Canberra, Australia via SCL - Daniel Boyle

[boyle]

So, today is the 1st of July. For this month I'd like to play footbag every day, and blog on here about it. There'll probably be some very cold days, particularly if we settle down in Canberra, but that shouldn't stop me.

Anyway, Ryan came over here today, that was the first time I've been able to catch up for a kick with any of the Australian players, so it was good to have a session. The best thing from me for this session was

Ripstein (first time ever).

I sometimes think about what have been my dream tricks, and this has always been high on the list, but for some reason I never got the movement. Yesterday I was very close, so I just popped it in there midway through the session, and hey presto. There you go. Only one side and only once, but that's a beginning. I think I hit my first swirl more than 10 years ago, so that's seriously been a long time coming.

I have been playing in bits and pieces, but I think for this month I'd like to be a bit more strategic about my solo sessions. One thing I have been looking at is doing some "evening up", in order to get to the point where I can do plenty of tricks b2b.

Some that I have mentioned on here recently are atomsmasher and barfly, and paradox whirl is another one. I think there will be a few sessions working on that flip whirl of mine this month, it's very poor. My left leg is simply not strong enough. Something I did today, which I'm not sure I've done before is pixie ss illuision b2b. I'm sure I have done that sometime along the line, but it felt good.

Another cool combo was ripped warrior>down double down. One thing I couldn't get, at the end was pixie double switch, which is normally reasonably easy for me. I just kept missing it in a wide variety of ways.

Ryan had some good long strings but was suffering a bit from "World Cup Syndrome". Now that Chile are out, I am not too interested, particularly with those awful kickoff times.



Here's how you get to that stage. Though this image is actually from the State of Origin rugby league match.

So, hopefully in the rest of the month can catch up with some of the other footbag blokes and some other friends too. Also will be starting back doing tours at the AIS next week, which is always a good chance to promote footbag to the visitors on the tour.

[Asmus]

Props on Ripstein! One of my favorites as well.

Good luck on the 30 days. Maybe one day I will do something like that.....

[boyle]

So, I nearly got my plan for kicking daily off the rails on only the second day, but seems there is good lighting. Well, good enough anyway. Previously I had a little kick, so it was enough to say "I kicked", but barely scraping by.

It was a nice location though.



I filmed a bit there. Nothing particularly good, but I think I got a couple of things that I'd like to use, more scenic shots, like playing as a ferry goes by, that kind of thing. The basic idea is to make a video of me being "back in town".

Anyway, as the evening set in, some ideas of simple fitness kicked in too. The little man was a little grumpy, so to calm him done I put him up on my shoulder and we went for a walk. We walked up the stairs, then I stopped and did some squats at each one (1,2,3, finishing up at the 15th step). So if my calculations are correct, which they may not be, that's 110 squats.

Speaking of this system, on the first session, on grass, on a hill, I was doing clippers, aiming to go up to 10. I was doing each number on both sides, but dropped on 8, I think on the 6th, on the second side. That is a good drill. I hope to get up to 10 on both sides, then come back down.

Later, with a similar ideal in mind, I did 10x5 lunges, so 50 of them too. I made not sure not to stretch out too much on them, as I have injured myself more than once overdoing that.

So, as I mentioned I got in a footbag session. I wasn't wearing Lavers and I had a couple of beers beforehand, and another beer during the session. The goal was 50 tiltless. My original though for a session was a tiltless drill session, but in all honesty that sounds incredibly boooring.

Anyway, I got 30+ a number of times, was feeling quite good on a run before nearly tripping over my own foot at 40, and had the 50th trick drop off just as I was rising up.

That was the best I got. Ended up being a pretty good sweaty session though, and the light was fairly reasonable, the wooden surface not too slippery either.

Speaking of Mr Rod "greatestofalltime" Laver, I just finished reading his memoir. Nothing in particular that I didn't know, but some interesting thoughts on being the best. While I'm not going to be the best in the world at footbag, I think there are some things on the sidelines that I can really be the best at.

Despite the world being more and more interconnected, I am still a long way from the action though.

I have a job interview tomorrow via Skype. It's for a sports editor job, which would definitely have been on my dream jobs list from an early age, and follows on from what I have been doing the last couple of years. Let's see how that goes.

[boyle]

Played today. Not a particularly strong session. Didn't get in touch with Ryan, as I had already let a lot of the day go by before even getting out of bed, and he said he had some things on later in the day.

Anyway, I did a pickup drill, which was clipper>near pickup>pickup>clipper>far pickup rpt - I also got this reasonable run on the video. I put it on Instagram, let's see if this works.

http://instagram.com/p/p-vBh0GIGH/?modal=true

It didn't work, so there's the link. It shows a little of the backyard of our current location.

Finished off that session, which mainly consisted of drops, with a pretty good link. stepping ducking clipper>matador. I was looking for ripped warrior into it, and had a bit of a nuke set out of that, so that's definitely a combo to work on in the future.

We have a rowing machine here, so I went on that for a bit afterwards, did 2km on there. Going to keep using that each day too, it's very good exercise. Maybe 5km tomorrow.

Had the job interview today, I think it went reasonably well. I am one of six candidates, so I can only find out to see how that goes. That will be sometime next week. If it goes through, there will be a pretty key decision to make in our lives.

Here's one of my TV appearances on the news, a story about people not voting. Of course I don't vote, I'm not Chilean...



The Chile team did really well in the World Cup, but in the end they finished one place better than last time around, Brazil made them their bitch once again, though it all could have been so different.

The interesting thing about these qualifiers, is that I arrived just as they were getting along. I think I was in the country for the "bautizaso" (baptism-gate), where 5 of the best players, including Arturo Vidal, had a 10 match suspension for going out and getting drunk at Jorge Valdivia's son's baptism.

That was just before a key match with Uruguay, who thrashed them. This already followed on from having their bums kicked by Argentina. So the qualifying didn't get off to the best start.

The first game I went to was a few days after Uruguay, they beat Paraguay 2-0. I also saw them beat Uruguay which was probably the key match in the qualifiers. The other Chile game I saw recently was against Egypt, also victory.

I would say I am much more passionate about the Chilean team than the Australian at this moment, but that will probably change in the leadup to the next world cup, as most likely I will be living here at that time.

[boyle]

Had another night time session today. Was working on clipper and infinity drills. Not much creativity there, but good to play and not lose the streak early in the piece.

So I was working on doing clipper up to 10 then back down, I got from both 1 to 10, and 10 to 1, but couldn't do the complete scale. Dropped on 8 on the way back down, and 3 on the way back up. Did do up to 5 clippers with no plant, then back to one. Then I did 4 run throughs of infinity up to 100. My first go I had 10 drops within the 100, which was not much good. My best was 6 drops within that. Aside from the first one, I was dropping it twice within the first 10, which is not a good start.

On all of them I had more than 20 before dropping, and one was about 40. But, I can definitely do better than that, I'm sure eventually I could do 100, but I would like to be able to get to 100 with 4 drops, that would be better. Good for the stamina that stuff. I also finished my session with paradox blender, then I did 5km on the rowing machine afterwards, as I had planned. Then I drank a beer to celebrate my good deeds.

Interesting comments from Honza about not going to Worlds and Euros. I don't think the size or colour of bags needs to change in competition. Tournaments of any sport are about using the equipment within the regulations to perform your best. What does need to change is the incentive to actually go to the tournament.

It's not just about prize money. I think in reality, that's a very small part of it. Of course, when you've won 3 world championships in a row, come second about a zillion times beforehand, and received mainly a pat on the back after all that, then there's not so much incentive.

I hope to go to Worlds next year though. Aside from the incentive is the financial factor. Someone mentioned a while ago that footbag players don't lead lives that are conducive to afford the travel to go to the tournaments. So hopefully next year I'm not in the bracket.

I still think a world tour, with ranking points and some kind of good prize at the end is the key. That gets people going to the events to get the points, if you don't turn up you are at a large disadvantage. You could do what sports like bodyboarding do, and that you select something like your best 5 results from the 10 tournaments, so you don't necessarily have to go to all of them or perform well, but you need a good consistency. My parents are coming to visit us tomorrow, so I will try and fit the footbag into the morning to keep on track.

[boyle]

I'm just going to make a quick post today. No pictures or video.

I had a nice comment from Derek Littlefield on his blog. Here is what it said:

Thank you for peepin' it, and glad you think so. Seems like you are doing some pretty big things for footbag, you are awesome, and your shred is looking SOLID.

It always makes you feel good to have a comment about what you're doing both on and off the "field". It's good to see someone as well really pushing things on the toe game. I should push my own game more, it's pretty poor.

At the beginning of my session today, I had some pretty simple goals - more than 50 tiltless, more than 20 guiltless, more than 10 tripless.

I did all of these. Once again I got 49 tiltless, which was annoying, that overthinking thing when you ease off when you think you've already made it. The guiltless I wasn't doing that well on, I was annoyed with myself on the lack of creativity in my combos, I think I'll work on that more in the rest of the month. The tripless combo I did in one go, actually before the guiltless was done. I was trying something a bit different, and I think I got 14, I have a feeling I doubled up on ducking osis, otherwise the rest were unique.

With the tiltless, I did eventually get 73. I would have liked to get more than 100, I guess I wasn't so far off.

I just saw this video preview for Worlds. Hopefully this is part of a long series, but the message that I get from this is two things - it's mainly about net, and that nobody cares. I saw that at least some people have registered, so if you have let's say Tuukka, Taishi and Evan, and Caroline, then you have a reasonable portion of "the world" represented and some good blokes.

Despite being a small amount, I think it's about the same as last year, and there's some pretty high quality in the lineup.

• Aleksi Airinen
  Alex Dworetzky
  Andreas Nawrath
  Evan Gatesman
  Filip Wójcik
  Gaudenz Scherer
  Jakub Grabarczyk
  Jindra Smola
  Mathias Blau
  Nis Petersen
  Rene Rühr
  Taishi Ishida
  Tuukka Antikainen
  Václav Klouda

I think it'll be interesting to see how that goes, I wonder if there will be a live stream. I have a feeling Taishi might really impress after he has been performing so much in recent years, I also have great interest in how Vasek will go, I don't really see him winning it.

Only two members from the tour, Evan and Aleksi, both should be in with a shot for some medals. One name that is missing from this list is Milan, who Asmus said would be going.

I posed an interesting question in Brian Bear's blog - top 5 USA players at the moment. He was saying he would just be outside the cut of the top 5. I think you've got guys like David Clavens, Jim Penske, Evan Gatesman, Nick Landes, Ken Somolinos in your top 5, then as you get into the wider "ranking", you probably have to think about guys that don't kick anymore, but were incredible. Maybe guys like Bevier, Brian Bear, Dustin Rodes, Matt Kemmer, Pipenberg and you would have Nick Polini coming up into these figures, guys like Chris Dean too. I don't see enough of any of these guys at all to make a real ranking. If you add in the Canadian players, the reality is there is a pretty high level across North America, not a "dying scene" as many have mentioned.

The key though is to get all the best competing at the same time. That has proven to be very difficult over the years.

It would be great if all the best players in the USA went to the US Open, it seemed there were very few competitors in this year's event.

[boyle]

Short session today, was interrupted by eating, eating and then more eating. We had a friend over for lunch, then we went over to my Grandma's place for dinner. Plenty of food. Never ending!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomV2GisZvw[/youtube]

Before having my session I had a quick kick during a walk along the water with my Dad. I knew I only had a short opportunity to get anything on the video, so this is the raw shot. Very nice view, you can see the Harbour Bridge in the background, and I did a couple of nice tricks along the way.

Was working on my basic toe stuff today, starting with toe kicks, I think I did 172 alternative toe kicks, which I would say is a personal record. I didn't really get up to much, I was trying to do 10 of each different trick. It took me a while to get ten of the different versions of ATW. I did them all eventually though. Something that I did reasonably well, which is normally quite weak was pixie ss mirage about 6-7 times. I would like to build on that. I was especially happy with my flipside, which combines two weak elements. Anyway, didn't really finish off my plans for a longer session, but I wasn't building to anything spectacular either.

Didn't do any rowing today, I have been doing a few k's on the machine each day. I did 5 the day before yesterday and a couple yesterday. So that's something good for the fitness. We also walk quite a lot with the little bloke. I haven't done any more running since my longish run the other day, I think if I do any serious running, I'm going to need a new pair of shoes.

Going to Canberra tomorrow, going to start again doing tours of the AIS. I should be able to get a real count of how many people I show footbag to on these tours. Considering I did it for 5 years previously, and at times would be able to show footbag to 1,000 people within a day, it's probably over 100,000 people.

Unfortunately that hasn't led to any new players though....Looking forward to getting back into that job though, it's something I really enjoy.

[boyle]

On the bus back from Canberra to Sydney. Had an express trip down there, left at 6am this morning, it's probably going to be midnight by the time I get back to what we are currently calling home.

We got somewhere else to call home now too, we just signed a lease today, so that's convenient I was in Canberra. I'm not sure what it will mean if I am offered this job in Shepparton. Let's see if that if comes to fruition. What it definitely means is that if the if doesn't trigger, we have a stable place, and a location for the shipping company to deliver our stuff to.

All good things there.

I had my first day back at tours today, and ended up doing 4 tours in a row. I did a short footbag demo on each one, and each time plenty of people impressed. Had over 50 people on the last one of the day, there is a large soccer tournament happening at the moment, the Kanga Cup - it's actually the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere - so a couple of the groups were involved in that. Pretty amazing that this tournament is bigger than anything Brazil or Argentina have ever put on. These massive tournaments are not always in the "star" places though. The Milk Cup is another big one, and that happens in Northern Ireland.

That's really all the playing I've done today though, those little demos, the final one was quite good, they were impressed. On every tour the group gave me a round of applause at the end (not just for the footbag, but for the tour), and I always take that as a compliment.

I have a feeling I will have to wait a bit for the bus to come when I get up to Sydney, so there might be a short opportunity to make a semblance of a real session.

Anyway, the place we signed the lease for is very close to the place we left before going on our trip to Asia, which was the end of our renting time. So I guess I will have to add an extra > Canberra to the title of the blog. Then if we move back, which I think we will in time (in a long time), then it will be what it is now (RPT).

I saw that Ken got a GoPro. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with that. I'm quite keen to get one too, I think I could have a great deal of fun using one. Not just for footbag, but for some of the other semi-adventurous activities that I get up to. That's what they're designed for after all. I actually saw one, I think it was the silver model, in Big W, for cheaper than it's advertised on the website. Considering you still have to pay shipping for the ones from the website, that's a much better deal.

Once I get some money together, then I'll start thinking on that. Have to start putting myself into a stable kind of zone first.

[boyle]

Just a short session today. Maybe like 30 mins, had a couple of runs of guiltless that were going on with 20 or more contacts, but then I would drop just as I was getting into the swing of things. Like every day, I thought a lot about footbag and there were some interesting conversations.

I really hope that Worlds are in Denmark next year. I think they will be. It would be the first time since Berlin where a city actually *wanted* the tournament and was completely prepared for it a full year out.

That would be pretty awesome, and I think I would be well worth going to. I actually have quite a few friends in Copenhagen, not only from the footbag community. The timing would be quite nice to go to Roskilde too....

World Cup is coming to an end, I've stopped being particularly excited about it, might get up and watch the second half of the game tomorrow, think that will be on around 7, which is milk time for the little man.

I like the park we went to today, I've been down there a few times. In the little creek there are many ducks and the picture at the top is him having a look at them.

Also, I kicked a little last night in Sydney while waiting for the bus. Got about 12 or 13 guiltless in one run and a bloke came and gave me some congratulations. He was a Canadian guy and we actually had a nice chat for a bit up until his bus came.

Had a family dinner this evening, not so long until our little house sitting adventure finishes up. It's been a great way to get back into the swing of things in Australia. Now time to get a bit more serious about opening up the earning capacity.

Also, I've told Asmus tonight that I'm keen to get involved in the BSOS.IT project.

I was just reading the interview with David Clavens that was posted on there in the last few days. These were his parting words.

Footbag is small. Let’s value each other. We can’t afford to lose anyone who has devoted time into this game.

That's something that comes into the conversation of the "stars" not posting on Modified. I think the key problem is that most of the top players are overall less interested in footbag at the moment.

I feel there's something a bit "less" of the community. I'm not sure if it's part of the fact that the general social media world makes everyone so interconnected, that it's not just through a tight-knit community that you can have that deep connection.

Francisca is looking for a phd topic relating to social science of the internet, maybe her subject could be something along those lines. Would be interesting for someone to do a social science kind of project on the makeup of the footbag community.

That skydiving event looked like a lot of fun. It's great to see the community around the sport getting together for something pretty unique.

On the topic of the radio interview, I think nemesis is the perfect trick for saying the hardest trick. It's funny, on the tours at the AIS, the kids will always say "do your hardest trick". I normally show them a phoenix, which is by no means my hardest trick, but it's pretty reliable and has plenty of elements to it.

On Nemesis and the press, it immediately brought me to think of this one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuxRTYbRaOE[/youtube]

From the man quoted above, with very little warm up. That was something great to show off to the press.

And for me, Nemesis will probably always be a dream trick, though it's funny, I don't actually have a lot of desire to even go on the path towards trying it. Principally because I'm so far off all the different elements, that it would be a frustrating journey.

I'll be kicking with Ryan tomorrow. Hoping to catch the other blokes before we head out of Sydney, pretty amazing we've already been in Australia about a month. Our original flight tickets are for tomorrow, so we could go to Chile if we really wanted to...

[boyle]

Just finished up a session with Ryan a little earlier on. I had played a little earlier on the day, I was trying to break my knee kicks record. I didn't do that, but I did get 96. It's pretty hard to keep them under control, the hardest thing is to regather after you've made a mistake.

I was doing well in one run, had various 50+, one was going on strong but I had stepped on my shoelace and that brought things to an end of that run.

Here are the thoughts of young Nicolas on the footbag session that we had.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dxs3G5qioA[/youtube]

I don't remember anything fantastic. Had some long runs. Ryan had some longer runs than last time too.

I worked a bit on that combo ripped warrior>matador. I was getting the nuclear set out, but couldn't get the full trick done. I think something spinning out of that could work quite well. Unfortunately tricks like pdx blender, blurry whirl etc are my weak side.

Got up at halftime to watch the match as I mentioned, went back to bed once it got to 6-0.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Wow. Ill combo, that ripped> mat. You got the hardest part out of the way, try putting less effort into the nuke set and major sure you straighten your support leg during that set. The nuke for a matador doesn't have to be as big as you think. I found this out the other week. How this helps a bit.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Hope this helps*

[boyle]

Yeah, I don't think I am far off, I think it's a cool combo. It was getting to the end of the session when I was trying yesterday, think I have to bring it in with less fatigue.

[boyle]

Played today. Nothing much to report, had a few reasonable runs, but was feeling pretty sore. We went to the aquarium. I was hoping to get a little footbag video with the sharks floating up above, but that idea didn't really work out. I am trying to think of anything worthwhile I did in my session. I did magellan x 8, that could be a pb, I don't think I've ever tried to do many.

I haven't made any post yet on bsos.it, haven't really had a huge amount of time. The two things I have planned are one about the tour, put all the videos in one place, then another about "footbag and funding", a follow on from the Asmus post about clubs, but also a bit of advice/ideas about different ways that footbag players can fund their travels.

Anyway, once I get going, something else I will do is put up my old interviews that I have previously done. I have been thinking a lot on this world tour idea. I have a feeling that at some level it could happen next year.

Anyway, we'll move into our new place next week, and we've run into some luck with an old friend who is about to move to Canada and is looking to get rid of a wide variety of things, including fridge and washing machine, for pretty cheap.

What I can't remember about this place is whether or not there is a good footbag space. If not, there is a reasonable area up at the shops. We used to live just around the corner from this place, it's a good area to live.

[C-Fan]

You should update your blog title and signature, now that you're back in OZ.

I'm happy to hear you're playing with Ryan some. Does Dyalan still play?

[boyle]

yes, now we have confirmed we will be going back to Canberra, it will be time for an update. Although we won't start there until next week.

I had a kick with Dyalan last time I was out, and I am hopeful to get a kick with him tomorrow, though he said he's a bit sick. There's a lot of dust on the Rod Laver collections here. Hopefully that will change a bit now that I have returned.

I had an interview last week for a sports editor job in Shepparton, which is down in country Victoria. Didn't get that one, so now we set our sights on Canberra, and have the full benefit that we have a very nice house ready to go. So hopefully I can drag Copey out from time to time to lace up the boots.

[boyle]

Had a quick kick today. I didn't have my usual session when the little bloke eats his lunch, as we were preparing for some guests. Had my friend Billy come over with his kids, they are in a pretty similar situation to us -Aus/Chilean couple, just back in town.

Anyway, they caught the ferry over and I went and picked them up, we had a good lunch and then went to kick the footy in the park.

I shared this video on my Facebook, what if the world was like the world cup....could be Canada's best contribution to the "world game" since they lost to Martinique...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvsuYssoTw0[/youtube]

Anyway, back to the kick around, it was pretty good fun, you could see the harbour bridge from the oval. I was hoping to get a photo of the bridge through the goalposts, but that was not successful.

Got some very interesting news for the footbag world, well at this point it's nothing, but could turn in to something more. I applied for a grant a while back, and now have been invited to the second round to give a full submission. We have to see how that goes, but I am quite hopeful on that one.

Won't go into great detail on the plans, but it'll be similar to the tour idea, with focus on Australia during the Asian Cup, Chile at the Copa América and a few other Latin American countries. I have just seen the same department has an Australia-India grant. That could be one for next year....

When we were kicking the footy, I played for a couple of minutes and hit ripped warrior on the grass, I also kicked a few field goals and was happy with that. I started off with some very bad kicks, hadn't done that in a long time, but I gradually got better.

Anyway, in the evening I played some more footbag, I didn't plan on playing for a super long time, so I was just going for long tiltless strings. I got more than 50 a few times, so that was something.

We're finishing up our mansion time in the next couple of days, which is a little disappointing, but I guess we have to get into our real lives shortly. Dyalan's a no-go for the kick tomorrow, but it could still work out for something. Let's see.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

It's awesome how you're a spearhead for the Australian footbag player resurrection. Keep it up dude

[boyle]

It's awesome how you're a spearhead for the Australian footbag player resurrection. Keep it up dude

It was pretty disappointing to see it sort of slip away, but with Caroline buying a hostel in Poland, me being in Chile and Dan Ednie becoming a Chinese TV star, our numbers were dropping off.

On that note, this is something I was please with.



Originally we had a few more to come, but Dyalan and Ryan were both out through sickness. But Ian came over and we had a bit of a "hack" style kick. Most of the events before we left, Ian was barely kicking, so it was good to get him into it.

Both of us came into the game around the same time, we first met at the "Australasian Championships" back in 2001. We were both a fair bit younger than the rest, so it was something kind of comforting, because all these "old blokes" were a little intimidating with their skill and all that (at these stage I couldn't do around the world, but I did beat them all in consecutive kicks...)

Anyway, we had a good lunch, drank a beer and I hit a few good tricks along the way. We were playing with a sandbag, but I did a few little interesting tricks, some spinning ducking stuff, bs blur midstring, which is not something I do often, plenty of good long runs.

I also went to the footy this afternoon with another friend, best thing was it was free. My team lost though. It was Mounties, who are the reserve team for the Raiders. In true Raiders fashion, they lost, and had the opportunity to equal the scores and missed (this exact same thing happened in the Raiders match last week).

I have been watching a good show about The Doors. I was thinking recently that I haven't really been thinking about a routine and should choose a new song to work on a routine for, maybe one of these songs could do well.

This is our last night of residents in Hunters Hill, which is one the "top" suburbs in Sydney. The average house price is $1.5 million. Not a bad place to live...

We'll have on more night in Sydney, then we'll head down to Canberra.

[boyle]

I didn't play very much today. I don't know if I would count it as a session, but I put together a few strings in the morning, and during that time did get over 10 guiltless. I was thinking about a session tonight, but there was too many baby things to do, and I had a big dinner, so skipped on that one.

Have been thinking a bit about what I'd like to do to submit for this grant. The two key things are doing something along with the Asian Cup in Australia in January, then the Copa America in Chile in June. To get some other organisations involved is the key. I haven't really completely solidified my thoughts, I have a couple of weeks to get things together.

A sepak takraw player posted something on the Australian Footbag group on Facebook, I was talking to him for a bit. I didn't know that Jeremy Mirken has gone full time into takraw. The world champs for that are on in Bangkok in August. I mentioned to him about doing something together for the Asian Cup. Linking things Asian footsports makes complete sense for the Asian Cup. I might write to Capital Football, the people who run soccer in Canberra and see if they're interested in doing something.

I have seen the results from Euros, nothing else really, but what is awesome is that information as simple as that, coming out quickly, lets you know exactly what's happening (well of course, not exactly, but you can imagine Evan Gatesman performing solidly, before Vasek takes the cake with a throwback in time to ten years ago.

I hope there is some streaming for Worlds, I will probably give that a look. Though the field for Euros was probably just as, or more competitive.

It would be interesting to do the same equation of the "top 5" European players, if all are available, all at full strength, and to eventually do a best in the world ranking.

Jay mentioned a bunch of possible or probable inventions in his blog, a lot of them I couldn't really get my head around, but the first one was (I think) rev swirling symp rev whirling swirl. I have a feeling someone must have hit that. That's not going on much, I've seen plenty of people do rev swirl symp whirl, quite some years ago, and people have improved a lot in swirl based tricks. So, don't know about that one. The rest are just crazy though.

We move into our new place in Canberra tomorrow. Beginning of a new era. Hopefully me being back in Australia is also the beginning of a "new era" in the sport of footbag.