COPA CABANA 2006

NOTTINGHAM 26th -28th AUGUST 2006

THE TEAM

Mat, JB, Rich, G-Mac, Pee, Scaramanga, Keir, Steve, Jo, Alex, Liz, Sally, Hobson, Tim Blair

FRIDAY

So AWT's debut tournament kicks off as Steve arranges for everyone arriving on the Friday to meet him at the world famous Trent Bridge Inn. After managing to spiral round the city to our destination Alex and I eventually arrive meeting Ste at Maccy D's. Cue the rain for the last half hour of the journey, plus Alex's abortive attempt at navigating – it leaves me less than a happy-go-lucky-scamp. Shortly afterwards, I collect Liz from the station, receive a call from Jo while I'm there and return to the campsite, set up the tents and then we bugger off back to the pub to await the arrival of Radders and G-Mac in the car of Little Tiny Pee. They arrive around 9ish and it's the most unlikely of them that it refused entry to the bar – Radders! Because people under eighteen usually traverse the Nottingham night-scene wearing a tank top. Oh well, off to the offie where we stock up on a good supply of grog for the weekend's festivities. Liz, Jo and I then walk back to the campsite while Alex bags a lift to navigate the others to the tents as Ste goes to sleep in a proper bed. Oddly enough, we arrive way before them as lo and behold Alex's directions nearly put the others in Loughborough, a quick call to multi map super whiz JB and everything is back on track. At the campsite we meet all the other teams plus Ian, Hobson and LeeBoy, get a bit drunk and play a bit of foozball, this went on till about 5 am. I'd gone to bed by then as I was bloody knackered.

SATURDAY

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooo it's all excitin! We are awarded our free breakfast (cornflakes or muesli) and those who weren't given them the night before were emblazoned with wristbands. Rich and Keir arrive then for me and Radders it's off to the Captain's meeting- one sheet schedule, text score reporting blah blah blah, (you know the drill) and we're off to our first game, after some spangly new tops that is! Our opponents? Hulltimate's grad team.

AWT vs Hullumni

First game ever! Woohoo! We lost the toss and we're on D for our first point. Within about a minute we get a D a quick succession of passes down the pitch and either Pee or G-Mac slots a sidearm to me to put AWT on the board – booyah! Downwind now, we get another D and it's G-Mac basking in translatory glory as we go 2 up. Good start huh? Well shame we couldn't go on like that as the cobwebs of not playing for a few months begin to clog up the Translation machine. I think the final score stood around 6-3 to Hull. We were a bit dishevelled to say the least.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 3 - HULLUMNI 6

Next up we got our full squad to take on Liverpool's university team as Sally had turned up and we had assistance from another ex-Mwnci – Tim Blair.

AWT vs Boogie Knights

In the words of Rip Torn in Dodgeball, we looked like a bunch of retards trying to fuck a doorknob. We could not stop dropping discs! Sure we got the odd point here and there eventually resorting to huck-and-D, but it proved easy enough for Boogie Knights to take advantage of this with some fast played turnoverage. Don't get me wrong we made them work hard for their points, but we still knew we could do better – we put it down to us still getting settled into our own ways. They had dogs on the sideline. I don't know what to say about that though…glad they didn't shit.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 5 – BOOGIE KNIGHTS 9

Now we took on the pirate team from London, PAF!

AWT vs Pyramus and Frisbee

Interesting one this one, we started to move the disc around a bit more and gave them a hell of a game, playing a bit better but still not quite up to our usual standard, we managed to get a good few points off these guys. Running around like pirates all day was fun for them and everyone else as most of our team had lost their voices by the end of the day which I put down to talking loik a poirarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrte. Arrrrrrrrrrr. Anyway, they still proved themselves to be the better team as the game ended at something like 10-6. Their call was pretty nifty as Radders found himself making up a story without realising it.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 6 – PYRAMUS AND FRISBEE 10

Next up Brunel plus a couple of mates including a guy from Haze…

AWT vs BASIC

These guys were pretty good, they played clinically and smoothly and punished us hard for our drops. We managed to keep them running and tried to make it difficult for them to score but when the final score was 15-0 we knew we were doing something wrong. I reckon we had gotten a bit flustered and were forcing it a bit much. Never mind. The well-spirited captain told us that that it wasn't a 15-0 match and we weren't a 15-0 team. Bloody nice of them I reckon. A good game, we tried hard but were just very, very unlucky not to score a point as we made a couple of drops in the zone. Gutting.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 0 – BASIC 15

Last game of the day is on the horizon though, onwards and upwards against Staffs Uni team.

AWT vs Mental Discs

In what has to be one of the best games of the tournie, Awaiting Welsh Translation were up against the only team seeded lower than them in the group. Both teams had lost every game till that point and wanted this one badly! Kick off and AWT spend no time in going up 2-0, scoring an upwind point in the process. About bastard time! I don't know what happened after that, both teams get a point then we just took our foot right off the pedal and let Mental Discs score seven on the trot to take the half – bollocks! They score again! 9-3! We are in the shit to say the least. Then a miraculous thing happened, we start laying out everywhere! Of my own I remember Pee putting a disc behind me in the zone which I had to layout to grab, I remember laying out only to have a MD player fall over me, I remember the exact same player returning the favour, I remember Rich's layout D, Graham's one, Keir laying out at his head height for a goal, and doing the same thing for a D. We must have scored about 6 on the bounce while they scored 1. 10-9. We were back in it. They score, we score, they score we score. Hoooooooooooooonk! The hooter ends with us trailing 12 points to 11. A gutting end but we were back on track.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 11 – MENTAL DISCS 12

So the party, Keir made himself up to be Jack Sparrow, Graham was supposedly Crockett from Miami Vice, I was Clark Kent, Jo was Jessica Rabbit, Alex was Phoenix from X-Men, Sally was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Liz was Betty Rubble. Everyone else copped out and went as extras. I hear the party was good but I kept falling asleep on the bench so I went to bed.

SUNDAY

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It. Fucking. Hurt. Aching legs ambled slowly across the bridge to the pitches where we were met by the faces of our next team…

AWT vs DrugStoreCowboys

Aberystwyth + Sunday Morning + Ultimate = Loss. It turned out the old formula has graduated along with us as we played some sluggish ultimate. I can't remember a whole lot about the game except that the final score was about 9-6. Not a bad result but we still hadn't won a bloody game!

FINAL SCORE: AWT 6 – DRUGSTORECOWBOYS 9

Tally-ho onwards and upwards to play the team in pink wiv an awesome name…

AWT vs Premature Huckulation

Now this is more like it! Point for fecking point, by now we had taken on board the usual Mwnci zone and were using it well, they managed that notorious upwind point (or was it the changing ends at half time that did it?) either way the game ended prematurely (hehehehe) as we started late. Finishing the game at 9-7 in their favour.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 7 – PREMATURE HUCKULATION 9

So the end of our pool and we're sitting at the bottom –humpf! The crossover was next but first a few of us picked up for another team…

Team Montage vs Pen15

Alex, Sally, Rich and Myself picked up a couple of points for these guys as they were short of players and has the same colour tops as us. The warm up was to the song ‘Montage' from Team America, you know so we start off rubbish and end up ace by the end of the montage. Still we played a few points, which was fun before we had to trek back to the campsite for our next game. Not sure how the game went but I hear they did well in the rest of the tournie.

FINAL SCORE: TEAM MONTAGE ? – PEN15 ?

So we take on the number 4 placed team top of the group, bottom of ours…*sigh*

AWT vs WhipScar

Aber grads vs Warwick grads, fun, fun, fun! We take to the pitch and play bloody hard! The first few points take a good while for WhipScar to chalk up, but once they did, they made it very difficult for us to score. Eventually they start dicking around throwing stupid discs and generally trying to make us look like a bunch of tossers, so I don't think some of them liked it when we managed to score a couple. Radders scored at least one of them, I know, not sure about the other one. I remember I sent Graham a huck which he caught then assisted with, only for one of their players to say to me that I was travelling and that he'd let me off – Gee, thanks mister! You're the best! Cheeky sod. We weren't too happy when Tom the TD decided to commentate saying how the match wouldn't really matter anyway. We'll at least we held our own against the team that went on to win the tournie.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 2 – WHIPSCAR 15

Back over the bridge to the other field for a rematch…

AWT vs Premature Huckulation

Up against these guys again and again it was a pretty good match and again I think exactly the same thing happened but with added layouts. Great, great fun but we still lost making this now 9 losses out of 9.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 7 – PREMATURE HUCKULATION 9

So off we pop to the campsite where we each get some hog roast a few beers and then go to watch a game of fantasy floodlit Frisbee as two AWT members took to the field Rich on the clothed side and Jo playing for willies out. Cue many, many obscenities yelled by Hobson that get everyone shouting and laughing in equal measure – awesome fun. Then it hammered down as I went to me tent to watch Clerks.

MONDAY

The last day and we've won absolutely nothing! Except about 2 calls and that was it! At least now we were up against teams that were of equal standard to us and so could hopefully expect a win. We awoke to find a note in place of Sally where she said her goodbyes :'( As Freddie Mercury said, the show must go on. We were up against the open team of our favourite university chums – Jesters.

AWT vs Red

Nice of these guys to change kit! As Red's kit was the same red as ours they changed to grey which we thought was well sportin of them as you know they didn't have to and their team is called Red after all. Anyway, something was in the hog roast as all the cobwebs and dust were gone, AWT was finally playing as well as we all knew it could! We score twice, they score, then somehow we score another eight with them only answering once- this included upwind points for us! It was incredible, we felt very proud of ourselves for winning our first game as AWT against a very cool, spirited and talented bunch of guys and gals. An absolute pleasure it was to play them.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 10 – RED 2

Hopefully we could keep it up against our next opponents…

AWT vs Too Many Pies

Next we took on Newcastle University's team and again we had an amazing time! Great ultimate was played by both teams, both squads managed to bag upwind points and it turned out to be a close game from which it was lucky we took the lead. The game ended with us winning! Woohoo! I had a great time playing these guys as I knew that I'll hopefully end up playing with some of them in their open team – The Brown when I wing my merry way to Newcastle.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 7 – TOO MANY PIES 5

Onwards to our final game then it was, up against some familiar faces…

AWT vs Lords

Our good buddies from Malvern made this the perfect showdown for our final game. It really was a bloody epic game as both teams went hell for leather. We traded point for point, both teams got upwind ones, they managed to get one more and we managed to drop it in the zone of an upwind point. If only we'd scored the game could have gone the other way but it was not to be. I remember laying out on my head…it hurt. Overall though we played well and had a great match with some old friends.

FINAL SCORE: AWT 5 – LORDS 7

So AWT finish with a final position of 26, improving on our seeding of 27 even though one team didn't turn up. A good start for a team that will hopefully extend far into the ultimate stratosphere and one day be seen as one of the greats!

Thanks to everyone for playing especially the girls and non-grads for each being an integral part of the team, you were all ace and we couldn't have done it without you. Good luck to Sally in America and the same goes for Steve, we'll miss you both! Steve, your place on the team is ready and waiting for when you get back and Sally, if you're over here or the team is over there then we expect you to once again slip into the shirt with the colour of arterial spray.

3 Welsh Translations…

Jellyfish! Microwave! No Parking!