Imagine being Noah Moss. You’re 19 years old and this is the most important game you’ve ever played. In a mammoth penultimate point you watched your team bottle six or more downwind possessions through sheer anxiety, fumbles, and hucks to no one—your team is actually in the middle of a good old fashioned choke, having led this game 10-6. You guys just turned it over on Universe point, pretty cheaply. Your opposition has the disc around the brickmark and it doesn't look like they want to give it back, grinding unders, swinging to the centre. An ambitious hammer gets put up and it sails out the side of the endzone, skidding all the way to where plush grass meets a concrete footpath.
You are chosen to go pick it up. You’ve been playing at Manly since you were 12 years old.
Behind you is a seven-year long program, with all its hopes and hard work, designed and refined over the better part of a decade specifically to win this game.
In front of you is the entire field. You are, of course, going upwind.
And as Noah Moss begins his long, slow walk to the front cone of the endzone, and the hundreds of people from other games clear the sideline with great reluctance since they want to be as close to the drama as possible, and every single other team at the tournament is now lining the field, and the whole of Manly’s massive club is shouting nice and encouraging things, and Newcastle are slapping their thighs and screaming to stop the unders, and the noise is real and the energy is palpable, and Manly’s whole incredible narrative arc and the many lessons therein are being discussed loudly on the sideline, and the players are all so wholly consumed and invested in the game that it has no doubt started to feel surreal, and everyone on the field has reached that special plane of personal investment where life and work and Uni and everything other than this moment melt away, on that long and lonely walk to the front cone, young Noah smiles quietly to himself. He believes in his team.
‘It’s you and six mates, Noah,’ someone says on the sideline. ‘Just you and six mates.’
IOU has made an official submission to the Macquarie Dictionary to have the 2023 phrase of the year be: Game to Go. It’s got everything. Rhythm. Alliteration. Intrigue, drama, electricity.
A Game to Go is a do or die qualifying showdown for two teams vying for a single spot at the Australian Ultimate Championships. This is the first time in many years—possibly in all of recorded history—that we have had not one but three of these scintillating, tightly contested clashes in Australia. Last week, Chilly and Heads of State played off for the third Southern Region bid. In the Women’s Division down south, Zig Theory and Spicy Chilly battled it out in a game to guarantee a place at Nationals. This week, after two nail biting quarter final losses to Fyshwick and Krank respectively, the NSW Ultimate Championship’s fifth-sixth play off saw Manly and I-Beam go head to head.
Regionals has stakes now. Regionals is no longer just a tune-up, or an annoying formality for teams in the Eastern and the Southern regions. Regionals can define your season, and determine where and when you’ll be playing your National Championships come April.
The Game to Go starts nervously. Duh. Manly are broken a few times and I-Beam race to 3-1, but the Mullets zone proves effective. I-Beam’s central handler Ryan Davey is out with a foot thing, meaning they’re now running with 12—the fluctuation of this number is a long-running Newcastle joke, ever since they won nationals with something like 13 functioning bodies in 2010. Davey is a big loss. Not only are I-Beam struggling to consistently break through and punish the Manly zone, but their top-end is already having to double up, sometimes playing two, three, ten points in a row.
Manly seem to get over their nerves at around 4’s, or at least they convert their nerves into energy. The surging Mullets ratchet up their level of pressure and start to cash it in—though, in all honesty, they do have to pull down some pie. Some bail out hucks. Some scrappy, lucky D’s. But who cares! Their D-line boys bring wave after wave of pressure, and their offensive line, for the most part, does the job without too much worry. They take half 8-5. Ominous.
After the interval, which is short and quiet, I-Beam come down in a patient, conservative zone. For the first time in the game, Manly’s O can’t just be energetic hypebeasts, launching hucks and taking insane grabs—they must show maturity. They must dump and swing and dump and swing and pop and work and grind and swing and dump and complain about a lack of cuts and dump and pop it over the top and toe the poorly marked line and it isn’t easy, no pass comes for free. They hold their O point. And their maturity might just be a more impressive feat than all the layouts.
Actually, no. The layouts have been sick. Manly rack up so many bids, so many full-extension grabs, so many intelligent, athletic blocks in small spaces, that it’s honestly hard to keep track of them all. I-Beam are hitting the deck as well, but mainly to save possession. All the momentum is going the way of the Mullets, and after a turnover they instant-huck for a goal to make it 10-6. The Manly boys can now dare to dream the dream. This might be their undoing.
Tim Lavis has been playing Nationals for longer than some of these Manly kids have even been alive. The experienced heads of Lavis and Chris Stoddard refuse to roll over, and they start to take charge of the game. Even on really long possessions, Lavis gets every second pass. Stoddard’s speed has been somewhat nullified by the zone but he repurposes it, zipping around the cup and threatening downfield in dangerous pockets of space. Although they turn it somewhere near the endzone, a miscommunication results in a Callahan for I-Beam. 10-7.
‘That’s a hold, Manly!’ someone yells, which is good gear.
No one laughs.
On the following point, the Mullets huck it away under minimal pressure for no real reason. Lavis walks to the disc and takes his sweet time. I-Beam works it up to half, but fumble. Then, on the first throw, Manly hucks it right back, again for no real reason. Lavis takes his sweet time, part two.
You can feel the charge of the electrons in the air begin to change. Nervous energy has again become raw nerves for Manly, and they have to actively try not to be frustrated at themselves or each other. The sideline can feel this and start to yell different, more soothing things at a slightly higher pitch than before. I-Beam can feel it as well. After a bit of faff, Lavis shoots it long to Newcastle’s own young gun, Luke Prosser, who brings it down under duress. 10-8. We have a game. The time cap hooter goes.
The things that are said to Manly’s lightly choking O line are the things that are said to lightly choking O lines in Ultimate games around the world. ‘Don’t worry about what happened on that last point,’ and ‘Just hang onto the disc,’ and ‘Work with your legs,’ and ‘We’ve got this, boys.’ When on-field emotions become too much to bear we seek refuge in cliches. To succeed, this remarkably young O-line—average age low 20’s—must fight that little nagging voice in their heads that is saying ‘Uh-oh.’ And even if it’s a little gauche or obvious, they really do have to ‘catch the disc before worrying about the next throw’ and ‘just do the simple things right,’ and take it ‘one pass at a time.’
These are extremely nervous young men trying to tell themselves and each other that they’re not nervous, that they haven’t been thinking about this exact situation for months and years, that they aren’t consumed by narrative arcs and how awesome it would be to catch the Goal to Go, not to mention how how terrible it would be to lose from their 10-6 head start. Nerves are always part of moments like this. They are where the magic lives.
Sport is so weird. And wonderful, sure. Sinking, visceral, spine tingling nervousness about throwing plastic to your friends is not a normal way to feel about being alive, but that’s what’s so amazing about moments like the one that’s about to happen. They remind us why we play, why we train, why we care.
The pull comes up, and it’s a good one. The unthinkable happens. There’s a short field turnover on the second pass, from an average throw and a nervous bobble, under immense Newcastle pressure. Liam Doherty throws an outrageous, gorgeous around break to Winchester, and I-Beam make it 10-9. The Game to Go is a game to 11.
What happens next is not really publishable. Not because it’s obscene or anything, it’s just one of those points that we’ve all been a part of but could never explain to someone who wasn’t there—even with all of the words in all of the pages of the Macquarie Dictionary. It’s a true blur. People on the sideline describe it as a rollercoaster. A whirlwind. Manly drop it and turf it and just needlessly give it away so many times that it’s not possible to keep count, and I-Beam, to their credit, keep heaping on the pressure. Newcastle have six or more chances to work it upwind in incredibly tight throwing windows and finally, eventually, though probably no one at the game could even describe how they do it in the end, they put it in.
Universe.
It was always going to be Universe.
By now every other game at the tournament has finished. The sidelines are a sort of rainbow of jerseys as each of the teams stand in clumps, and the noise is coming from every angle. Manly receive the pull and turn it over within a few passes—nerves, again. After some trademark faff, I-Beam’s would-be game-winning-hammer gets dragged out of play by the wind, which has become a few knots stronger these last few points.
It skids all the way to where plush grass meets a concrete footpath.
‘It’s you and six mates, Noah,’ someone says on the sideline. ‘Just you and six mates.’
The temptation to gloriously huck it the length of the field must be tremendous, but Noah Moss centres the frisbee diagonally backwards to his best mate Jordan Richards, also 19, who he’s been playing with for six years. Manly handlers have to bounce the disc around in their endzone four times before they finally get out. Richards hits Hanlin Zhang, who hits Mack Calder, who hits Tom Butler, and they’re still barely at the brick mark. They have to go backwards after a stoppage and an around break pops in the wind, Alex Reilly leaps and drags it down despite heat from all sides. They centre it and get some momentum, moving the disc to halfway. The pressure is unbearable and yet Manly’s young side continue to break the mark, to throw the difficult throw. Seized by the moment, Reilly launches what can only be described (sorry Alex), as a rank pie to the left corner of the field, and Moss beats the swinging arm of Liam Doherty to the disc. He flips the frisbee into the endzone.
To describe what happens next is no easy task. The catch, the cheers, the pick, the long conversation, the do-over? Jeez. Not easy for us amateurs at IOU to get our heads around, let alone articulate. Though we suspect that the answer to the age old question, “Did it affect?” may very well hold the secrets to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, we do not know said answers and cannot hope to describe the scene. We will, instead—quite happily, actually—leave commentary of the final moments to an excerpt taken from the blog of one of our sport’s greatest storytellers, Mike Neild:
They dove and caught the frisbee for the win. This was a spectacular way for the game to end. Somewhere between 40 and 400 people rushed on the field. There was a pile of bodies, shirts were whipped around heads, I thought I saw a bin on fire pushed on the field as a part of celebrations. The only problem was there was a pick call, and it wasn’t a win at all.
The game wasn’t over. Tears of joy had to be wiped away, players untangled themselves, and the field was swept clear of the mini carnival that had just occurred. It’s hard to imagine the emotional journey of the people playing in the game. Joy, grief, surprise, frustration, determination perhaps.
Play started again and the scene repeated itself. The youngsters won the game and a place at the National Championships. Shirts were thrown, hugs were hugged and all kinds of emotions were felt on both teams.
The kids won. They are going to Nationals.
This article was written on Gadigal country. IOU acknowledges the Traditional Owners of country on which we live, work and play, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge and celebrate the continuing cultures and contributions of First Nations people.
Will there be any streams planned for nationals?