London Calling
A-Tour 'London Calling' brought 6 European teams to Tour 1 in Wimbledon on a weekend with a variety of weather from gusty winds with rain, to breezy sunshine.
Group stages-
The 24 team top division split in to 6 groups of 4, the top 16 teams split between 4 groups and the teams in the 17-24 split between 2 groups.
Group A
Featuring last year’s Tour winners and 3rd place xEUCF Clapham, Danish champions Ragnarok, EMO from the midlands and Dublin Ultimate. Clapham, fresh from a tournament in Texas against the major US World’s contenders brought consistent game to beat the rest of the group. Dublin, confident from a victory over Ragnarok in a recent Irish tournament took the Danish champions in sudden death, EMO then soundly beat Dublin, leaving a final play-off between Ragnarok and EMO, EMO only needing at the least to lose by 4 to go through in a 3 way tie. With the score at 14-10 to Ragnarok and effectively sudden death, Ragnarok came through to win 15-10 and go into the quarter finals.
Group B
Featuring xEUCF champions Chevy, Inside Rakete made up from top players from across Germany, Cambo Cakes from Holland and Fusion from Scotland. Chevy's Worlds team took control of their games winning all 3, Fusion coming closest with a 15-12 score line. With both Fusion and Inside beating Cambo Cakes they faced each other in a play-off for a Quarter final spot. A strong middle of the game from Fusion took a potentially controlling lead 12-5, only for Inside to take the initiative and score 6 before Fusion got back on the score sheet, Fusion then closing the game 14-12.
Group C
Featuring Fire’s 1st and 2nd teams, this summer’s Worlds hosts Silence from Prague and Team Shark from Oxford. All games went to seed without any close final scores. Fire won all with Silence taking 2nd place comfortably. Fire 2 took third place with a 15-10 victory over Team Shark.
Group D
Featuring xEUCF semi-finalists Karhukopla from Finland, Brighton who finished last year’s domestic season in 4th but played Mixed at xEUCF, Munich Ultimate Club (MUC) and London’s Tooting Tigers. Karhukopla started against Brighton in a game which ended in sudden death for what was expected to be top spot in the group, Karhukopla scored that all important point and went on to win the group. MUC managed to push Karhukopla close, losing by 3. Brighton eased past MUC leaving the Germans 3rd and Tooting in 4th.
Group E
Featuring Leed Leeds Leeds (LLL), Burro Electrico, Limited Release and Strange Blue. With LLL feeling disappointed to be out of the top 16 due to the injection of the European teams they wanted to prove a point which they duly did (and went on to win 100% of their games). Their closest contest came against Burro who they beat by 3 points. Burro continued to get the points on the board and upped seed from 4th to 2nd in their group avoiding a 3 way tie by virtue of beating Strange Blue by 2 points in their final game. Limited grabbed 3rd place with hard fought up-wind point to win in sudden death over Strange Blue.
Group F
Featuring The Brown, Fully Charged, Devon and Vision. Fully charged through the group to gain top spot. A 3 way tie for spots 2-4 gave Devon 2nd spot although they lost to Vision in sudden death, Vision finished 3rd with 2 sudden death games, a loss to the Brown and the win over Vision, with The Brown ending 4th despite the victory over Vision.
Day 2 was formatted into 4 brackets- 1-8 knock-out, 9-12 round robin, 13-20 knock-out, and 21-24 knock-out.
1-8
Clapham (1) vs Silence (8)-
A close first half with plenty of turnovers for both teams didn’t produce a clear advantage for either team. In the 2nd half Clapham’s defence took control managing to stop the Silence offence from working, Clapham gained the momentum and ran out 15-9 winners.
Chevy (2) vs Brighton (7)
Chevy motored through the game and headed to the semi with a 15-7 victory.
Fire 1 (3) vs Ragnarok (6)
Similar to the Chevy game, Fire walked out with a 15-7 win.
Karhukopla (4) vs Fusion (5)
The tightest of the quarters lead a battle to the end with only a couple of points difference until the end where Karhukopla took the game 15-12.
Clapham (1) vs Karhukopla (4)
Clapham won through to the final convincingly 15-10.
Chevy (2) vs Fire 1 (3)
Arguably the best game of the weekend. In a game featuring some huge plays from both teams Fire came out strong and scored an early break point, they carried the narrow advantage through the game and into the final stages. Chevy managed to find the extra gear when it mattered and their D scored repeatedly to close the game out 14-12.
Clapham (1) vs Chevy (2)
The final between the British Tour Champions Clapham, and the xEUCF champions Chevy, didn’t turn into the spectacle the crowd had hoped. The first points were traded before the Clapham defence took advantage of basic errors from the Chevy offence. 15-5 final score to Clapham.
In the placing games Fire dominated Karhukopla 15-3 to finish 3rd. Brighton finished 5th with strong victories over Ragnarok and Silence. Silence placing 6th after edging Fusion by 2 points in the 5vs8 game. Ragnarok finished 7th after a sudden death win which exploited a Fusion offence who ran out of legs (and brains), Ragnarok coming back from 13-9 to win 14-13.
The 9-12 Round robin finished Inside Rakete 9th with 3 clear victories, MUC pipping EMO for 10th in a sudden death final point, and Fire 2 12th.
13-20 knockout provided some close games.
13- LLL, beating Shark to gain the top 16 spot this year’s squad now deserve, trading through a game against Cambo Cakes until scoring 1 of only 3 points scored up-wind during the game, to win. The final game against Tooting Tiger gave the biggest come-back of the weekend, a motivational team talk from the captain asking for the 100% record spurred LLL to go on a 7-1 run, winning 14-13 after being 12-7 down.
14- Tooting Tigers, coming through a tough semi with Dublin to painfully losing their final.
15- Dublin, edged a narrow victory over Cambo in their last game following the tight semi.
16- Cambo Cakes, narrow victory over Devon followed by the close game with Leeds left Cambo without the energy to overcome Dublin.
17- Team Shark, after the loss to LLL they overcame Devon convincingly before finishing the weekend with a sudden death win over Charged.
18- Charged, they ran over Burro 15-3 but lost the tight final game to Shark
19- Devon came through yet another tight final game to win 14-12.
20- Burro didn’t manage to find their form on the Sunday, finishing with the loss to Devon.
21-24 knockout
The first round of games gave clear winners in Strange Blue and Ltd Release. A re-match from the previous days sudden death group game which Ltd won, Strange Blue came out strong and went on to win 14-12 and take 21st place. Vision and The Brown had a re-match following The Brown winning in sudden death in the group. Again revenge appeared to be the major motivator with Vision taking 23rd spot with a 12-10 victory.
Thanks for the feedback from those who had the time, without the information I received the above would be a set of final scores.
A big thanks to Si Hill, Dan Berry, the UKU, and everyone else who put in the effort to organise and run the tournament.
