Steel City Staves Off London, 119-79

By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Sun Apr 10 2011 3:49pm

LONDON, UK -- After two flat opening halves and two very impressive second halves previously in the weekend, low seed London (unofficially #22 in the world via DNN, unranked in the WFTDA East) found a way to play 60 straight minutes of strong derby in the final bout of the Anarchy in the U.K. event. It was enough to keep them within striking distance for nearly the entire bout, but was not enough to get them their first win of the weekend, as Steel City (#18 DNN, currently #5 East WFTDA) played a merciless prevent defense for most of the second half to claim victory, 119-79.

Read DNN's archived boutcast.

London was narrowly up 11-9 after five minutes and three lead jams in a row for London kept them ahead to 18-9 with 22:20 left, but Steel City had a great defensive jam when Damage Dahl and Ally McKill repeatedly stuffed Fox Sake on a full-length jam; Snot Rocket Science picked up a 10-0 that gave Steel City the lead back at 19-18 with 18 minutes to play in the first half.

London kept the bout low-scoring with an impressive penalty kill that held SRS to only 4-0 during a minute for LRG's Vagablonde in the box, and with 15 minutes in the first it was just 23-18. But Snot Rocket Science wouldn't let another powerjam opportunity go by without exploiting it; she turned a Fox Sake penalty into a 15-0 that gave Steel City a 20 point lead at 38-18 as the half entered its last ten minutes.

That and another powerjam, 20-0 for Hurricane Heather, accounted for almost all the points scored in the final 15 minutes of the half. Most jams ended up going 0-0, including an impressive half-ending jam from Mean Burrito, who used her lead jammer status to kill almost a full minute against Kamikaze Kitten. Without the two big powerjams, it would have been a ridiculously low 23-20 for Steel, but they took a 62-20 lead into the break.

London cut a little bit off the lead in the second half's first few minutes, but with Steel jammers usually taking lead and playing extended cat-and-mouse with the London jammers before calls, it was still a very low scoring game at 64-31 with 21:30 left. Points went up on the board very slowly for the first 12 minutes of the half.

But the prevent defense could only last so long. At Steel City 72, London 43 with 17:33 left, penalties absolutely destroyed Steel CIty, as their entire pack plus jammer SRS went to the box -- with the London pack able to completely stop and isolate the heavily outnumbered Steel blockers. Vagablonde blew up the home crowd as she was untouched on almost every pass for a huge 29-0 that tied it up at 72-72 with 15:01 to play.

That single jam ended up representing the majority of London's points in the half, though, and they only scored on two more jams in the half as Steel City went right back to deadly effective clock management. London remained blanked for six minutes after the huge 29-0 jam before Kamikaze Kitten picked up 3-0 to make it 94-75 Steel City with 8 minutes to play. Steel answered two jams later with 3-0 to SRS to make it 97-75 with 5:20 left, and the following jam was the nail in the coffin as London filled their box, leaving the track open for Hurricane Heather to drop a critical 13-0.

It was then 110-75 with 3:29 to play and London called their second timeout, but on the following jam, Hurricane Heather took lead and 4 points but made no effort to call the jam or start a second scoring pass, electing to play defense and eat the clock by letting opposing jammer Kamikaze Kitten tire herself out on a 4-4 full-length jam. London's last timeout came with 1:25 on the clock and the score 114-79.

The last jam saw Vagablonde up against Mean Burrito, and when Burrito took lead there was no question that Steel City would run out the clock; Burrito did just that to finish the game on a 5-0, giving Steel City the win at 119-79.