UKU Tour 2016: Nottingham WindFarm A Tour

David “DP” Pryce has had a little fun with this one. Here is his preview of A Tour for the second instalment of the 2016 Tour season.

With that international thing out of the way we can get back down to the real business of the 2016 season; next up is UKU Tour 2 in Nottingham, now aptly named WindFarm.

As always, anything I previously predicted was pretty much wrong, so I will endeavour to not make a single prediction that you can pin me to this time. I will, however, attempt to talk about some of the excitement from London’s Calling and how WindFarm might play out.

With Ka-Pow, Brighton City and Leeds being demoted we see Pelt, Flump, Fire of London 2, and SMOG being brought up into A Tour. First to note here is the addition of Pelt over Ka-Pow. Ben Heywood, UKU Schedule Guru, told us: “Pelt were in touch way before Tour 1 to say they were sending basically their second team but would be full strength at Tour 2,” hence justifying their addition to the top flight and pushing Ka-Pow down. Secondly, the Flump, Fire 2 and SMOG results were incredibly close in London. Those results suggest that it could go either way if any of these teams play again in Nottingham. It will be interesting to see who will stay up from these four, but my money is on Fire 2, for no obvious reason…

Moving to the top of the table, Clapham have returned after the bulk of the squad took the top two spots in London as GB, and weeks later only lost one game but finished fifth at Worlds. Most people would say they are a shoo-in for taking this one too, closely followed by Chevy, EMO and Glasgow. EMO had an absolute stormer in London after I basically discounted them from getting past quarters, and Chevron did in fact turn up in fantastic style, being only one of two teams to take GB to double figures (not including GB themselves).

The real fun begins in the 5-12 bracket, with teams from all over competing to firstly avoid the round robin of demotion, and second get up into top eight ahead of Tour 3 (SunStroke?). A team who did the bare minimum last time round was Fire of London 1, with a slew of injuries coming both before and during the event. (When a team has to put me on the O line you know things aren’t in tip-top shape…) Fire will be looking to come out storming back into the position that the potential in their squad alludes to, so we shall see what they bring in Nottingham. Cambridge, Flump and SMOG stand in their way in the pools.

Ranelagh (as well as some Pelt players) also return to the Tour after taking on some national teams recently. These lads are now looking to take the British teams on and show them how much better off they are for being in Europe. They are not to be underestimated, and even in terrible conditions expect big plays and fantastic knowledge of the WFDF hand signals. Birmingham, Pelt and Fire 2 will be trying to stop them taking route one and standing in a field trying to decipher the difference between a goal and a pick.

Reading, Manchester, Devon and Sneeekys had very strong showings in London and all will want to get themselves into semis. It’s so hard to separate them but, from playing against them, I would say Manchester and Sneeekys come out of the pool just over the others, but each team can take the others out so expect some fiery battles here.

My pool of death would be Pool B with Chevy, Reading, Glasgow and Devon all having the ability and depth to take a win off each other. Who knows who will come out top there – it’ll be fun to watch the chaos ensue.

Good luck to all, and let’s all try and forget whatever the weather throws at us and just enjoy the fris, eh?

Featured image by Serena de Nahlik