Club Open and Womens Indoor Qualifiers 2024: The North review

by Mihael ‘Jimmy’ Dimitrov and Beth Dimitrova
At the start of December 2024, we saw the Club Open and Women’s regional qualifiers return for another year. A change in the calendar resulted in the qualifier moving away from the mid-January dates to an early December one. This meant that the club level players were perhaps still a tad fatigued after a long season and uni players were not as willing to commit with the winter exams just around the corner, both of which contributed to less interest overall.
UKU pushed for the event to be 2-days as well, which generally meant people were less willing if it meant missing out on a whole weekend of Christmas shopping…On the positive, the event returned to Ravenscraig which is a lot more accessible to the larger pool of players across Scotland and eventually dropped to a single day due to lack of teams.
Open
In the open division, we saw 9 teams battle it out. Defending champions, Newcastle Brown, were looking to continue their upwards trend, snatch the single guaranteed spot to nationals and make their trip up to Scotland really worth it. The schedule put them in a difficult pool with Rotterdam Money (filled with mostly Glasgow-based players, rather than Rotterdam) and Rampant 2.0 (made up of Glasgow-ish players). All 3 teams could fight for the top spot, depending on who showed up during the game.
Rampant 2.0 set the standard high, taking a win over The Brown, followed by a comfortable win against Rotterdam Money. The Brown on the other hand, also took a win against Rotterdam Money, locking them out of the semis.
In the other, arguably easier, pool, there were only really 2 contenders, Rampant (still Glasgow-ish) and Cattywampus (Edinburgh). Both teams built up their cohesion during the morning and faced off in the last pool game. A surprisingly nail-biting game with both teams leading by a break at some point during the game. A last ditch effort by the Rampant defence earned a block, bringing the game to a tie. Top of the pool was subsequently secured by Rampant due to a better goal difference.
The top 4 were ready to face off in the semis while the bottom 5 moved into a power pool. Rotterdam Money showed their experience and comfortably achieved 5th. Sneeekeys (Edinburgh) manage to end on top of a couple of really tight games, securing 6th. GlasgGone (former Glasgow Uni) and Glasgow Open followed close by, with the pool wrapped up with The Brown 2.
In the semis, both Rampant teams went in with confidence having topped the pools. Rampant faced off The Brown and Rampant 2.0 matched against Cattywampus. Unfortunately, neither Rampant team managed to repeat the success from the pool games; The Brown won their game comfortably, while Cattywampus narrowly managed to secure an 11-10 win.
The final between The Brown and Cattywampus was quite close for the first 10 or so points, with the teams trading and keeping the pace really fast. Cattywampus managed to steal few breaks and edge out a lead and the story was all but done for The Brown. Fighting their opposition before time ran out proved too much of a challenge, resulting in Cattywampus winning the game 13-8.
Women’s
Only 5 teams were entered this year which presented a challenge to the people responsible for the schedule. The round robin started off with an unexpected loss by the Pink Ladies (Glasgow) to The Newcastle Brown. DISCO Women (Edinburgh) won all their games quite comfortably, apart from a single close game against the Pink Ladies. Edinburgh Ladies Frisbee had a slow start in the pool, getting the short end of the stick in a couple close games and ending up at the bottom of the pool.
Glasgow Women had a solid performance and beat The Brown in the last game of the pool, making it a 3-way tie in the middle. It all came down to a point difference, and so the Pink Ladies secured second, Glasgow Women third and Newcastle Brown in fourth, after unfortunately not capitalising on their great start.
The bracket play was an unusual but probably sensible format, considering there were only 5 teams. DISCO Women were waiting in the final and the Pink Ladies and Glasgow played in the semi. The winner would face DISCO and loser would play a final 3v4 bracket game. At the bottom, there was a 4v5 game between the Brown and ELF to decide who would get another game in the 3v4, and who would have an early finish. ELF had finally kicked into gear and managed a very comfortable win against The Brown.
Pink Ladies also gelled throughout the day, winning against Glasgow Women by a larger margin than their pool game. The 3v4 was set and culminated in Glasgow Women beating ELF by a solid 4 point margin. In the final, Edinburgh’s DISCO Women comfortably claimed the top spot over the Glasgow based Pink Ladies with a 13-7 score line, securing a guaranteed spot to nationals.
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You can find the tournament schedule here.
Featured photo by Tristan Millington.