Separation Issues

So Thursday night saw Cobra's take on the boys in white on the night, Dojo. Luckily the heaven's finally cleared after a week or so of continual rain, the grass was freshly mown low, the dirt moist and the air was electric in anticipation of the clash of the renowned under-achievers of BPL.

Cobra's came out on D and played some hard man to force the turn to start the game with a break. Dojo then scored. Only for import Kalin and semi-native Abra to get some D's and put some hucks up for 3 points in a row, Cobra's pulling away to be 4-1. The Dojo were making basic skill errors and giving the Cobra's the disc and not playing too hard on D making it easy for Cobra's to pull away.

After a rousing time-out speech from Sensei himself (I believe it started something to the sound of "We can easily beat this team") the Dojo came out with their trademark 'Fatty Fence' zone. The Cobra's couldn't handle the pressure of his wide spread arms and turned the disc over multiple times for the Dojo to capitalise and level the scores, 4-4.

They eventually took half 8-4 with their zone forcing turns from the Cobra's. A special mention to Wetnose who redeemed himself while saving a pass from yours truly with a greatest sailing straight back into my hands.

We came out of half fighting back to make the score 10-all. Pete was picking off all of the wayward passes out the back for the Dojo and Cunliffe was monstering around in the cup getting layout D's. The Cobra's found an offence that was working better with Kalin, Abra and I working through the middle of the zone to open it up.

It was coming very close to time cap and Cobra's kept turning it over for the score to be 14-10 in favour of the Dojo. Up until this point the game had been everything you would want, it was spirited, physical, full of passion and each team wanted the win. The next point brought all of that crashing down for me and brought the game into disrepute.

Time cap had been called during the point, this was the last point of the game, Cobra's on O. Kalin brought down a disc, stumbled and rolled into the endzone. He took a couple of steps back to the line and tapped the disc back in, UPA style. The Dojo were on the backfoot, scrambling to make some type of defence. He was about to throw a goal when travel was called by a member of the Dojo. When questioned about his call he responded by saying 'He didn't even think it was a travel, it's for a shit call made by you (directed at Wetnose)'.

There was a bit of an explosion at this point, as there always is when there is that much passion in the competition. I tried to have a on field discussion, which fell on deaf, yet steaming ears. This call was made in spite of an earlier call as there was no real premise for a travel to be called. This is just another timely reminder to all players in this competition that being a player you are also an umpire and you MUST know the rules. As tricky as this may be we need to separate ourselves from emotion while discussing the rules. And as a player, it is our responsibility to play by the rules and facilitate discussion when a call has been made. It is not only a new learning experience every time, it is what makes this game different to every other out there.

Kalin ended up throwing the goal for the game to end 14-11.