Australian Footbag Nationals
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Interview with my good mate Daniel Boyle about the Australian Footbag Nationals By Chris 16/3/08
Canberra having the Footbag Nationals soon and my good mate Daniel Boyle is organizing it this year and yeah I have seen play, he good, so naturally I wanted to help him out, so read the interview to find out more and his views on the beloved Canberra Raiders for this season
1. Why start the Footbag nationals?
We have Nationals for Footbag each year, and each year someone from the Australian Footbag scene organises it, so I thought it was my turn to try my hand at it. I also have a degree in Sports Management, so I guess it’s good to use that!
2. Are you happy how the media and people are responding to the idea?
Footbag is a really small sport, so we don’t get much media coverage, however I got a really good article in the Canberra Times around Christmas and we had a training camp down in Narooma on the South Coast and the local paper wrote an article about that. I’m in the process of starting a cut and paste Footbag zine. If the mainstream media doesn’t want to know about it, then I’ll make my own media!
3. Have you had much support in regards to sponsors and stuff?
We don’t have heaps of sponsors but Lotus from Elemental Footbags (www.elementalfootbags.com) has been great to us and given us a bunch of footbags as prizes. We’ve also got a prize of a Freestyle Footbag Kit from the World Footbag Association (www.worldfootbag.com) so things are going alright.
4. Will you be playing?
Yeah I’ve been working hard on my game lately and I’m pretty excited about competing. Nationals is the only major competition in the Australian schedule, so I’m siked.
5. Who have you got for nationals?
We’ve got most of Australia’s top players travelling to Canberra from all around the country. The favourite would be Dan Ednie, he went to the World Championships last year in Florida and was the first Australian to reach the finals. There’s also guys like Ian Pritchard from Sydney, Jeremy O’Wheel from Hobart and Hagesy from Queensland, he’s a champ. Here in Canberra we have a developing scene, with me, Caroline Birch and Nathan Cope having just moved here, we play most days of the week, it’s awesome to be having nationals here.
6. How will the winner be chosen?
So there’s three different events, and they’re all judged.
Routines- You do a two minute routine to music and then you get a technical and artistic score. You’re technical is about how well you perform the tricks and how hard they are, the artistic score is based on your creativity and choreography. That one is probably my favourite event.
Sick 3- In this event you have to hit a combination of three tricks, you get 7 attempts to do the best combo. Each combination is given a score out of 6 by the judges, the top score wins.
Shred 30- In this event you have 30 seconds to score as many points as possible. Each individual trick has it’s own points value and then there is a formula to calculate the total score.
7. How can people enter the competition or are people chosen?
People can really just rock up. You can find info on the comp at www.footbag.org or www.ausfootbag.org The Footbag community in Australia is very tight-knit so I already know most of the people who will be coming to compete.
8. Where is it going to be held?
The comp is going to be on Saturday March 22 in Union Court at the Australian National University. It will start around 1 and go until 4 in the afternoon. Players will be in Canberra for the whole of the Easter weekend.
9. What do you hope to achieve from it?
Tournament wise I am hoping for at least 10 people to be competing, and to attract the best players in Australia to come to Canberra. I also want to show people that Canberra isn’t as bland as it has a reputation for. On a personal level, this year I would really like to place in the top 3 in at least one event. Last year in Hobart I came 4th in Sick 3, so I’d like to step it up another level. My game has stepped forward a lot in the last year and I would like that to be reflected in the results.
10. What will ensure that you win?
Haha I probably won’t win, but the person that does win needs to be really focussed and train hard, not get injured as well. I had a bit of pain in my ankle yesterday so I’ll be resting up a fair bit in the next week.
11. How do you think the Raiders will do?
Ah, now that’s an important question. At the moment they’re the big favourites for the wooden spoon, but I don’t think that will happen. I’m hoping they can make the top 8 this year, they have some really good young players like Todd Carney and William Zillman and I think Joel Monaghan will be a really good addition. I’m going to start writing match reviews of the games I go to in the Rock’n’Raider zine, everbody should read it.
12. Anything else?
Cheers for the interview man, Footbag is a great game, everyone should play. I just put out a new zine called Capital Eyes, it’s sick, everyone should read it. I’m predicting now that Canberra will become the new hub of Footbag.
