posted Sep 8th, 2009 - The internal competition of the five 4-way teams from the United Kingdom at the FAI World Cup 2009 ended with a clear victory of Sonicnutz.

It was a little bit complicated to determine the fair rankings of all teams since the all-female lineup, Kaizen, competed in the female 4-way category and completed all ten rounds. There was no cut for semifinals and finals in this event due to the low number of teams.

Sonicnutz was the only British 4-way team in the Open Class that made the first cut into the semifinals and was finished after nine rounds. Phobia, Fusion and Escondido completed eight rounds and were done. Sonicnutz did not make the cut for the World Cup, where the best ten teams advance into the semifinals. However, the rules for the European Championship count only one team per nation and Sonicnutz was in 10th place for the United Kingdom after Round 8.

The NSL News looked at the leaderboard after the completion of Round 8 with scores of all five British teams. This changed the ranking positions between Kaizen and Fusion. Kaizen had the better average after ten rounds, but Fusion was up by two points after eight rounds and could not complete the remaining two rounds.

It was very interesting to follow this internal UK competition throughout the competition in Protejov, after the same teams had already battled with each other several times this year at the meets in the United Kingdom. Sonicnutz was already the strongest team of this 5-way at the UK Nationals 2009 and had finished 20 points ahead of Fusion.

Sonicnutz was still only in 5th place at the UK Nationals 2009. None of the higher scoring teams was qualified or eligible to compete at the World Cup 2009. This also counted for Satori, the new British 4-way champion of 2009. Satori missed the BPA deadline for registration and had to watch the event from home.

This the Satori members did very carefully, and they were unhappy that they could not participate live on competition site in the Czech Republic. Most likely, Satori would have made it into the final round of the European Championship for the United Kingdom after finishing with a 20.7 average at the UK Nationals 2009.

The 20.7 average is in fact the highest 10-round meet average that any UK team has ever posted. Even the legendary British XL lineup (Pete Allum, Steve Hamilton, Thomas Hughes, John McIver) did not score higher at their time.

Pete Allum and Steve Hamilton both competed for Italy with Sinapsi at the World Cup 2009 and finished with a 21.4 average and bronze medals. Thomas Hughes is a Spaceland Fource and Paraclete XP 8-way member, while John McIver has been guiding Satori to this new British record average this year.

Satori (Aaron Faith - Tail, Julia Foxwell - Center Outside, John McIver - Center Inside, Katie Woods - Point) is now ready to show one more time that the team has made it to the top level in the world and represent the United Kingdom on a significantly higher level in the future. The ESL Championship is coming up this weekend, and Satori is eager to post world class scores on the ESL leaderboard.

The team members are looking forward to compete at high-profile events to get ready for next year's biggest challenge at the World Meet 2010 in Russia. They already have the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2010 on the Satori agenda, as well.

First of all, they will collect many important points for the British delegation at the ESL Championship 2009. The United Kingdom has to defend the ESL Spirit on home turf. The UK delegation in Prostejov has already shown how well the teams and competitors can work together at challenging times. The battle for the Fun Flag always featured a very strong UK defence and tricky plans of attack. The Dutch delegation is probably the toughest challenger in Hibaldstow this weekend.