London Winter League 2003 - Matchday 2 updated 10th December Matchday 2 saw a complete turnaround from matchday 1 in Division 1: both Clapham teams topped their Div 1 pools with clear victories over the Ledgington teams. Discuits, very welcome visitors from Reading, emerged as worthy winners of Division 2 after a second place at LWL1 - congratulations! Special mentions to Smash & Grab for a mighty victory over one of the Ledgington teams, and to Thundering Herd: despite remaining winless through 2003 they got very close and their enthusiasm (well Joel's anyway) is a reminder to us all why we play this crazy sport. Many thanks to Wayne Wrecker, Nicole and the boys from the Thundering Herd for all their help organising matchday 2. See you all again on January 3rd. As far as I'm aware there's been no reported lost property. Division1: 1 Clapham 1 2 Clapham 2 3 Ledgington 1 4 Smash & Grab 5 Ledgington 2 6 Hammerage/NSD 7 Strange Blue 8 Red Dog At LWL2 Ledgington paid a heavy price for their LWL1 victories over Clapham. We've all seen it in the Tour - for the last 2 years Clapham have lost Tour 1 then won all the rest - nothing stings them into action like a humiliating loss (except 2 humiliating losses apparently!). The 2 pools of 4 we start with are pretty much set up so that there's one Clapham and one Ledge team in each - but on this occasion neither Ledgington team could get going and the results were around 13-3 and 13-4. They struggled all day to rotate 20 players on each of their 2 teams and this was to prove extremely costly in their pool game against a Smash and Grab team who in Lars' words ' were really up for it, played very well and capitalised on every opportunity. Once we went into the cap, Ledgington scored about 4 straight points to take it to sudden death but S&G took down a big huck to finish it off.' Not surprisingly a more detailed S&G report revealed it was Waggle who bombed it long to Ryan. Elsewhere Hammerage overcame Red Dog, and Strange Blue couldn't get much from S&G. In a monster all-Clapham final the likes of Randy, Cart & Scando thought they would easily outgun the other team (old men plus the odd handy youngster) - but they weren't counting on Britney's fantastic form and the team spirit shown (we came back from 6-2 to win 15-12 I think). It was a fantastic game with layouts and outrageous grabs left, right and center. Smash and Grab were hoping to complete a double over Ledgington in the 3/4 play-off; they had a good start, and took an early lead. Jon Kinsey reports: 'It looked like we had it, when fitness caused us to make some mistakes (we were down to 2 subs). At 6 -3 us, we let them take 6 in a row to finish 9 - 6.' Dang! ;-) The other Ledge team polished off Hammerage 15-5 to take 5th, and Strange Blue pipped Red Dog to 7th in a thrilling sudden death finish. All in all another great day of outdoor Ultimate. The sun shone and my team won :-D Division 2: 1 Discuits 2 Albatross/Bad Habits 2 3 Pyramus and Frisbee 4 Under Cover Lovers 5 Disc Doctors 6 Albatross/Bad Habits 1 7 Mohawks 8 Holloway Hammers 9 Thundering Herd (This report was compiled by Division 2 co-ordinator Rob McGowan) (For your information - when 9 teams want to play we seed 3 pools of 3 so that 3 plays 4 and 6 plays 7. Then winners go into the top pool, losers into the bottom pool and middlemen into the middle pool) The 2nd Division went well despite the odd confusion over pitch size and frequent interruptions from Sunday dog walkers. Some high standard ultimate was seen in the morning with Pyramus, UCL, Discuits and ABH2 looking especially strong early on. With UCL going down in a hard fought group match with ABH2, it meant that the top seeded pool was as follows: Pyramus, Discuits, ABH2 Unfortunately for Pyramus, they ran out of steam in the afternoon and lost both their group games though they never stopped running throughout and their ever present leader Dan seemed to be pretty happy with a third place finish. Discuits versus ABH2 was an exciting game with Discuits emerging as victors and topping their second place at LWL1 to emerge as worthy winners of LWL2 and should head into the new smaller Division 2 as one of the favourites. The second seeded pool consisted of: UCL, Disc Doctors and ABH1 UCL "Londons Loudest Team", always looked the stronger of the three teams here, and they were still smarting from their loss to ABH2 so were keen to get revenge on their sister team ABH1 - and they did, scoring a convincing victory which set them up for a solid 4th place. The Disc Doctors managed to score one over ABH1 as well placing them in 5th. With ABH1 having dropped down from Division 1 last month and potentially into Division 3 (assuming we have 3 divisions) they will be keen to put in a strong showing at LWL3 The third seeded pool contained: Thundering Herd, Mohawks and The Holloway Hammers Some great close games characterised the action in the bottom group. First up were The Herd and The Hammers, still searching for their elusive first WL win The Herd battled hard and were leading for much of the game until Holloway pulled ahead in the final minutes to win 11-5. The Herd next played the Mohawks and again led throughout the game. Nerves got the better of them though and they lost in sudden death after a magnificent fight back from the Mohawks. Commemorative "Thundering Herd - Winless in 2003" discs will be available soon. The final game in the group saw 2 of the university teams square up - Mohawks (Sussex) and Holloway. The Mohawks managed to carry the momentum from the previous match through to this game and they won a hard fought and very well spirited game. Click here to see the league table after Matchday 2 home | results | info | teams | maps | stuff | archives