Women save the day

8.30am. Must win game. Germany. After another early morning rise for a light meal, the Mundis headed down to the main fields for a rematch with Germany, who were one of the 4 teams to beat Australia in Turku, 14-17. The queue to see Mike the physio seems to grow each morning and Andie was there too today, some meniscus issues keeping her out for the day. Tex sat the day out also with a groin strain. That meant we were down 2 of our leading goal scorers. My knee responded well to anti-inflams and my PCL was given the all clear after a layout v USA swelled overnight and I took it easy v Italy, so I was running with just minor meniscus issues.

Germany started downwind on offense first point. Our first O point they pulled the disc out of bounds, so we started from the brick mark. With no Tex, it fell to Wazza to scoot long and the first pass was duly sent deep. Too deep and out the back! We fought back and after a marathon point, we scored.

We expected the Germans to play the style of offense known throughout the rest of the world as 'German' (strange that :p ) and they did, levelling 1-1 before the 'Mundis went on a run 4-1, thanks to a big layout D from the birthday boy Steve Wealands and some tight clam zones which restricted the german style of play. However our offense was not as tight as it could've been with soft turns against the zone in our own half combined with hucks to contests or good huck options resulting in bad throws. Our offense crumbled, as their offense adjusted to both our zone and straight up offenses. German style involves lots of deep throws and our straight up negated that until they started running handler isolation plays with a very deep horizontal stack. They also landed a few cheap shots by throwing hammers and blades on high stall counts onto the heads of their tall men.

Germany took half 7-9 and we were looking frustrated with some simple drops and a bunch of bad throws. Cath and Leanne were both once again very dependable with disc in hand and Gaby was likewise, save for one brain-fart of trying to hammer over a german guy on the mark. Lucy and Mel had big layouts, on D and O respectively to win or maintain possession. Our turnovers seemed to be coming from our experienced men.

At half we rejigged a few things. In a bid to reign things in we clamped down hard on the dump area and played backhand force. Yorston was assigned to shut down their #1 man, captain Rue, and matched him admirably, keeping him to just 2 assists for the match, but one was blocked by Freise, however his man took an amazing reflex catch behind him on the big deflection. Watching the O team make simple errors can fire up a D team and with intensity we lifted; the blocks started coming again. Lucy finished with 3, Steve poached effectively for his 2nd and i might edit this bit when i remember who got the others :)

We came storming home over the top of them in the 2nd half taking it 10-5 to win 17-14. The second half was a better display or our game, however the structure was still lacking in places, especially near the endzone where after a timeout near the goalline it took us 16 passes to convert the goal. Patient yes, pretty no, structured, definitely not. To the Germans credit they played very effective poaching in the cutting lane, as they are a group who have played much ultimate together and are wily and cagey with their age and experience.

The Germans sang us a great song (involving beer of course) and Leanne and Lucy split the women's MVP with Wazza getting the mens. Max had 5 assists and Bec 4 goals. In a scare for the Germans, the Italian team nearly knocked them out of the next phase with a spirited showing, going down 16-13. That result showed us how much work we have in front of us to match the teams in the next pool.

Mundis will have to play better structured offense against GB and Canada tomorrow or we won't go far. We had just 16 turnovers for the game, but it felt like a majority of them were easily avoidable. Our women carried the day here.