Another season, another party

G'day Bugger fans

So another season of the BPL is drawing to a close. The Moreton Bay Buggers club has had some highlights and some disappointments during the league. It has been great for us to enter 2 strong playing teams into the comp, and i hope to see the buggers continue to represent in future leagues.

We have 2 teams in the semi finals next week, and due to a few interesting developments the Crusty Buggers will play the Fresh Buggers in a semi final. So we are assured of having 1 of our teams in the grand final in 2 weeks time, excellent.

On Friday night, thanks to the social committee (Ben and Wet Nose), we had our end of season social night. It was a pretty good night with Buggers from both team in attendance and in pretty good form. We hit the Embassy Hotel with cheap drink deals organised and a dance floor that took a while to get going but once it did - baby, good times!

A key feature of the night was the boat race to see who would get to wear their Blue buggers strips for the semi final. A worthy award and very well contested. Racing for the crusty team were Mike, Spinner, Manuel and Nandor at anchor. The Fresh line up was Ben Worby, Beej, Carlos and Jangles at anchor. The weapon of choice was schooners of Tooweys, the stage was set.

With Notty starting the race off like a cute girlfriend in one of those 60's type aqueduct hot rod drag races the Worby monster and I were off. Using his years of experience and commitment to the discipline Ben got a lead for the freshies by 2 or 3 fingers, Spinner then put the Crusty effort into gear and made good in roads into the fresh lead. During the Columbian leg Carlos "the dark horse" pulled away again and going into the final pair of drinkers Jangles might have had 2/3 seconds and 3/4 fingers head start. Enter the Locher!

Nandor smashed down that long glass of beer like he was hucking a forehand out of a zone - quickly and accurately. That drink disappeared in impressive style and the Crusty team was victorious. Blue shirts on Thursday Crusty boys! It was all very fun and I think we all enjoyed it (after our heads stopped hurting that is).

Plenty of frisbee was talked, lots of tidy dance moves were executed and as far as i'm concerned good times were had by all. Thanks Ben and Wet Nose for getting the night sorted - it is great to get all the Buggers together for a bit of raucous action from time to time.

Thanks for a good season teams, play well in the semi this week and starting thinking about what you want to achieve with your Bugger team mates next year.

Fresh air for everyone!

Welcome Buggers, new and old to the Buggers' "Fresh" squad.

Thursday night saw a good turn out with 10 players, 6 old and 4 new. It was great to see the new guys fit straight into the squad with what looked and felt like a fully functioning BPL team within a few points.

Although beaten to the half by 2 or 3 points we pushed hard and punished their zone to even the score not long after the break, finishing the game at a bittersweet draw. Robbed by 'the Foot of God' catch after the huck a few points into the game.

Personal Highlights of the game:

Beej asking permission to huck a massive forehard to Wet Nose in the endzone.
Quinn's sweet 'fully horizontal 4 feet in the air' layout to catch my swill
Two Callaghan's in one game! Nice work Jangles.
Making BPL's top zone defense took like something you'd see on Monday night.

Great game Freshies, it feels really good to play on this team.

Gold Digger

New team, Old club, New players, Old system

So the MBB: Crusty Buggers had their first run around last Thursday. This team consists of some well established Brisbane players and some brand new talent.

Here at the Buggers I think we have a well refined system for taking new players and acculturating them into the tactics, and acclimatising them to the speed that works at the BPL level.

Last thursday night was a great example of this. We played a game against the Rawhide team with 3 buggers from last years team, and 4 brand new buggers (including 3 guys playing their first game of BPL). We played savage all game and won the by 11 points. I was really proud of the effort and hard running of the new blokes and of the patience and leadership of the old blokes.

It's hard not to feel good when things are going that well for you, and i'm sure all the players had a great time. I think part of the result can be attributed to a good simple system, part to effort and application, and part to luck. It all happened to be on our side in round 1.

I'm really looking forward to getting the other 5 Crusty Buggers onto the track so we can build a strong new team and continue our positive start.

Yeah Buggers!

Bugs in my teeth

In order to spend some time talking about how good we have been, and how good we could continue to be, we went out for a night

The social committee (Ben Worby) got the thing together and it all worked out pretty bloody well.

Ben 'social committee' Worby

First we played some pool at a place called Qmasters. There was a 'big boys' table and a 'small boys' table. If you won you went up to the big boys, if you lost you went down to the little boys. We played paired pool with best of 3 game contests happening on the big boys table in the same time that 1 game was played at the kids table.

This me after my 'pool for beginners and chumps' coaching session from JRay. "Get your chin onto the pool Que Mike, you are bringing in an error of parallax."

The winners of each rubber would afforded the right to choose the drink that the losers would purchase for both teams. The complication was that at Qmasters the pool tables are not in the licenced area, so the drink of choice was some kind of shot. Consequently the first 3 or 4 few drinks that most of the boys had were some kind of firey shot. Finished off one bottle of black sambuca that was on the shelf and had a good run at the other one. Jason was on call for work and so couldn't go too hard on the booze. Never the less the social committee had a plan, Jasons first drink was a shot of lime cordial, youch.

Anyway as you can imagine some players made out pretty well by winning a lot of games and getting a lot of drinks bought for them. It was a good fun start.

We then headed up to the Normanby where Massey was having a going away party. This turned into a big fat booze up with various members of the Brisbane Frisbee community. I had a top time.

So, thanks for the great night Ben and team, so long Massey, enjoy southern California and the girl. Thanks Chady for the photo action. I'll see you all again for another Buggers social night soon.

Mike

The Year of the Bug

Well, well, well. Another successful Moreton Bay Buggers BPL season.

For the first time in the history of the Dog Cup/MAL/BPL there were 5 healthy and competitive teams in contention. All teams had distinct cultures and playing styles. It was a joy to have that level of variety and freshness in the league.

After a competitive and exciting regular season the Semi Finals arrived with the teams positioned like this: 1 MBB, 2 UQ Lovers, 3 DoJo, 4 UQ Passion, 5 Rawhide. With 4 players overseas and unavailable for periods of the final series the Buggers managed to scrape through 2 weeks of extreme intensity UQ final match ups. We played in our 5th Grand Final in a row and won our 3rd.

I wasn't at the Grand Final and so can't convey much information about the game. The final score was MBB by 1 point over an extremely competitive UQ Lovers team. We played the Lovers 3 times over the season with the following results: Lovers by 1, Draw, Buggers by 1. A drawn season! The Buggers just managed to make our only win of the season in the final game. These 2 teams have placed a few more stones in the bridge of rivalry that joins our 2 strong and different Frisbee clubs.

The spring league of the BPL is only 2 weeks away and the Moreton Bay Buggers are taking a page from the Lovers club and entering 2 teams into the league. The BPL will now include the MBB: Crusty Buggers and the MBB: Fresh Buggers, making this league a 6 team competition!

This spring league will be very interesting as arguably the strong team over the last year divides and grows its player base. How will the new teams play? Who will rise to control the competition? How will the playing styles of the new teams change from the established Bugger method? How will the Crusty and Fresh boys integrate 6-8 new players into the BPL? Where will these players come from?

As far as i'm concerned this is shaping up to be a very interesting Brisbane Premier League. Strap yourselves in.

Buggers too hot for Rawhide (15-9)

Round 5 saw the Bugs up against Rawhide - a group of experienced campaigners vying for their first win of their debut BPL season.

Given the teams’ relative ladder positions, the Buggers were due for a plain sailing evening, but Tony Ross forgot to give his men the script as Rawhide shot out to a 2-0 lead. When the Buggers awoke they managed to even the scores 2-2 through patient working of the disc and dumps to advantage as practised the previous week at training.

Rawhide counterattacked though and crept to 5-3 lead. This prompted the Bugs to employ a puppy fence in a bid to thwart hucks to breaks from the back of the Rawhide stack. The tactic proved hugely successful in stopping the downfield pass and preventing significant gain in field position. Buggers took half 8-5. The Buggers’ momentum continued through to the second half. On offense, Mat Ryan was too quick for his opponents, scoring multiple goals from a well-structured stack.

The O team also used a horizontal stack which created many passing options (quite a few through the centre corridor) and moved the disc quickly across field to good effect. Also the swill-to-Neild option proved successful on a number of forward thrusts.

A creditable performance from Rawhide, but not enough to deny the Buggers the three points as they got up 15-9.

By Micka Kanowski

Top of the Table rumble

Heres my blog:

On a perfect night for frisbee with the temperature mild and the ground soft and perfect for laying out, the Buggers came out hard early, eager to avenge the loss to the Lovers in the final last season. MBB jumped out to an early 6-1 lead, they looked and felt well on top. However, the young, energetic Lovers team clawed back the next 5 straight points to even it up at 6-a-piece. The next two points were long, hard running points with the Buggers showing that they are faster, stronger, and better looking to take half 8-6.

The second half was a major struggle with neither team being able to grab the ascendancy and run away with it. The game finished with some confusion as to when the time cap had been called and the game was declared a 13-13 draw, a fitting outcome from the two top teams in the competition.
For MBB outstanding new-comers Mick and Nick ran hard and smart all night, while many players took advantage of the unusually soft fields and laid out at any opportunity.

Wet