Doing what we do best

Trevor Lovering is an example of the new bread of frisbee player on the Brisbane Ultimate scene. You know the type, they started playing frisbee in high school, by the time they get to uni they already have 2 BPL championships under their belt and sometime soon they'll be heading overseas to play frisbee for Australia.

I hope Trevor is just one of many exciting new players who we will see playing in the BPL in years to come. In the mean time here he is to tell us about this weeks clash with the UQ Passion team.


After a few wins, a lose and three too many draws over the first half of the season, the Buggers are back to doing what they do best, winning games through grit and determination. We are now well and truly on the road to a third straight dog cup after a nail biting victory over the full strength Passion team.

The new look 2010 Buggers have been going through a few growing pains over the season. With some familiar faces no longer with us and some fresher faces finding their place on the team, BPL season one was always going to be a challenge for us. This week we found that sweet spot with a strong man and zone defence as well as a cool, calm and collected offence.

We started strong taking an early lead but the emotion of Passion proved strong as they took half 8-7. Passion carried this momentum through to the second half extending their lead to 10-7. The Buggers called a much needed timeout to regather our thoughts and calm down. Our offence was the patient and conservative, giving Passion nothing and pressuring turns with our hard working D.

Our efforts brought the score up to 12-11 to the Buggers with last point called. After a dropped hammer to the Passion end zone, the Buggers walked it up the field to score the winner and avoid our forth draw of the season. Congrats on the win boys.

Trevor Lovering.

"So, nice to finally win a game eh?

Special guest blogger Simon Statham - 4 times Moreton Bay Bugger and current defending BPL champion - shares his thoughts on this week's game.

"Two draws in a row don’t look great on the stats but it hides two very hard fought games that we deserved to get something from. Last night was a different sort of game. A ‘potential banana skin’ (to paraphrase English football managers). We probably always thought that we could win but to manage that complacency and to come out with a very controlled game where we worked hard to get turnovers and took our opportunities was very satisfying.

We put a lot of things in place last night that we have been talking about and trying to achieve all season. Our man-D certainly seemed to shut down the pitch very effectively against a team of (for the most part) younger and fitter guys. This was particularly effective in marking the ‘under’ cuts, but we did get mismatched on speed a couple of times for the ones over the top so we should continue to watch that. If there was one thing that might have put even more pressure on it was they often had a dump pass to get out of trouble – but they rarely moved forward.

O was very patient. The poor shot selection that characterised the crazy 10 minutes against Dojo, when they scored 6 or 7 points in a row, seemed to have been rectified. Sometimes we didn’t get very far very quickly but (aside from the last 5 mins) we turned over pretty rarely. For me that was probably the biggest plus. We dramatically cut down on the unforced turnovers, which will put us in good stead against better teams.

I thought the new Bugger buddy system was good. I for one found it useful at the end to talk openly about the mistakes I’d made – helps me to put them at the front of my mind so I can learn from them and not gloss over it.

Finally, it was nice to see Tony going long for some scores! When was the last time we saw that happening?!

Cobras beating Passion was very good news for us. The league has closed up and it proves that anyone can beat anyone else in this league. We’ve got to believe that we can win the thing again this season – C’mon the Bugs!

Si"

Good news for the bugs

Round 6 saw the Moreton Bay Buggers play in their second draw in a row. These results came on the back of a single point victory over the UQ Lovers, which was preceded by a pounding from the league leading UQ Passion team.

Its been a strange run of games for us. While the outcomes have not been ideal, at this early stage of our team building project we are happy to focus on the process and hope that desirable outcomes follow.

We feel like we have turned a corner recently with how we are playing. The lesson for us has been persistence and experimentation. We have tried a number of different adjustments over the last month of frisbee and its because we have kept working at our issues that we feel like we've made a break through.

Time will tell whether we have found the right mixture of tactics and utilisation of player skills for us to continue to play good ultimate. At this stage however we are feeling happy about the progress evident in the team over the last couple of games.

Unlike previous Buggers teams that have been quickly successful based on high quality athletes and simple tactics. This season's team has required a change in direction and a different focus for us to find our rhythm.

The team is excited about the progress we are making and look forward to continuing to test ourselves in the very competitive environment that we find ourselves in.

Buggers teams from previous leagues

The Moreton Bay Buggers have been a part of the Frisbee landscape in Brisbane for a decade.

As a Brisbane Premier League team the Buggers are now in their 5th year of existence. In those five years many players have proudly and enthusiastically worn the Bugger black, blue and red.

I've dug into the vault and found the team lists from the last five years. I'm missing the original team list as Rueben Berg was the captain and mastermind behind the Bugs entrance into the competition. The lists and number of season played by each Bugger can be found on the right side of the page.

Many players have come and gone from the Bugger teams. Some have moved away from the competition and play in other leagues. Some have thrown their last disc in anger and now only participate through the email list. Young men who learned their frisbee craft with the big bug on their chest are spread across the BPL teams including 2 other club captains.

The MBB club has always been active in bringing new players to the competition. Over 30 genuine new-to-frisbee rookies have had their first taste of organised competitive ultimate at the club.

It is worth mentioning the following long serving sons of the Moreton Bay Buggers for their efforts over the years.

13 seasons
Mike Neild

12 seasons
Nandor Locher

11 seasons
Adam Beu
James Larkin
Jason Ray

10 seasons
Alex Chadwick
Liam Gillions

9 seasons
Nich Coote
Mat Ryan

It is a proud history full of excellent players, great teams and good frisbee times. I'm hopeful for many more.

Up the Buggers.

Youch!

This week we played against the UQ Passion team. The now clear league leading UQ Passion team.

They beat us good. In fact I can't remember being beaten that badly in the BPL for a long time.

We just didn't control the frisbee on offense, UQ did, and that was the main theme of the game.

We are a new team this season and we will continue to work ourselves out over the season. We're looking forward to many new challenges.

Speaking of challenges this competition is great. On the other field the Heroes knocked off the Cobra team is a 1 pointer. What this means is that after 3 weeks there are 5 teams all within 2 competition points of each other fighting it out for the bottom 2 semi final places.

I know its only the start of the season however I get the feeling that its going to be really hard to get into the Semi finals this season. It has been tough the last couple of leagues because all five of the teams have been great, however with 7 teams capable of winning games this season its actually a pretty short list who get in. Yikes!

I was actually thinking that in order to get really good this season we might need to start doing some training. I wonder if we are approaching the stage when teams are going to need to train regularly to be able to win this competition. Not this league I think, however it would change the success of the Buggers and most teams if they were to do two sessions a week.

We're looking forward to next week already.

The begining, again.

Only once in the 7 years and 19 seasons has a team won the BPL season more than 2 seasons in a row.
(Full records can be found a the dog-cup yahoogroups site under data base)

This season the Moreton Bay Buggers are looking to the be second group of men to achieve the three-peat.

I love the start of a BPL season. The potential, the new tactics, the new team list, the fear and excitement and this league the new teams.

This season's MBB team is fairly different to last seasons. Five long time Buggers are not playing with us for various reasons and four new and returning Bugs are on the team. We will have to change the way we play in order to suit our new playing list. We still do a few things the same though and last night was a good example of this.

We had a great game against the brand new and very exciting Slamtown Flatball Club. The really exciting thing about the Gold Coast team is that prior to last nights game we know very little about them. We know some of their players, we did a little scouting in their first game against the Cobra however they were an unknown.

It was quite difficult deciding on a defense use and even harder to workout match ups on the line. I was very impressed with the general standard of play by all the individuals on the Gold Coast team and I expect they will get better as they adjust to playing with each other and playing against stiff opposition.

The game was very tight for the first half with the Slamtown up by one and the game on serve. In the second half we found a better fit defensively and won some points in typical Bugger action through one on one block and aggressive throws to the endzone.

The final score was 15 to 10 Buggers which included a 8 points to 2 second half.

A good start to the season. A season which we are looking forward to as a real challenge.

The one, the only, the JRay

There are some great aspects to being involved with a young sport like Ultimate Frisbee. There are also some painful aspects.

For example all the people who organise our sport - leagues, tournaments, web sites, policy, couching, publication and sausage sizzles still play the sport. We don't have a sweet group of Mums, Dads and hasbeens to deal with all that organisational stuff for us. Painful.

We need to regularly exert energy into recruiting, promoting, educating, explaining and selling our sport to all and sundry in the hope that it will continue to grow so that we can continue to play games.

Its really only the Taiwanese who want to get our autographs. Young sports.

Some excellent aspects about being involved in a young sport like Ultimate Frisbee are that lots of us are in with a chance of playing the game at a National or International level. Excellent.

Our community is smallish and loving. It's great to be quickly accepted into a community that wants you to be there.

The great aspect of being in a young sport that I want to highlight here is that in our young sport the early heroes of Ultimate Frisbee are people we know. The titans of Ultimate Frisbee legend in Australia are people that might even still play on our league team. Players from the first Australian team at Worlds in 1988 might just still be trundling around in our community.

There are many founding members of the Brisbane Ultimate Frisbee community who should be enjoyed and remembered for their direct connection to the beginning of our sport. Today i'd like to mention one.

Jason Ray

I'm not going to tell the whole JRay story here, not because I don't know it (he has told me enough times) but because either you already know the man and have firmly formed your opinion, or you don't know him and if that's the case you should ask Buzz about him, it's much funnier that way.

What I will say is that Jason worked pretty hard to develop our sport in Brisbane. He contributed much to our community landscape including the much loved Brisbane Premier League. In the early 2000s when Brisbane was a one league town (mixed at UQ) Jason worked to initiate and administer as the first league director the R.C. Dog Cup.

For those of you who haven't had a close look in a while its printed right there on the trophy.


We love our Thursday night open league. The Dog Cup, the Mens A league and now the Brisbane Premier League. It is an enthusiastic and significant competition. It means a lot to those who strive for success in what can be a challenging and competitive environment. This week it enters a new phase as a 7 team competition, very exciting.

We owe thanks to Jason for the beginnings of our competition.

Jason has played his last season of BPL. In classic JRay style his last game was full of passion and angst, wild hucks out of bounds, 3 massive plays in the dying stages of the game and a gritty grand final win against an old enemy.

Jason you are one of the founders of Ultimate Frisbee in Brisbane as well as a contributor on the domestic and World stages. You have inspired many of the current crop of Brisbane elite to achieve their best either through encouragement or through their desire to best you on the field.

You'll be missed at the Moreton Bay Buggers and i'm sure you'll be remembered. Well done mate.