Tassie Tiggers, April 2004

Tassie Tiggers, 2004

In April 2004, the Tassie Tiggers played in the Open Division of the Australian Ultimate Championships. This was the third year a Tasmanian Ultimate team travelled north of Bass Strait to play Nationals, following on from the Nationals campaigns of Choice Cuts (Open) and Vacant Air (Womens - joint with Vic) in 2002 and the Tassie Tiggers in Canberra in 2003. The Tiggers played in a top tier of 12 teams in the Open Division in 2004. Joe, Tom and Craig played with a Tasmanian team at the last 3 Nationals Championships (Joe also played with WOM, the Tasmanian team at Mixed Nationals in 2003) and Asher and Ingrid returned for their second Nationals with the Tiggers. The Tassie Tiggers maintained their tradition (started in 2003) of including women in the team for the Open Division at Nationals.

The Tassie Tiggers were: (back row) Stewart Wilde, Stefan Goecke, Tim Phillips, Craig Mundy, Tom Caldwell, Dave Wilson, Joe Boyer, (middle row), Ingrid Buchner, (front row) Mike Baker (captain), Felix Kennedy, Kathrin Buchner, Asher Gentle.

There are 138 more photos from Nationals on Charlie's photo page too!

Official report from Captain Mike!

The Tassie Tiggers Ultimate Frisbee Club recently participated in the Australian Ultimate Championships at Shaw Park in Brisbane. Going into the tournament the Tiggers were seeded 12th out of 21 teams in the Open Division, and after four days of tightly contested competition with some of the best teams from the mainland finished 13th.

Day one saw us play three game against opponents seeded first, sixth and seventh. The first game was against ACTion Men (Canberra), seeded sixth. After trading the first few points ACTion Men were able to score the next few points, maintaining their lead against us for the rest of the game. The next game was a much more closely contested game against seventh-seeded Eastern Territories (NZ). The Tiggers came out much stronger in this game and NZ started flat, with the Tiggers taking half 9-5. We possibly benefited from the fact that we changed shirts to white for the game, as both team's primary colour was black. Unfortunately the Tiggers couldn't maintain their intensity in the second half and after leading 12-11 with ten minutes to go, were overrun going down 16-12 at time-cap. After lunch we played our third game of the day against the top seeded team Fakulti RC (Sydney Universities). This team had too much run for us and we went down 17-3 before time-cap.

Day two saw us play another three games against higher seeded opponents. The first game of the day was against Savage (Adelaide). The lead changed a number of times throughout the game, with the Tiggers taking half 9-7. Again, Tassie was unable to hold on going down by a couple of points in the end. Game two was against Bloodnut (Wollongong). Again this was a tightly contested game with a close score line. The Tiggers were unable to gain the lead in this game and in the end went down 12-11 after time-cap. Our final game of the day was against Sublime (Perth). This team was well drilled and had a lot of run and it showed, with Sublime doubling our score to run out winners 17-8 before time-cap.

Day three again saw us play three games, with one opponent from the top tier and the other two from the top of the bottom tier. The first game of the day was against Flick'n'Steelers (Newcastle) in slippery conditions which made it difficult to catch and throw. Newcastle was able to put together a few points in a row and ended up winning the game comfortably in the end. The second game of the day was our first against a team seeded lower than us, Hot Chilly (Melbourne B). This was a game we knew we could, and had to win so we played hard and were able to keep a couple of points buffer for the duration of the game, winning in the end 14-11 after time-cap to break our run of seven consecutive losses. Our third game of the day was against the eventual plate final winners Dojo Mojo (Brisbane B). Unfortunately we let this team get a start on us from the beginning and we were unable to bridge the gap as the game progressed. Although we went down by two points at time-cap, we finished the better side, using our iso-play on offence to run rings around the bigger, slower Brisbane team. This loss left us in a match up with Manly Massif B (Sydney) in the 13-14 playoff on the morning of the finals.

On day four we were down to play Manly for the playoff for 13th, however the Manly boys obviously had a late night as they slept in, missing the game and giving a forfeit win to the Tiggers! This gave the Tiggers a record of 2 wins, 8 losses from ten games at Nationals. Due to lack of interest from the rest of the Tiggers (too tired I guess), captain Mike ran in the men's doolio, run during the women's final.

Special thanks to Dave, Kathrin and Stefan, our pick-ups for the tournament.

The 2004 Tassie Tiggers were:

Ex-Tassie Tiggers, 2004

2003 Tiggers Captain, Shavawn Donoghue, played in the women's division at Nationals in 2004, as a member of the winning Southside team. Congrats Shavawn!