Western States Open 1999

Date

June, 1999

Participants

Sean Daly, Bruce Farrar, Ryan Hunt, John Sarra, Jon Schultz, Wayne Smith, Greg Willey

Report

One ASA tradition was started and one was continued as the first Western States Championship tournament was held inside the home of Wayne and Irene Smith. The tradition that was started was the tournament itself, and thanks to the votes of the ASA hierarchy, it was made a “major tournament” and thus worth more ASA ranking points than another tournament with the same number of competitors. The tradition that was continued was that the host won the tournament, which is very common among ASA tournaments (especially the Holiday Silver). In addition, it was the first ASA tournament to use FISTF rules.

Seven players met in Northridge, California at the Irene C. Smith Subbuteo Complex for roughly five hours of Subbuteo and eating. And when it was over, the host, Wayne Smith led his green clad Werder Bremen teammates to a hard fought championship. But most of the applause went to the hostess, Irene Smith, for ordering and picking up, not to mention paying for, the pizza and meatball sandwiches, preparing the cooler chock full of various sodas and leaving the chips and other munchies conveniently located for the enjoyment of all.

“Most of the thank you notes we received went something like ‘Thanks for the pizza, the hospitality and the tournament, and, oh, yeah, good job in the tourney.’” Wayne said. “Irene made the tournament what it was.”

As for the seven competitors, they were: Jon Schultz, the 1994 ASA National Open Champion and US representative to the 1994 Subbuteo World Cup; John Sarra of St. Louis, the ASA’s 1998 fourth ranked player; newcomers to ASA “major” tournaments, Greg Willey, Bruce Farrar, Sean Daly, and Ryan Hunt; and Wayne Smith, the ASA’s 1998 third ranked player.

With seven competitors, and three pitches, everything worked out very evenly. Each player played each other player once (a “single program”) in the first round and every player played on each pitch for two of their six games. After the single program was over, the top four players played off in the semi-finals, the winners of the two semi-final games met in the finals, the two losers of the semi-final games met to determine third place. In all games, there was a four-goal mercy rule in place, which means that if one player takes a four-goal lead, the game ends. In addition, since goal differential was a tie-breaker (although unused in this tournament) a player could not get credit for more than four goals in one game.

The three Astropitches used in the tourney were, on Table 1, a virtually unused Astropitch, on Table 2, a nicely broken-in Astropitch, and on Table 3, a very old Astropitch. Each pitch exhibited different characteristics that required the player to adjust his game accordingly. The more a pitch is used, the less rolling resistance is offered by the pitch, and, normally the better the figures glide. The exception was Table 3’s pitch, as it offered slightly more drag to most figures than even the new pitch. “The more experienced players complained a bit about pitch 3, but I have not played on that pitch in 10 years, and my guys glided wonderfully.” Wayne said. He added “I used Kleen Guard Furniture Polish and one swipe over the European polishing cloth. John and Jon seemed terrified to use furniture polish. If they had, they would have probably had better success on Table 3. I only polished my figures twice over the eight games I played and my little team mates glided like champions.”

Before the first round started first round, the schedule of games was made out with each player represented by a number. After the schedule was completed such that each player played every other player and also played two games on each pitch, an 8-sided die was rolled by John Sarra to determine which player was “Player 2”, “Player 3” and so on. As luck would have it, he rolled the worst position for himself. He got a bye in the first round and had to play powerful Jon Schultz in the second round after Schultz had a game under his belt.

When asked about the disadvantage, Sarra shrugged it off...”At least I got to watch him play his first game, so I got to scout him a little.” He said.

Despite the hardships, Sarra held Schultz to a 1:1 tie. Both Sarra and Schultz rolled through their next few games without conceding a goal until Round 5, when Sarra met Smith. Smith had been ravaging the rest of the field and both players knew that this would be a critical game. The two players had met twice before and Sarra had not lost to Smith in those two previous games. This one was different as Smith came up with a 2:1 victory.

“(Smith) is a much quicker player than last year, and he can take the ball through the middle of defense now.” Sarra noted. “He couldn’t do that last year, and that is something I have to add to my game, as well. I play on the largest pitch that FISTF regulations allow, and there is always plenty of room to work. On standard Astropitches, there is not that much room.”

Smith got no respite as his next game was against former ASA champ Schultz. With Smith’s victory over Sarra, combined with the earlier tie between Schultz and Sarra, Smith needed at least a tie with Schultz to have a good shot at first place after the single program. Schultz scored first as Smith admitted to touching one of Schultz’ figures on his own shooting line. That set up a free kick for Schultz in a dangerous position. Two flicks later Smith was down 1:0.

“I would have never seen (Smith) touch my figure and his pointing it out was very sportsmanlike.” Schultz said of the foul. “The same thing happened to me later in the game, and I did the same thing.” Schultz’ foul, in about the same place did not result in a goal due to some scrambling defense on Jon’s part.

Near the end of the first half, though, came Smith’s equalizer. With the ball near the shooting line, Smith pushed the ball past a defender and immediately struck the ball at goal. Schultz’ ‘keeper got a piece of it, but not enough, and the score was tied. The second half was very tight, and the score remained 1:1 until the final whistle.

“That was a really intense game, but it was not without its humor.” Wayne said. “Before the tournament we spent about a half an hour hammering out, in detail, all of the FISTF rules. Then we had a freak situation where Jon’s defensive flick struck the ball after my offensive flick missed. This situation is not covered in the rules and the two of us just froze and looked at each other expecting a ruling. ‘Uhh...’ was about all we could muster. But neither one of us new what to do. We are both good at applying rules, but both of us had brain-short circuits at the exact same time because this play is not covered in the rules. We ended up rolling a die to decide what to do.”

In the mean time, Daly, Willey, Hunt and Farrar were scrambling to make the final four, or at least to pick up a few wins for additional ASA ranking points. Daly started very slowly, losing badly to Smith 4:0, but quickly picked up his game. He exploded for three goals his next game against Willey, then shut out Hunt, 1:0. Daly then gave Sarra a scare, losing a close 1:0 decision to the eventual runner-up, and after getting shut down against Schultz, beat Farrar 2:0 to clinch a spot in the final four.

“I can’t believe that guy (Daly)! The less he plays, the better he gets.” noticed the host. “When he came over every other weekend, Bruce (Farrar) would beat him almost every time. Now that he comes over about every other month, it is the other way around!”

Bruce Farrar’s fortunes were not the best. The tournament’s hardest shooter had a rough time getting the ball on goal. “I was getting shots, I just couldn’t get them on goal.” Bruce noted. When he did, it was most impressive. In his last game, against Smith, he maneuvered a ball down his right wing and blasted a shot so hard that goal reared up as it hit a bar high in the back-side of the goal. After fishing the ball out of the back of the net, Smith had to check the goal to make sure that it was unbroken. Unfortunately for Bruce, it was too little too late to salvage a final four birth, as he dropped the game 4:1, dropping his record to 1 win and 5 loses.

“This tournament showed me the incredible competition out there that I had never seen.” Bruce said after the tournament. “There were some really good players. The two Jo(h)n’s were awesome.”

Greg Willey’s fortunes were slightly better, as an early first round 1:0 victory over Farrar ended up giving him the edge to beat out Bruce for a fifth place finish. Unfortunately, that was the last of Greg’s wins for the day. His only other point came in a 0:0 tie with Ryan Hunt.

Ryan Hunt, like many beginners (he had played fewer than 5 games before the tournament), brought with him a star figure and did not even realize it until after the all the games were over. Ryan’s goalkeeping figure made numerous saves throughout the tournament and at least one was without help! Against Smith, Ryan had left his ‘keeper lying down next to the left post. Smith rolled a ball into the shooting zone and struck a ball hard, low and headed for just inside the post. Ryan’s ‘keeper made another big save. Everyone after the tournament commented on Ryan’s ‘keeper abilities. It was Ryan’s ‘keeper that helped him pick up his first ever ASA point...a 0:0 tie against Greg Willey.

“For some reason, whenever we first begin to play Subbuteo, our ‘keeping skills are way better than after we’ve been playing a few years.” noticed Gary Archer some years ago. Gary is a Subbuteo player of the past, and exposed the host to Subbuteo about 14 years ago. Unfortunately, Gary could not attend the tournament to see how far his student had progressed.

The end of the single program, the host had edged out the 1994 US champ by just two points. John Sarra had locked up third and Sean Daly coasted into fourth. This meant that the semi-finals would see Daly meet Smith and Sarra meet Schultz.

In the Daly-Smith semi-final, Smith took an early lead and then his offense fell apart. This was partly due to Daly’s change in tactics. In the first round game between these two, Sean pushed the middle of his defense out after the ball, leaving gaping holes for Wayne to exploit. In the semi-final, Sean kept his defense more in tact, and when he did get a figure out of position, Wayne was unable to take advantage. In order to help his defensive positioning, Sean just kept rolling long balls over Wayne’s shooting zone and trying to hit in a roller with the one or two figures he left in the offensive half of the field. While he did not score using this tactic, he kept the game real close and had a chance all the way to the final whistle. Wayne got into the final with his 1:0 victory.

In the other semi-final, it was even tighter. Sarra won the game 2:1 with goals just 10 seconds from half time and another just 40 seconds from full-time. “I kind of stole that game with those (two late goals).” Sarra said afterwards. This meant that the Final would be Smith vs. Sarra, with Daly and Schultz in the third place game.

Schultz wasted no time in taking out his frustrations on poor Sean. With the pressure off and nothing to lose, Schultz put on an incredible exhibition with a very fast 4:0 mercy rule victory over Sean to earn third place.

The final game was a rematch of the final of last year’s “Landmark Open” in which Sarra’s defense dominated Smith in a 2:0 victory, and with it, got to take home the “Jefferson Cup”. This time would be a bit different. The best scoring chances this time belonged to Smith except for a play in the first half. Sarra rolled a ball quickly through Smith’s defense and over the shooting line. The ball hit one of his defenders and stopped, Smith getting as far as saying “My ba...” when John unleashed a shot which ramped up the defender and into the net. John had flicked his player just as, or slightly before the ball hit Smith’s defender to pop it into the goal, but it was clear to Smith (and substantially less clear to Sarra) that possession had changed before the ball was struck...no goal.

The game remained scoreless throughout full-time, and so a full 10-minute sudden death period ensued. Smith kicked off and remained in fairly tight control of the over time. With 4:21 remaining, Smith got a ball through Sarra’s defense, Sarra flicking a defender right in front of the ball to deflect an incoming shot. Unfortunately for John, the ball hit the defender and bounced over John’s ‘keeper into the goal. Smith won it 1:0 on a “Golden Goal.”

Smith said after the game, “It’s funny...last year John outplayed me very badly in a final match and scored on two, at least slightly, controversial goals. Last year, he clearly outplayed me and won. This year, again in a final match, I felt I had the better game and I got a controversial call and won. Maybe the player who is playing better is destined to win. It is sure better than having the guy who gets outplayed winning them all.”

“(Smith) certainly deserved the championship. You can bet that I will be working on my short game!” Sarra added.

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Group table

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Group stage results

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Knock out rounds

Semifinals

Third Place

Final

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