play is more complex and the inter club rivalries are spicier. Some players join the league and thrive while others move on after a season or two.

The Moreton Bay Buggers have a proud tradition of finding and developing rookies for their BPL teams. The Bugs have been in the competition for 5 years in 17 seasons with 21 teams. There have been 68 Buggers over the years of which 37 have been rookies, an average of 1.8 per team.

Its important to clarify the definition of 'a rookie' for the purpose of this post and the MBB records. A rookie is a player who is new to the BPL and to BPL standard frisbee. I.e players who are competing in their first BPL but have played similar standard frisbee elsewhere are not considered rookies. Only guys who are joining the league up from BUML or lower standard have been counted as rookies on the Buggers. There have been many additional guys play their first game of BPL with the Bugs from the US, Canada, UK, Colombia and interstate, these guys haven't been counted as rookies.


In our 17th season we are excited about 4 new players joining the Buggers team, 3 of these guys are new to Open frisbee and will face all the excitement and challenge of a rookie season in the Brisbane Premier League.

The following is a list of blokes who spent their rookie year playing for the Buggers:

Winter 2006
B11 Adam Beu - 11 bug seasons - current Hero captain
B12 Alex Chadwick - 11 bug seasons
B13 Liam Gillions - 10 bug seasons
B14 Scott Massey - 5 bug seasons
B15 Matthew Morrison - 2 bug seasons
B16 Ben Worby - 8 bug seasons

Summer 2006
B18 Nick Coote - 8 bug seasons - current BUML team captain
B19 Michael Kanowski - 7 bug seasons

Season 3 2007
B21 Stephen Glen - 2 bug seasons
B22 Josh Peters - 3 bug seasons
B25 Spinner Sheppard - 8 bug seasons - current Bugger
B28 Craig Stewart - 1 bug season

Season 1 2008
B30 George Salisbury - 5 bug seasons - current Hero
B31 Reece Stewart - 4 bug seasons - current Cobra captain
B32 Daniel Strelan - 1 bug season - current Hero
B33 Felix Duvallet - 1 bug season
B34 Erik Stevenson - 1 bug season
B35 Damian Wong - 3 bug seasons

Season 2 2008
B37 Steve Timms - 1 bug season
B39 John Catarius - 1 bug season
B42 Simon Statham - 6 bug seasons

Season 3 2008
B43 Jo Dilegge - 1 bug season
B44 Doug Meikle - 1 bug season

Season 1 2009
B46 Wayne Benton - 1 bug season
B47 Rashaun Hoh - 1 bug season
B48 Ben Hutchinson - 1 bug season
B49 Jack Lilwall - 1 bug season - current Cobra
B50 Trevor Lovering - 6 bug seasons - current Bugger
B52 Andrew Ogilivie - 4 bug seasons - current Bugger
B53 Andrew Rhule - 1 bug season
B55 Jimmy Smith-Cotrell - 1 bug season
B56 Michael Watt - 2 bug seasons

Season 2 2009
B59 Ryan Flux - 2 bug seasons

Season 1 2010
B61 Tim Johnson - 4 bug seasons - current Bugger

Season 2 2011
B65 Linus Mueller - 1 bug season - current rookie
B67 Dan Webb - 1 bug season - current rookie
B68 Nick Webb - 1 bug season - current rookie


37 rookies over 5 years of Bugger teams. Some still with the Bugs, some off playing with other teams and some moved on after their sharp introduction to our great competition.

If it was easy to play in the Brisbane Premier League we wouldn't all appreciate it so much.

Good luck to all the rookies who take their first step into the BPL next Thursday night, and good luck to all the teams who will battle it out again in the excellent Brisbane Premier League.

Saturday, 23 July 2011

New Look MBB for season 2 2011

There has been change in the Bug den during the off season; Oscar, Manuel and
Si have all headed back to their respective homelands, and Mike has officially hung up his cleats. So this leaves 10 players from last season and some exciting new additions

Diddums is back from his peace keeping mission in East Timor with the chocolate soldiers and keen to play for the bug again.

Peta McNaughton has pointed Linus 'the kid' Mueller in our direction after having played BUML for a season. He's been playing the mid year draft and been competing well against some BPL veterans.

Chris 'Milky' Penfold is another one of the damn pommies. He's been living in Newcastle (NSW not geordie shaw) for the last 6 months and will be moving up to Brisbane in the middle of August. He has been running triathlons recently rather than chasing plastic, so expect him to make some very long, if slightly slow cuts!!

TJ brought a few of his BUML team mates along to the mid season draft, and by some coincidence they all ended up playing on the East team. We have now added the monster Webb brothers to our roster.
Nick 'the smaller' Webb has been playing with What The Huck and is gaining some good field sense, and can bring out some layout D's when needed. Dan 'the bigger' Webb had previously just had a throw with his brother but has already shown a lot of improvement over the course of the last 4 weeks.

So the buggers continue their tradition of bringing rookies into the BPL. It's also good to see that Chris Cunliffe has started up another team for the league, hopefully this will help balance things out across the board. This will mean another exciting 7 team league this season with a great range of interesting match ups across the competition.
2 teams playing in their 17th-19th seasons,
1 team in their 5th,
2 teams in their 4th,
1 in their 2nd
and a brand new team.

Mike has now stepped down from the captaincy role but he will still be aiming to be a part of the team to provide our rookies with some coaching. 6th season stalwart Stu is stepping up into the captaincy role and Mat Ryan has become VC. As the only remaining Bugger from the very first team back in Feb 2006 Mat will be bringing some tactical talk to the team, along with the occasional "harden the f*ck up and play D" speeches!

So yeah.... quite a big change to the team this season. Its with pride and excitement that we present the Season 2, 2011 Moreton Bay Buggers:

#13 Stuart Austin (C)
#88 Buzz Burwell
#24 Tim Ferguson
#24 Tim Johnson
#5 Rob Lowe
#12 Trevor Lovering
## Linus Mueller
## Chris Penfold
#20 Graham Prickett
#40 Andrew Ogilvie
#50 Anthony Ross
#63 Spinner Sheppard
#33 Mat Ryan (VC)
## Dan Webb
## Nick Webb


Should be a great season.


Stu and Mike