It was a cold windy afternoon as I made the long trek down most of Lensfield road to our match at Parker's Piece. No really, I don't think you can truly understand unless you were out in it. The cold on its own would have finished off lesser teams. Couple that with a gusty, unpredictable wind and precipitation ranging from sudden bursts of coherent rain drops to some form of drizzle. This felt like a day for snuggling in front of a warm fire, with a mug of hot chocolate and a large duvet. This did not feel like a day made for outdoor pursuits, not even Ultimate.

Yet arrive we did, gradually building up to our expected squad size. Of 8. With Tejas lost to the wonders of Wolverhampton (I have it on good authority the uni team have done a good job of winning everything), Kaustuv at a conference and several other squad members missing this was going to be a hard match. Trinity had also, true to form, pulled out a big gun in the form of Matt Shannon.

So we started to throw a bit, to get ourselves warm. Or less cold. Except that throwing upwind was a highly hit and miss (mainly miss) affair thanks to the gustiness making it impossible to adapt. Downwind throws faired better, and fetching them was warming at least. After Draves and I had set up the pitch in a manner akin to a door wedge, I went to toss discs with the Trinity captain whilst Draves fixed the mess. I lost the toss and thought we'd lost some form of advantage, until he chose to start upwind and I settled for downwind O to start.

Things seemed to be going swimmingly, and we won the first two points. Then they brought out Shannon, and they comfortably secured a break against the wind. The rest of the match was quite even, both teams played a lot of huck and D, but there was a lot of smart small passes against the wind as well. Notable points were fresher excellence, the abilities of our women to outrun their gender mismatched marks and Tom Talbot, who was under every floaty disc, making well timed cuts and putting in solid handling. Nick SD's hucks also got us out of a couple of tricky situations.

Alas when time had gone we were left 6-5 down heading upwind, quickly dealt with be Trinity to give a final scoreline of 7-5. Even our cheer leading
team that had formed behind the Avery (with the insightful chant of 'Go Purple!') couldn't save the match. Overall during the match our D was spot on and the difference between the two teams probably came down to a couple more sketchy endzone catches by them than us. We need to make sure that our O is chilly, particularly close to the endzone, and that on getting the disc we don't panic and throw the first thing we see. A well known cliché of college league ending speeches is that the weather was the real winner. Here however, both teams overcame the elements to play some sweet ultimate.

MVP: Tom Talbot, with amazing grabs, skying plenty of people with longer arms and throwing well.