Bristleheads at the Malaysia Ultimate Open – Trip Report

Well, the weekend before last the Bristleheads went to KL to attend the Malaysian Ultimate Open. And I’m still tired.

On Thursday I typed a press release which the Journo proofed, faxed it off to all the newspapers and it got picked up by 5 newspapers. Three of the English papers and two Chinese features the Borneo Bristleheads going to KL for the MUO. I’m not sure how many people actually noticed it, because I didn’t receive any emails. Clearly we’ll need to do much more marketing for the sport.

As expected, we got our butts kicked at the MUO, but we had some exceptional experiences and met some great people. My only complaint was that it wasn’t as social as we’ve hoped, but now that we know the lay of the land we’ll do better next time.

As a team from Sabah we were well keen to win the party, as Sabahans (and by extension, those who live here) are known to party. However, on Saturday night our entire team was wiped out and tired, and most of us went to bed by around midnight. Only one of our team partied till dawn; Chris. Kadazan. Hardcore partier.

Saturday just took it out of us. Our very first game was up against Freak Show, and damn those guys are serious. Kudos to them for taking their game seriously serious, and they are considered one of the best teams in Asia, but wow, stern man. Anyway, we had loads of fun when we scored 1, and only 1, point against them.

Our second game on Saturday was against Wild Cats, a team we thought we had a better change against, because they weren’t testosterone charged. Nevertheless, our inexperience and clear lack of skill saw us only score two points against them.

By our third game we were seriously ready for action. One of our games got cancelled due to an electric storm, so we had some time to rest. Game three was up against Shiok, another serious Singaporean team who knew we were green and had the attitude to remind us of it. We dug deep and scored four points against them, which grinded them no end. We were chuffed.

On Sunday morning, much earlier than any of us wanted to be awake, we played against a team of mostly expats called Satu Lagi. They were top contenders, but a lot more fun to play against, because although they were serious they still had some time for silly buggers. We lost against them too, but we enjoy it.

Our next game was up against Dengue Fever, featuring the CEO of Air Asia X, and intense man who takes his Ultimate ultimately serious (he would not have stood out in the Singaporean teams). We scored a triumph of sorts, because even though we still lost against them, we managed to cap them, or prevent them from scoring the maximum of 13. The end score was 11-5, so a good result for us.

Our last game was really a friendly, the two bottom teams pitted against each other. Pirates was as near to our level as they had at the MUO and if we weren’t such soft asses who where all injured and tired, we might have been able to give them a run for their money. Instead, we lost 13-4.

Pirates had an uptight-kilt-wearing-finger-waving-rule-mongering captain who made the game memorable for his being pedantic and rubbing our noses in a fundamentalist interpretation of the rules, but as a game of Ultimate it was ok.

The fields were basically grass floating on mud. On the one hand this led to lots of injuries; sprained ankles, twisted knees, it was ugly. On the other hand it encouraged laying out, which meant lots of action as people flew across the field and after the disc. It was tiring though.

Not to mention dirty. I had to scrub my socks and shirts to get the mud out. Some of my clothing will never be the same again. But it’s all in good spirit.

In the end the Borneo Bristleheads, that’s us, won the Spirit Award. I guess when you play as poorly as we do, the only thing you can do is have fun. And we did. And the other teams noticed, so they decided we should win the Spirit Award. Thanks guys.

So now that we know the level of competition that we’re up against, we’ll prepare wholeheartedly for Singapore. There’s a tournament there in August, I think, and this time the Bristleheads will go to win one.