Interflug 2009 - english version

Interflug is a well known Hat tournament in central europe. Like each from nine editions, it takes place in Berlin. First polish man played on it in 2004; first time polish man played in final in 2006; first polish man won it in 2008. Streak of luck goes on..

A lot of polish people visited this event, but what’s interesting, this time it was mostly young guns. In this year edition took part seventeen players from those five teams: Uwaga Pies, Cool Flights, Goryle we mgle, RJP, Astro Disco.
As a tribute to Michael Jackson teams were named after his hits.

This tournement had a switzerland system. It means that for example if u won three pool games it doesn’t qualify your team to a better bracket yet. On the other side if u lost three pool games it doesn’t mean u don’t have any chances for a final. Crucial influence for what place your team fight after pool games, have crossover games. Pool games only give your team an opportunity to play against potentially weaker rival.  Some doesn’t like this system (read. Nowy), and some does a lot (Elvis or Lucjan).

Being in the same pool teams ‘In the closet’ and ‘Remember the time’ had this situation. Team number one took first place in the pool, but lost the crossover game (with Elvis from Astro and Piotrek from RJP team - ‘Earth Song’ ), fallin down to fight for places from 9-16. Second team took the last place in the pool, but won crossover game, and thanks to that got into the bracket for places from 1-8.

For orange team, which i had an honor to play in, it wasn’t so easy. Actually every game was really tight. Each pool game we lost just by one point. On every of those we’ve been really close all the time. In third game against ‘Jam’, we was near as no other. But some wicked english man (forgot your name buddy) crossed our plans off, doing four sweet layouts. With two of those he scored, with the other two he prevent my team to score. He was supported by Mirko from Yeah Haw, whose lefthanded forehand hucks were almost 100% successful.

Crossover game with ‘Streets in Moscow’ was the only game this day, when it wasn’t us runnin after the score. But with much respect I would say that if we wouldn’t win, it could be our rival - team with sky color jerseys go into the final. They had few amazing players. Finally ‘Streets in Moscow’ took ninth place loosing only one game..the one with us.

In Saturday evening we didn’t went downtown to eat some kebabs, couse dinner seconds were nice, and Habibi imbiss too close. We spend the evening on the field throwin and talkin. Bed time story was told by Majonez, and if U wanted to hear it, or not.. U had to.

In the morning saying hello to breakfast, and what’s quite unusual at that time, to bunch of countrymans, we were looking like hipnotize in the big green. U could say that organization of this tournament was like field surface quality - great.

First game orange played against P.Y.T. This game got me even more in to the feeling that we are gettin better slowly. Our actions were preety calm, and disc possession was much better than the opponent. For the first time in this tournament we won easily. Also easily and with a big smile we took part in the cake race with P.Y.T. team. We won again. Simmilar to us, ‘Thriller’ team was going, where Majonez from Astro, and Ewa from RJP played. They didn’t lost any game yet. Yet, couse in semi final they failed to ‘Bad’, a team where Poznan’s - Maciej, Kuba and Kiziol played supported by Młody from Cool Flights. Second semi final was a get back game from day before- ‘Remember the time’ vs ‘Black or white’. I remember very nice handling and few quick cutters from the opponent team, that we had to deal with. It was very fun, tough game. It was those few Defence bids in the main momens of the game that let us win this one.

Final.. who would thought about that. Those chats from the circle like ’see u in the final’ which, i think nobody is takin seriously, came up true. Although we didn’t meet the team from our pool, the fact that we made it to the final, while loosing three of four games day before, was amazing.
The power of orange team u could see from the first game, it was only the matter of time, when our game will be on the right track. And it went on the right track in the last moment, during the crossover game. After this one till the end we’ve been self-confident. In offence we used horizontal stack. Quite often we went on preety hucks, thrown by Henderik from Holland. But when rival used zone defence we manage to go thru the field with quick give and go. In defence the best option was force forehand while covering man on man, but sometimes we used Dog defence, known also as Salmon.

Final was the game when we was in the best shape, and the opponent ‘Bad’ seem like tired, and without an idea to make the big plays. It doesn’t mean they didn’t fight hard, but it was us, that had the disc sticked to our hands. Point after point we took away the chances from gold jerseys team. We won 11:2.

Thanks to everybody for that time. Special thanks to cuters who I could compete with. It was a great challenge.

Lucjan

Interflug Tournament 2009 date 08-09.08.2009.
Astro Disco was represented by:
-Elvis
-Majonez
-Nowy
-Lucjan