Canberra, Australia via SCL - Daniel Boyle

[boyle]

I started writing a big long response to this but my computer decided to just crash midway through.

You can see the full playlist from Jakub M from Poland - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQQJSwC ... af&pp=iAQB

There were also some various clips on Instagram (a lot on stories, which are not permanent). I would like to see a cool little edit but I haven't seen something like that so far.

I went to the Australian Champs for freestyle football a few weeks before, quite a few players from Japan and Hong Kong came out for that and I saw some of them interacting with the footbag action.

It is a good opportunity to get involved more heavily with that scene but I don't think it's best to be "all in". What I do think is we should get involved in their "Pulse" series, which are regional qualifiers for the bigger events.

What I also find interesting is that even though the event was mega in terms of participation, in terms of newspaper articles etc, I didn't see much of that. I would say probably people outside of freestyle football still wouldn't know what Superball is. Which I'll come back and touch on in regards to Olympics.

My personal though is it would be a pretty good visual sport, but even though it's come along in leaps and bounds, the organisational side is still not at Olympic level (maybe it is actually). But that comment I just made about it not being known outside the individual sport may give some issues. I think in terms of the organising people, it's still very few people actually running the show, which might be a disadvantage.

Though they have developed a good system with those regional qualifiers, I'm not quite sure they match up to the Olympic level - I'm also not quite sure on their participation numbers - there are certain country/number amounts to qualify. The countries would probably be fine, having actual registered players I'm not sure on. Possibly if they were governed by FIFA that could be a way in, but I don't see that happening in either direction. Even though it's a sensible idea.

They have carved out a good market though in what they are doing, and it seems to be working well. It was good in the commentary on the footbag events, Pekke continued talking about what a big influence footbag was on the early freestyle football days. Probably once we had the kind of Euro explosion around early 2000s, there was a lot of influence on the moves they were doing there - particularly clipper based combos which were kind of unheard of then, now they are super common.

Just on those three sports, they're all kind of interesting for different reasons.

Breakdancing they are not bringing back to the next one and I don't really see it coming back at all. My Australian friend (not actually someone I know, before anyone asks...)

Skateboarding I think is good as an Olympic sport but I think there should be a pure vert event. I don't like the format of the street where they get x amount of turns at a certain trick and there's just lots of crashing (good reflection of the day to day skateboarding, not a good tv product.

Soccer is actually not a great Olympic sport as you have it at under 23 level. I've seen people suggest to bring futsal in instead. Not sure about that.


That's a lot on that.

I had a kick with Dyalan last week in Sydney. Just a short session but it was fun to have a kick around. Because we were light on time we played more like a hack circle with some tricks embedded between. He hasn't played that much, though he also got a session with Tom when he was out.

We went and saw Iron Maiden with Killswitch Engage, that was pretty fun. I then saw Killswitch Engage in Newcastle the next day in a way smaller venue. I will go to Sydney again and see Parkway Drive today. I've been doing some reviews for a music site so I'm getting some of these for free. Which is very nice.

Just kicked now for about half an hour. A few things I've done recently.

magellan>ss dlo rpt
spinning osis>torque bs

came very close to ripped warrior>matador just now. Don't know if I've hit that before I think yes.

[boyle]

I got up early and did some footbag in the gym today. I was going for that 20 x 20 - 20 rounds of 20+ contact strings. My personal rules on this are that each trick can just be done twice in a row, although I'm fairly lenient - eg butterfly and ss butterfly are unique tricks for this. I end up doing a lot of the same tricks as you have ones you are most confident in.

It's very good stamina training though and I was finding my stamina is not that great at the moment. I didn't reach the 20 in the time that I had, I ended up I think on 14. I only had about half and hour to play with before having a quick swim.

I had a couple of runs in the 40s, which is good as it gives you 2, but nothing above 50.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DAUD3LgPBoy/

Here's a beachside run from a bit over a week ago. This was very first run after having the camera on.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C_5DTucJriL/

School holidays starting shortly. Just got a new phone today, hopefully it's a bit better on the battery and speed at uploading things, might be able to do a bit more directly from the phone.

[boyle]

School holidays are coming to a close. I've just done a fairly large roadtrip with my sister and our kids between us (5 in total). Have been back home for a couple of days.

I've been getting in some decent kicking time in these last couple of days.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DAjYDyKPk0D/

Did I kick that much while we were away - probably not as much as on some other trips and not for really long sessions, but every now and then.

Spent plenty of time at the beach and that's always a good thing.

Anyway, been working on a few links.

dimwalk>diving legover b2b
double switchover b2b

For a lot of the time playing in recent days I haven't felt I've got into a good flow, but then occasionally I will get some good long runs, or to finish the session this afternoon I hit pixie ducking motion. So it can't all be bad.

[Muffinman]

Ooh the bothsided shuffle looks so good!

Love to see 20x20 catching on -- so happy to see you doing it If I'm getting close to the end of a session and I'm not close, I'll aim for, like, a 100 of easy tricks, or a few 40s or something. The worst is when you get a bunch of 39s in a row though lol. Keep it up!

[boyle]

Testing

[boyle]

It's been a time.
A very long time.

I've been playing a decent amount.

There has been the Passback Footbags Sick 3 comp, I put something in for that.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DHb3lLYza_C/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DHb3UapT8lh/

My main entry was darkwalk (pixie diving butterfly)>spinning ducking butterfly>spinning ducking osis.

Probably a bit too same-ish but I was glad to hit a 5-5-5.

I've changed schools I'm working at and have started a little club during lunch times on Wednesdays for footbag. It's just getting small turnouts so far but I haven't been promoting it deeply. I just got and have some things to kick available and let people come and check it out.

We've booked a trip to Europe in Sep/Oct. That won't hit the footbag timing but hopefully get to kick with a few people along the way. We will be in Turkey, France, south of Germany, Greece and Italy.

Since I haven't posted in so long I wouldn't have put my Joulu video.





Here's a video I made a while back of the trip we did with my sister. A few footbag rounds in that.

On passback they have setup the video verified world records again. I think I could have a reasonable shot at the infinity record. I think it stands at 120 at the moment. I got about 67 I think the best so far. I think I could hit 200. Then of course someone would beat it shortly after.

I've seen a bunch of music lately, including Knotfest which had Slipknot, Hatebreed and various others. I did some footbag in the middle of the Hatebreed mosh, and actually did a really good many contacts run (40 or so), which worked out well. I also saw them on their own show the night before and that was great.

One reason I haven't posted much is I seem to have various computer problems. Might look at an upgrade in the near-ish future.

[boyle]

I fractured my wrist about two weeks ago. I've done pretty well over the course of my life to avoid major injuries. But that's got me in a cast for some time...not really sure how long yet, but everyone tells me this area (scaphoid) takes a long time to heal.



Marc Strauss from USA was out in Australia this week, I was still able to get a kick in with him. I wasn't quite at full ability, but could do some decent tricks. He said he might move here in the next year or so which would be fun.

It's school holidays at the moment, we've got some visitors out from Chile. I'll still try and do some kicking. Now I got the waterproof cast I can go in the pool, so might do some of that in the coming days.



We didn't go quite to this area on our recent trip[, but fairly nearby.

Oh yeah, I much more expected to be in the fracture clinic following seeing Hatebreed, not riding my bike home in a straight line...

[boyle]

It's been some months since my last post. I feel really demotivated when it comes to various computer-ish things lately. Like I don't even update my social media very much anymore (doesn't stop me from looking at it endlessly).

Let's talk some footbag. This time of year I always get a lot of cool memories pop up about the visits to Worlds which are always cool to see. We are going to Europe in September so I'm not getting that same jealous rage that sometimes occurs.

A different memory came up of me about 5 years ago hitting pixie ducking rev swirl into a good run. I couldn't hit that but I had some good strong runs and hit some bigger tricks that I haven't done in a while as well as longer runs.

We've had a friend from Finland out the last couple of days and caught up a few times. She came to Australia with a couple of others to do an internship about 15 years ago and we've stayed in touch since. I talked about footbag and one of the others said oh, someone from my high school was quite good at footbag (it was Juho Marjo, who also came to visit us in Canberra on a different occasion).



I actually met my friend right at this very spot yesterday.

So speaking of Europe, we will be in France, a couple of days in the south of Germany, a couple of days in Switzerland and some time in Greece and Italy. I'm not sure I will get too many footbag encounters but I will probably meet up with Marco in Stuttgart and maybe try and get in a kick with Tina in Zurich, I know that Marc in my above video kicked with Tina and Rene there. He also had a cool session in Berlin in recent days.

As for the wrist, cast is off and I've been to the doctor recently and the scans are looking good. Have to do some exercises to build back strength but it's all looking pretty positive. But I really slowed down on the exercise while that was happening so I feel my stamina has greatly reduced but I'm trying to build that back up.

Back to school now, just had the first day back today. For this European trip we're taking a couple of weeks out of the term and that's really great.

[boyle]

I will just post a few words in here right now and maybe something further down the line.

I'm in Europe. Unfortunately I just missed Worlds by a few weeks.

I just kicked with Franck Remy today. I just posted a very short clip on Facebook, I might put something more elsewhere in the future. I will kick with Marco in a few days in Stuttgart. We will also go to Greece and Italy and a couple of other places.

I haven't posted in ages. Worlds looked fun. Congrats Mathieu. How good for "one of us" *the 8 or so people that post on a semi regular basis here) to win Worlds. Pretty good.

In today's session I had pixie ducking motion and fairy gyro mirage come off the foot. I had some good ducking/diving runs.

Yesterday we rocked up to the Louvre as regular tourists. They had closed many streets and had all these sporting activities (possibly one year from the Olympics) but it was all quite fun. The kids enjoyed it a lot. Wheelchair European Handball was a hit.

[boyle]

We have been back from Europe a while.



I put together a few runs from along the way. We had a pretty good time. In terms of footbag I kicked with Marco in Stuttgart and also met up with Tina in Zurich. She had an injury and it was pouring rain but we had a good little gathering of families.

I've been working on some "No Plant" kind of stuff. Derek Littlefield is running a comp over November with that theme. I've been trying to kick a bit more. We had an event the other night at my school I teach at and I did a small demo as part of that - it went quite well with not many drops.

[boyle]

We're into 2026 so I will renew some posting with vigour and hopefully post more than 3 things across the year.



Here is my Joulu video. I think that's 10 years in a row of submitting a video, maybe even more. I was glad not to run it this year, I really didn't have the capacity for something like that at all.

I am planning to go to Japan for Worlds. I think that should be a good time. We are also looking at going to Chile this year. I think a Japan Worlds will get a good turnout. They have a really good freestyle football scene there too so hopefully there's some crossover there. We had some of the Japanese players come out in the recent years for the Australian champs of freestyle football.

Speaking of the Joulu. I really struggled with the Links of the Day this year. I got through most of the intermediate ones on both sides but I think I ended up doing only 2 or 3 of the open.

On the year in footbag that was - I feel I am declining a bit in my game. I have put on some extra weight in the last couple of years so time to cut down on the beers a bit. I don't think I've put enough time into training properly, but with Worlds on the cards that should give some motivation to get in and train well.

In recent days I read an article about future business models for freestyle football. I had some thoughts on it so I wrote my own article.
https://sportslashlife.com/future-of-fu ... le-sports/

[Tjuggles]

It would be awesome to meet up in person in Japan! I also need to get in shape. My knee (I think my meniscus) has been acting up. I think it is due to bad form on my weak side. I have beed trying to improve my left toe, and I think all the work has done a number on my knee. Trying to build muscle up around the knee so hopefully this ends soon.

[boyle]

I've been getting into a bit of proper-ish training (not really, but some). Today I put some focus on the Shred 30 and the big verdict is - a lot more work needed. I've got a bit of a planned shred 30 which I used around the Covid competition times. Which basically connects a few straightforward drills.

I have also made paradox drifter my focus trick of the month. I'm not sure why but I absolutely suck at this trick. I've been using TJ's app looking at this. A lot of the features don't track directly to how I play (just doing whatever I want) so maybe using the app is going to help me be more focused. For example the other day I worked on drifter just to a catch and did 50 on each side - with about 5 mistakes each side along the way. I have set myself a goal of 10 pdx drifter on each side for the month (just 10 at all, not 10 in a row). So we'll see how that goes.

We've got a weekend away down in the snowy mountains (although it's hopefully not snowing this time of year). My friend had a thing there last year for his 40th and we had a good time so we'll go there again. Hopefully get a bit of hack going. His brother can do a few tricks and he has always been a pretty good four square player.

A little before going to Europe I quit from the gym. I wrote an email just before New Year (peak gym time) just to ask about prices. They haven't written back so now I am against them. I've got bits and pieces set up at home so I've been doing some exercises here.

We've spent some decent time down the coast over these holidays. I made a couple of videos regarding these adventures.