The 2007 European Ultimate Championships held in Southampton this year were a showcase for GB ultimate. British teams took the gold in the Open, Mixed, Masters and Junior Women divisions and had strong silver medal placings in the Women, Junior Open and Under 17 Open divisions.

Congratulations to the Fire of London legends for playing some outstanding ultimate:

Open Division - Gold

Peter ‘Rodders’ Wright
Joe ‘Muppet’ Bolton
Rich Turner
Lewis Glover
Gareth ‘Gaz’ Shaw

Mixed Division - Gold

DJ Moore
Rob Whitehouse

Masters Division - Gold

Lars ‘Baddy’ Patel
Wayen ‘Wrecker’ Wretter
Justin Parkhurst

Photos courtesy Lewis Glover.

Well important things first… Fire2 finally beat Brighton to go top 8 !

A longer blurb at the end if you want to read it.

Results: (Just guessing the scores here)
Saturday
Fire2 15 - 10 Devon
Fire2 14 - 15 Claphan2
Fire2 15 - 8 Ltd Rel

Sunday
Fire2 14 - 12 Brighton
Fire2 7 - 15 LLLeeds
Fire2 9 - 14 Discuits

Finishing position 8th !!

MVP - Wayne the Wetter (with 1/2 the votes).

The Good:
Everyone had moments of sheer brilliance this weekend. Well done
everyone for cutting hard in good conditions and keeping the disc in
hand with sensible throws on Sunday.
We moved it around the pitch flawlessly all weekend - breaking the
mark and getting free all weekend.

The Bad:
Endzone-itis. We had trouble sticking the disc in the zone from 10
yards out. This would have meant an easy win against Brighton ( as we
were 7 - 3 up and then lost the half 7 - 8 ) but every turn over was a
shot for the goal. The same thing would have meant a win against
Clapham2 too. If we stop doing this we will easily take a couple of
those 8-5 teams out.

The Ugly:
Last game against Discuits we ran out of legs and started sucking a
bit with a lot of simple dumps going astray and dropped catches.
Personal error’s due to tiredness was the killer here - but well fort
with a small squad.

I just want to say I’ve had a really enjoyable weekend and I think
everyone on the team stepped it up and showed everyone what they can
do. Lets make sure we upset a few teams next time and continue to stay
top 8.

Cheers
/crazy

Fire 1
Lars Patel v Paddy Murphy

Fire 2

James Baron v Clapham 2, thrown by their Swiss guy (Tunde?)
Chris ‘Serk’ Harman v Brighton, thrown by ?

Both the result of junk D on the back of a great pull!

-courtesy Wayne Retter

First Team 

Saturday

Fire 15-6 Clapham 2

Fire 15-12 Chevron

Fire 15-7 Janitors

Sunday

Fire 16-17 Fusion

Fire 11-15 Chevron

Finished the event seeded 4th.

MVP Rich Turner.

Second Team 

Started the event seeded 11, 2nd in our pool:

Saturday - Pool Games
15 - 08 The Brown
15 - 09 Bristol Plastic Factory
15 - 08 Blue Arse Flies
Winning the pool resulted in us being seeded 9, for the 5-12 bracket quarter finals

Sunday - 8 v 9
08 - 15 Brighton

Sunday - 9 v 12
12 - 14 Clapham 2

Sunday - 11 v 12
15 - 13 Janitors

Finished the event seeded 11.

Though the voting covered about 6 players, Fire 2 convincingly voted Andy Thornton our MVP.

Wonderful Copenhagen Ultimate 2007 Results for Fire of London

Pool Games
Fri 15:00 Fire 12 v 13 Pintje (Belgium)
Fri 17:30 Fire 13 v 11 Sippoo Odd Stars (Finland)
Sat 10:15 Fire 11 v 7 Freespeed (Switzerland)
Despite our loss to Pintje we finished top of the pool, maintaining our overall seeding of 3

Pre-Quarter ( 3 v 14 )
Sat 14:00 Fire 10 v 8 Cota Rica (Italy)
Quarter Final ( 3 v 5 )
Sat 17:45 Fire 6 v 10 Clapham (UK)
Semi-Final ( 5 v 8 )
Sun 10:15 Fire 10 v 13 Sippoo Odd Stars (Finland)
Final ( 7 v 8 )
Sun 12:45 Fire 13 v 7 Helsinki Ultimate Team (Finland)

(Fire scores courtesy of Wayne Retter)

Being men of spectacular physical ability and razor-sharp mental focus lends itself well to frisbee, yes. The application of these gifts are also quite relevant to…

KUNG FU!

In the Shanghai scene, he’s known as Venerable Master Tin Si Ra. Or, Master Terry.

A demonstration of the deceptively powerful Monkey stances.

Wavy demonstrates that it is not the foot that strikes the ball, it is your mind.

Gabor, new to these Far-Eastern techniques leads a lesson in his more familiar Hungarian Team Wrestling.

All images courtesy of Wayne Retter.

Andy T
Freddie
Luke

Fridays pool play wins against the Woodies (GER), Helsinki (FIN) and a narrow loss to Flying Angels Bern (SUI) counted for nothing in knockout play early on Saturday morning. Fusion gained their revenge for the domestic season. At 14-14 Fusion got a critical block on what would have been a Fire goal and quickly scored 2 goals themselves to knock Fire out of the top 8.
Wins against Bologna (ITA) and Freespeed (SUI) gave us a final playoff game against FAB again. It was another tight game but FAB were more effective at scoring their points. 10th place is lower than we hoped for but it was also a great preparation for Worlds in Perth very soon.

Another final against Clapham played in highly variable conditions. Another tight game and unfortunately again this time we couldn’t quite crack them. Next time…

The three main contenders in the open tour were Clapham, fielding large single squad, Fire and Fusion. The only team which Fire lost to this season domestically was Clapham, each time narrowly and unfortunately twice in semis. In the Tour 2 final, Fire lead a very tight game most of the way before a strong Clapham finish edged the game. and effectively finished Fires tour. At Tour 3 the semi went to sudden death. A crucial 3/4 playoff win at tour 1 separated Fire from Fusion in 3rd in the tour.
Fire 2 fought back from their B tour starting position to finish nearly as high as possible (6th) at T2 and finishing a credible 11th in the overall tour despite being limited to 17th at T1.