Analysis: Turnovers from Clapham v Chevron (Galaxy Point)

Analysis of the 5 turnovers in Galaxy Point between Clapham and Chevron, the final of Open Tour 1. Full game footage from this and many other great Tour games is available only at fanseat.com

Review: TOKAY cleats / boots

Quick analysis: Inward pivoting, & stack’s influence on technique

Talking about inward pivoting, the influence that playing stack offences has had on our techniques and habits, plus some info about live streamed analysis which is coming soon!

Analysis: Japan’s bizzare short-field defence pull play against USA & Colony

Brief analysis on Japan’s bizzare tactic of not chasing down the pull on defence.

Berlin/Potsdam: Hex clinic with Goldfingers

I travelled to Germany recently to run a Hex clinic with the Potsdam team, and to have a meeting with the US Embassy in Berlin about potential 10 Million Discs projects in Berlin and nationally.

The 10MD meeting on Friday morning went well, with the embassy being very receptive to the core principles which are naturally taught by ultimate; gender equality, peaceful conflict resolution, personal accountability under pressure, and mutual respect. We (Markus Kunert, Christoph Dehnhardt and myself) are looking at proposing a project which will engage a number of schools with high immigrant populations in areas with new citizens to help integrate them into the community, and work with groups with disabilities.

On Friday afternoon through to Sunday I was at a sports complex in a small place called Lindow, north of Berlin, training the team from Potsdam who are called Goldfingers – and a number of other representatives from other clubs nearby. Kim from Goldfingers arranged the trip – he had seen Hex online in 2016 and introduced it to Goldfingers, who had been playing it for the last two years, unbeknownst to me! It was really interesting to talk to them, see them play, and run a couple of seminars and a few practical sessions with them. They hadn’t implemented Flex defence yet, so it was fun to introduce to a team who understand the ‘hex philosophy’. It was exciting to explain to them the train of thought that led to coming up with Hex, knowing that it was what they had been playing it for the last couple of years.

Watching the Goldfingers play ultimate, I noticed they played in a fluid style and were good at sustaining flow, although it may appear chaotic to the untrained eye – to me this immediately looked like an experienced hex team. Chatting to them in the classroom session, I said that they already ‘got’ how to play basic hex, and if they just carried on what they were doing and staying open minded to learn from the offence, they would continue developing organically. They could relate to a lot of the ‘hex philosophy’ I often have to explain from scratch to other teams, and they appreciated how I presented the ideas clearly, and the perspective I offered helped everything in their understanding to fall into place.

Training Flex went well, through the classroom and practical session, everyone was very attentive and implemented the concepts very well, with some new additions to the drills I’ve designed to train Flex coming from the players.

Playing Hex all weekend, Goldfingers came 2nd at German Masters Nationals!

The Goldfingers Masters team had a practice match at the end of Saturday & asked me to be their coach on the sideline (I’m injured at the moment). A couple of times their Flex sandwiches got torn apart (as expected for a new defence), but when they started playing it more zoney-style it was more familiar to them as it is like a junk defence they play, and they shut down the opposing team convincingly.

Two weekends after my visit, the Goldfingers Masters team played German Masters Nationals and finished 2nd! Seeded 4th, this was a very good result for them, and convincing too – 15:4, 15:6, 15:14, 15:6. José, who hosted me in Potsdam, confirmed they played hex for the entire weekend and “were congratulated openly by at least one team, and in private by a few others for our use of the hex.”

I finished off my trip cycling around Potsdam seeing some fine palaces and different areas of the city. It’s a really picturesque place with many fine views and impressive places to see, so I had an amazing day. Check out all the photos I took from the clinic and from Potsdam in my Potsdam April 2018 Google photos album.

Full photos in the Potsdam April 2018 Google photos album.

Felix is going to Germany!

This weekend I’m heading to Germany to run a Hex Clinic with Goldfingers from Potsdam. At the clinic there will also be several coaches and experienced players from the teams in & around Berlin, which fits with my aim of spreading the Hex strategies as far and wide as possible.

The venue which Kim from Goldfingers has booked up looks amazing – each participant has a room booked to stay overnight on Friday & Saturday, there are grass and artificial pitches, plus there’s a sauna!

I’m looking forward to delivering the classroom and practical sessions on Flex Defence and Hex Offence. This clinic is happening as Kim had seen a few of my reddit posts and had tried to begin to implement some of my ideas but couldn’t answer all the questions the other players/coaches had, so they all figured it’d be a good idea to get in touch with me and invite me to be the guest coach at a training weekend!

Props to Kim and his fellow coaches for seeing the value in the strategies and making decisive steps to improve the level of their team – I really hope the clinic strikes a chord with everyone attending, and most importantly, fun is had by all!

Update: 10 Million Discs meetings & Live Streaming Analysis

Check out 10 Million Discs at www.10milliondiscs.org and our promo video
Full report from Belgium trips with photos: 10 Million Discs in Brussels, and Hex clinic with Helgtre

10 Million Discs in Brussels

I was in Brussels recently at a 10 Million Discs focus weekend. 10MD are a non-profit NGO who use ultimate as a tool to break down barriers within and between communities – whether it be integrating minority groups, refugees, disadvantaged youth, or promoting gender equity. The self-refereed / spirit of the game aspect of ultimate encourages peaceful conflict resolution, and with the incredibly low cost entry barrier (just a disc and a flat space needed), I stand alongside 10MD in believing that ultimate can and should be used to bring about real social change across the globe…

… read more & photos …

As well as brainstorming sessions and presentations from the 10MD members, we had meetings with the US Embassy, the Quaker Council for European Affairs, the European Commission for East Africa Development, and the Belgian Ultimate board of directors.

Previously I’ve worked with 10MD in Albania, where we introduced the sport to around 500 schools through teacher-training sessions with PE teachers in all the major cities across the developing country. They’ve also run projects in Macedonia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and worked with Syrian refugees in the Middle East.

This weekend we put our heads together to determine 10MD’s focus over the next few months, and also preliminarily landed a grant to carry out work all across Belgium, including the municipality of Molenbeek. The recent terrorist attacks in Paris, as well have some others, have been linked to Molenbeek, leading to a prejudice about the local population, which is in reality multicultural and contains many different communities, the largest being Moroccan and Turkish in origin. 10MD representative Tof Bihin will also be coordinating 10 hat tournaments happening in each of the 10 provinces in Belgium (with the aim of introducing new players to the game), and will be getting Ultimate Frisbee included in the Special Olympics in May.

One crucial tool we’re going to use here is distributing discs which have common phrases printed on them in all the languages used in Belgium (French, Flemish, and German!). We’re also going to work together with Belgian Ultimate (we met members of the board at a women’s tournament in Leuven) to activate potential coaches across the country to introduce the sport to schools in their local areas.

The meeting which impacted me the most was with the Danish Refugee Council. Thousands upon thousands of refugees have flooded across the Middle East and Europe since the war in Syria began in 2011, and securing enough funding to keep them alive and safe requires constant work from hundreds of people in dozens of NGOs. As a side note, what a quirk of conventional society that corporate/business workers enjoy such healthy paychecks in comparison to NGO workers – I can’t see any organic solution to this, but it’s an interesting reflection.
The basic health and safety of the refugees is the number 1 priority; beyond that is “psychosocial support” – the basic aspects of life which exist just beyond basic food, shelter, medicare and security. Refugee camps are places where young people spend many, if not all, of their formative years, living off hand-outs… think about that for a second. What is there for a refugee to do for all those years, how do they develop? Ultimate does not suddenly fix everything and make life rosy, but at a very low cost it offers an outlet accessible to everybody which keeps them active and social, and it goes beyond other sports thanks to the spirit of the game – instilling a culture of trust, honesty, collaboration, developing negotiation skills, and building a true sense of community.

It was great to meet with so many like-minded people who believe ultimate can bring about real social change in the world, and put together some plans to do exactly that. I look forward to the 10MD projects coming up in the future!