Watching the Finals

We beat the Swiss again, the score was 17-8 again. It was a nice good spirit game. Very European ultimate, which we are very good at.

The final day of the Worlds began rainy. We had a nice party yesterday and everyone has gotten over the bitterness of falling out of the top eight. Slowly it is time to start thinking what are the lessons we have learned here. One of the most obvious things we take from here is the fact that defense is much tougher than we are used to in Europe. Also the determination to get the disc by any means necessary (jump / lay out / fight / run) caught us by surprise. In the top teams every one has their eye on the disc at all times, so even when we though we had gotten a turn over there was still someone reaching for the disc. When it comes to playing as long as the disc is in the air, I think even Mexico beat us.

Womens’ ultimate is developing towards mens’ game, at least everywhere else than Europe. Tougher, more physical, quicker handling, more straight forward and typically bending the rules rather than playing with good spirit. We are really nice markers, in ten games we got only two or three calls of marker fouls. In the women’s final Japan called that more marker fouls to US in one half time.

Next up is the open final game, we’ll see how dirty it gets between US and Canada.

And Soon It’ll Be Over

FIN - ITA at Jericho Beach

The games didn’t go quite as planned. Today we played Italy on Pool C, which means positions below 9. We won the game 17-6 on the beautiful Jericho Beach field. The scenery was amazing, and although we had heard the fields can be quite windy there was practically no wind today. We wallowed in the disappointment of losing to Colombia for a little while and then decided to play tough until every game of the tournament was played. This time we began strong and we stayed strong throughout the game. The goal is now to take the same attitude to the game against Switzerland tomorrow morning and finish in the ninth position. And then off to the beer garden…

Afternoon and Evening Activities

First we decorated our players tent.

Finland tent

Then after dinner it was time to do some laundry and go to the Ship Wreck beach for some stretching. The beach was unbelievably beautiful, but the stairs leading to and from the beach were a bit heavy on our tired legs. Ship Wreck beach is also known for being a naturist beach, so we saw some Canadian ass as well. There was a good party going on on the beach so we left pretty soon. Otherwise we would have felt too sorry for ourselves not being able to participate (with clothes on), our morning game tomorrow is at 8:30 already…

The beach

Stretching

Cold treatment in the ocean

US of A

We lost the game against USA 17-8. The first half was very even, each team scored one point when it was their offense. Then in the other half, our defense was still good, but our offense suffered from our own unforced turn overs. Anyhow, we saw some big jumps and huge lay outs, which tells how intense the game was until the very end. The game style of the Americans is so much more physical than the European style, it’ll take us a while to get used to it.

FIN - USA

Girls in Green

We didn’t know what to expect from the Irish ladies. Getting to the University Hill fields was an adventure itself, we had to navigate the route to our bus driver and the other bus took some of our girls to a wrong place. But the itself was in great shape, the day was not yet too warm and we were feeling good. This time our game began better but the Irish were defending strong and offending well against our zone defence. The game was good fun, and it was really nice to see that the Irish have a good team in the Worlds. The final score was 17-9.

Now some lunch and some rest.