Dave Rountree and Alex Semfel are carrying injuries, and as far as I can tell, none of USYD's most excellent reserve players, Aki Lafllin, Philip Yates and Vivek Doshi, are committed to attending AUG, so this basically isn't great for USYD. I hate to buy into this cult of personality that seems to have sprung up around Calan - I don't personally think he would have provided much of a challenge to Alec Deslandes or Joel Pillar if he had been at AUG in 2008, although needless to say he has vastly improved as a player since then - but I'm sure there will be jibes directed at Brett Latham about this issue, I just hope he doesn't take them to heart.
Anyway. All of this got me thinking about uncontrollable events, and how you can adjust to them as a team, or as a player.
Injury
As above. It's bad enough if you get a dedicated role-filler out for the tourney due to a serious injury - as the case may be for Monash this year, with Cleetus out (get well soon Cleetus) - but losing a playmaker is devastating. The sensible way to deal with this is to utilise the player (especially if they're experienced) in a non-playing coach role, or as a dedicated sideliner. Make no mistake - if a player is a good sideline talker, concise, direct and audible, they can get you more blocks than Lego.
The non-sensible thing (at least from an injury management perspective) is to jerry-rig the injured athlete to a state where they can nut out a few points, usually on offence, usually handling. When there's a lot at stake, this approach can work, as it did for Owen and HOS this year at Nationals.
Of course, if an injury isn't so severe that it takes a player out of action entirely, but does effect their game, the onus is on the player to do a lot of things they're not used to (ice, stretch) to make the injury less of an issue.
Weather
Anybody who played Nationals in 2008, or NSW Mixed Regionals in 2009, or Melbourne Hat 2008, or [insert tournament with atrocious weather conditions, be it wind or rain] will know that there are some games where the weather plays an unfairly important role in determining the victor.
As a team it can be hard to adjust - there is only so much throwing you can do on the sideline improve accuracy in wind or rain - especially if you lack solid handlers. The benefit to zone defences, and teams that have practiced them, is notable.
So what can you do? Win the toss, for one. Positional play becomes important in wind, as does forcing flick options once conditions become wet. Reeling out junk defences - or conversely, reining them in, if all you're doing is letting their three Worlds-level handlers work it calmly up the field - are all options.
There's also another bit about weather, which has nothing to do with wind or rain, and that's climate shock. Taswegians playing in Perth have a substantial fish-out-of-water factor, and it's up to them (or Brisbanites playing in Canberra in winter, etc) to find some measure of comfort, whether it's donning thermals or drinking water like it's going out of fashion.
The Opposition
This is probably the most important of the 'known unknowns'. A wise man (who I think was Ken Shepherd) once said:
See them? That's the opposition. This is us. And the thing is, none of us have any control over what they play, or how well they play it. The only thing we're in control of is ourselves, and there is nothing stopping all of us from playing the best we can here tonight.The key point to take from this is, your team won't be able to exert any control over how well their opponents play. In the Victorian Mixed Regional Championships just past, Tribe by all accounts did a great job of capitalising over a cranky Cranky, a team who was not playing their best ultimate, by any stretch of the imagination.
There are no magic bullets to this one - or if there were, and I had them, I would be raking in the dough working for the AIS, not fumbling through a uni degree working at a pizza joint and running a sneaky ultimate blog on the side.
The best you can do is to do the best you can do, as players and as a team.
3 comments:
I think the controllable you are after is not ¨win the toss¨ (rather out of your control), but to decide correctly after the toss.
In wind, choose the upwind end. If it is likely to get windy later, and isn´t windy now, choose downwind. If wind is irrelevant, choose offence, unless you have a good reason not to.
are there any reasons apart from wind to not choose offense?
inclement weather is a bigger problem for players in northern states who don't get a lot of practice in such conditions. even when the weather is bad up there many players will simply just not play and opt to wait for sunshine.
different story in vic/tas, where we get to early May and known that the weather is going to be shit until October so we just get out and play anyway. then it comes to tournaments such as Melb Hat 08 and Nats 08 and such conditions can be dealt with rather than seeing it as an issue.
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