*Final Score – 5-6*

Sooooo this is kinda ridiculously obscured by the mists of memory but I’ve
decided to give myself a break from the dark depths of dissertation writing
by catching up on a match report:

...So it was that I dragged myself from the morning after my twentieth
birthday festivities and cycled over to Parker’s piece* *(yes I cycle from
Gonville, it gives me 4 minutes of extra sleep) trying to shake off the
effects of the night before and ignore the Irish car-bomb still broiling in
my insides. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my twenty or so years since
my escape into the land of the living, it is, dear children, that Guinness
and Baileys should never be in the same pint glass and nor should they be
downed - take notes NOwen, SD or whosoever had that bright idea...

Regardless of the state of my head and insides, I arrived on a gloriously
sunny but windswept Parker’s Piece bringing up the signup sheet on my
phone. NOwen arrived within a few minutes, nursing a similar headache and
asked what the numbers were looking like. 8 people with one of those being
a maybe. Ah. The thorn of low attendance firmly embedded in my side, I
attempted to throw with NOwen only to find that the wind was firmly set on
being a dick. Seriously, between me Nick and the newly arrived Jon we were
making one completion in six throws if that. As DCU trickled onto Parker’s
Piece, one urgently reminded player at a time, a sizeable ARU contingent
showed up looking more than capable of outnumbering us two to one.

A long, windy, nerve-racking story short, we managed to get a line of
players to face up to the Darkside horde and the match got under way. What
follows is a series of mental images that have survived the hellish two
weeks of dissertation/end-of-term deadline trauma which will hopefully form
some semblance of an actual match report. With the aforementioned wind, the
match was always going to be a low-scoring, scrappy game and for the most
part it was an upwind/downwind game. However, despite our lack of numbers
we worked ARU really hard on D refusing to give them any easy downwind
points. A combination of intense endzone man D and some excellent deep
cover from Jon, Nick SD and others kept them out when they had the wind in
their favour. A big shout out to our zone on ARU’s upwind points too as we
completely shut them down and pinned them to the line. Will and Jon as
chase performed really well, realising where they were covering (the dump
pass and the dump pass only) letting the wall, manned by myself SD and Tom
Claxton for the most part, do their job and let nothing through. We would
let them swing to their dark hearts’ content before pinning them against
the line. This is textbook zone but is often not easy to achieve and relied
on our wall/chase quickly moving from handler to handler before trapping
them against the line. The only throw they had was a handler crash from
behind to reset but achieved little.

The wind certainly helped our game that day, as the scrappy play it
dictates prevented our under-strength team from tiring too quickly and
negated to a large extent Darkside’s sizeable numerical advantage. It also
played into our hands on O: if there’s one thing Eagles love it is the
deep game and downwind those hucks were most definitely on. Again my memory
is hazy but I remember many a quick point from our team sending ARU
straight back into the hard yards of upwind – the demoralising effect of
rapid O points should not be underestimated guys. I also vividly remember
screaming several expletives as I dropped a huck in the endzone, scaring a
child who had ventured too close to the sideline in the process. Oh well,
hopefully if that child ever takes up ultimate he’ll learn to catch his
fucking discs thanks to the mental scars left by my loud and choice words
on that day. Towards the end of the game we scored a difficult upwind
point. This point was a heart-stopper, involving many a gamble: sketchy
hammers, frantic D in our own endzone and a huge catch to top it all.

This hard fought point put ourselves in the enviable position of a downwind
point after the soft cap and we duly scored, with SD catching the final
throw and cementing a well-earned victory for the Eagles against all the
numerical odds. I was immensely proud of you guys on that day, showing my
friend Matt from home what ultimate was all about and finishing off an
excellent birthday weekend in style. The game was pretty good spirit-wise
too despite a fair few calls and one of the ARU players face D’ing a huck
(from their own player, nothing to do with us). To my eternal shame MVP is
a mystery to me: we definitely did it but who it was I can't remember.
anyone who does is welcome to add it to the bottom of this thread!

Frove,

- by Draves 'not sure if Downing library's heating is broke or if they keep it
cold on purpose to aid study' Avery