Guildford entered two teams at both Mixed Tour 1 and 2.
We had a tough time at Cardiff. Not just the horrendous wet and muddy conditions, but both teams went down to consecutive defeats in back to back games first thing on Saturday morning. That gave us an uphill struggle. Both teams battled admirably, with the first team winning their subsequent games, but ending up on the wrong end of a three-way tie. That left them in 48th position going into Sunday’s games.
The seconds were unlucky to lose their third game in sudden death. They ended Saturday in their starting position at 51st, meaning they went into Sunday in the same 45 to 52 bracket as the firsts.
Before the call came through on Sunday for games to be cancelled, Guildford 1 continued their winning streak with two wins, including the epic second game against White Sheep. The dismal conditions meant we ended up calling a timeout half an hour into this game with the score still at 0-0. It did the trick though as we ground out a 3-2 win over a couple of hours of play to take the 45th seed position in what turned out to be the last game of the day.
Guildford 2 lost the first game on Sunday, but then earned a 5-3 victory against Devon 2, getting their first win in the last game of the tournament. That meant they held onto 51st, and then with the cancelled remaining games wound up 49th in the final reckoning.
Despite the poor results and conditions, the squads managed to remain upbeat and seemed to be enjoying playing Ultimate regardless of the circumstances.
Mixed Tour 2 was a very different proposition. Salford is The North rather than The Welsh, and the teams were greeted by The Sun instead of The Rain.
GU1 were seeded at 37 but with the twin motivations of redeeming themselves from MT1 and the prospect of a lie-in if they could top their pool and move up to 36th, they meant business. They won their first game to zero and their second to one. The third game finished 13-3 against the team seeded ahead of them meaning Guildford could hold their heads high and go into Sunday well-rested and confident.
The twos had a pool of three, and again suffered a sudden death loss. This time in their opening game against a Sheffield Steal side seeded 10 points above them. They also conceded the second game to ABH B. But then they rose up to take a noble victory over White Sheep in their crucial crossover game, thereby avoiding the bottom bracket for Sunday.
The firsts had a bye in their morning game so had their first game on Sunday at 12.20pm. The rest clearly did them good as they won 15-1 and then went on to win their last game 12-6 to finish as high as they could have from their starting position at 29th with a 100% winning record, scoring figures of 70 for and 10 against over the weekend, and a 10 game winning streak at Mixed Tour 2015.
For GU2 Sunday was a tight-fought round robin format in which they won their first, lost the second in sudden death to The Brown and lost their last by 2 points in a rematch against Sheffield. That placed them at 39th, 6 places higher than the first team’s finishing position at Mixed Tour 1.
The club is now looking forward and gearing up to our involvement in Mixed Tour 3 in Cheltenham on the 9-10th of May.