final preparations

here's a quick summary of our final preparations in the run up to WJUC.


On the weekend of July 3rd and 4th, the team took part in UK junior open nationals. We came 7th overall, in a tournament with a wide range of standards of teams. Hopefully, the experience stands to us. Thanks to the UKU juniors people for allowing us to compete. 


Dublin club summer league has been continuing every Wednesday evening, where the juniors have recorded wins over OCS and UCD, and a close loss to jabba this week. Results and schedule are here.  


David Ferris is out of the tournament with a recent injury. We wish him a speedy recovery. 


Robbie Brennan was announced as vice captain of the team. 


Finally, the under 23 open team, featuring junior players Conor Hogan and Keith Mernagh, came 12th and won spirit in the world under 23s championship in Florence recently. Congrats to them and to the other Irish teams that took part. 


We leave Sunday morning. 

Eh....

I also forgot to say that we'll have a placing Saturday at some point.

Here's the tournament site: http://wjuc2010.de/

Schedule!!

The schedule has finally been released. It is an 18 team tournament with 2 groups of 9. We have 8 group games and the top two in each group qualify for the semi finals.

We are in Group A with USA, Belgium, Finland, Australia, Germany, Japan, Austria and Israel.
Group B is Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, GB, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and Switzerland.

Opening ceremony and showgame (Germany V Austria) is on Monday and we start our campaign on Tuesday.

Tuesday, 8.30 v Finland
Tuesday, 12.30 v Belgium
Wednesday, 8.30 v USA
Wednesday, 12.30 v Germany
Thursday, 12.30 v Austria
Thursday, 4.30 v Australia
Friday, 12.30 v Japan
Friday, 4.30 v Israel

Handy enough so!!

I or Séamie or one of the lads will do our best to keep this updated daily.

Dublin & U23 friendlies, a captain announcement and this week's summer league game

Last Saturday the juniors played two full length friendly matches. First up was Dublin Ultimate (who themselves are preparing for world clubs in Prague next week). Quite to everyone's surprise, the juniors started the game by taking the lead, and continued hitting a few deep throws to take advantage of a slow start by Dublin...who at 4-3 down, called a timeout to refocus. That was the end of the slow start from Dublin, who went on to win 17-4.

Next up was the under 23s (the team that organised this day of friendlies, in preparation for the under 23 world championships in Florence later in July...thanks for that!). This game didn't go so well for the juniors. The under 23s strong defense and much more experienced and skilled offense were too much, and we went down 17-1. Plenty of things for the juniors to work on!

That day the captain of the squad was announced: Finnian Flood of st Mary's college. Finnian played for the Ireland A team at the junior European championships in Vienna last summer, and has gathered plenty of experience in his short ultimate career (including a cork open win with Broc ultimate). Best of luck, Fin!

On Wednesday (yesterday), the juniors played their second match in the Dublin Summer league. This one against a trinity team featuring many very experienced players. A much improved defensive effort was made, as compared with last weekend's games anyway, but alas, it wasn't enough, as trinity won out by 16-13 (I think!).

This weekend, we have a trip to UK junior open nationals, a real tournament experience which will hopefully stand to us at the world championships. And then next week sees a summer league game against an OCS team featuring many of last years juniors team. That should be interesting.

I'm off to Prague, to play club worlds with Dublin, so I'll miss both of those, hopefully, some of the other lads will update the blog!

Seamus