It’s a beautiful Saturday in May 2019. You enjoyed a pick-up game of Ultimate in the park surrounded by football kickabouts. When you asked other friends who just do not understand how amazing a sport Ultimate is to play you were scoffed at. You’ve now quickly showered and you’re waiting on your friends from Ultimate to arrive at the pub you’re sitting at in the city centre. On your way down, your social media feeds are dominated by discussions and videos around football with BBC News even deeming the fact that a club is being bought as newsworthy. As you look up at the pub’s TV and see yet another football highlights reel and analysis programme before the Champions League Final, you find yourself wishing yet again for a world in which Ultimate replaces football as the number one most popular sport. You wish that for once, Ultimate was given the recognition it deserves. As you furiously think this thought, there is a short, sharp, powerful rush of air and your pint is knocked off the table along with you off your metal seat. A bright flash illuminates your vision as you fall back then is gone as quickly and suddenly as it appeared.
As you sit up, you realise everyone is looking at you strangely. Nobody else seems to have experienced the wind. You look around the bustling city centre from the pub you find yourself in and you have the feeling of coming home after being away for 5 years. All looks the same but there is something nagging in the back of your brain that there’s something not quite right, that something is different. It reminds you of Polar Express’s uncanny valley effect – but not from Tom Hanks’s animated face – from the whole world around you. You stare at the people, searching for the reason the world feels quietly strange and odd – for the secret which is hiding in plain sight. Businessmen and women jostle their way through the masses, vendors stare into space, the homeless sink further into the floor under pitying eyes, cars inch past and you sit in the midst of what seems to be mundane normality. You notice the occasional person standing out from the crowd and you eye them wondering if it is them that is giving the world a different tone, but it is merely that they are the one person in the hurried throng who doesn’t seem to be desperate to be somewhere else.
Unable to find a clue from your eyes, you ignore them and focus in on your ears. That’s when it hits you. The conversations of the people passing by and from the surrounding tables. Men converse over pints as per usual but football is not the topic as normal. The chosen topic of conversation, is Ultimate.
“Did you see the game the other night?”
“Yeah, Dallas Roughnecks crushed Indianapolis Alley Cats in the final!”
“First half was shocking but once Giroud skied Koscielny from Emerson’s IO throw, Indianapolis just fell apart didn’t they?”
“They’ve been poor defensively for years. Course when Dallas have got a player like Hazard, doesn’t really matter how well you play on D. He’s been one of the best cutters in the league since he signed.”
“Sure sure but Maitland Niles with the strip on Giroud. He might as well have just given Hazard the disc for a Callahan his defensive error was so bad. Doesn’t take a special player to score when you make errors like that.”
“I was just gutted he didn’t get one more point. I had put £20 on Sky Bet for him to score a layout.”
“Unlucky mate. You looking forward to the Champions League Final between Toronto Rush and Seattle Cascades on the 1st?”
“Cannot wait! Did I tell you my nephew is getting to go to the match? Yeah, the Pro Youth Development League has paid for all the Scottish youth Ultimate teams to go to watch it. Said they feel that they have enough grassroots funding to provide the kids with a bit of Ultimate education, inspire them to see what’s possible if they really apply themselves to Ultimate you know?”
“There’s just so much competition to become a professional Ultimate player though?”
“The money is just so huge now if a player makes it in the game, it’s easy to turn a kids head.”
You turn in shock to see if you’ve made a mistake but there’s no denying the now blindingly obvious truth. The universe you now inhabits most popular sport is Ultimate Frisbee.
Looking past the old punters you finally notice the JD store across the road. Paul Pogba is posing in the window, his eyes glinting over the edge of his glimmering blue disc. Full Madison Radicals kits gleam in the window, University of Glasgow and Stirling University Ultimate hoodies and caps adorn the shelves and just graduated players such as Joao Felix and Trent Alexander-Arnold advertise the latest gloves and boots. 
You rise from your chair and turn over the newspapers in a stand nearby. The news that DC Breeze are soon to be taken over by a Saudi billionaire dominates the sports page, along with interviews from managers Klopp and Pochettino discussing whether respective star cutters Firmino and Kane will be available for the final on June 1st alongside comments from club captains and handlers Henderson and Lloris. Another column details how far rising Scottish stars who developed from the university scene like John McGinn from Heriot Watt and Andy Robertson from Strathclyde University have come in the professional Ultimate scene. Bookies detail the odds of a Callahan happening in the next game, whether Toronto Rush will make a strip foul in the first half, whether the score will be 7-5 to Toronto or 4-6 to Seattle.
You head into the shopping centre and pick up a kids Ultimate magazine from WH Smith, 2-1-2, and turn to a random page. 
You find quizzes for kids to discover which position they are destined for, be it handlers, cutters or Iso. You find personality tests for kids to find out whether they should play for Glasgow, Dundee or Edinburgh University before they turn professional. You see adverts for an online game called ‘Jumpers for Endzones’ where you can take a young player from a rookie throwing discs in his back garden for his dog, to playing for an amateur team and working on your throwing, cutting, layouts, blocking and catching to being picked up by a University team, before making the big time with New York Empire and playing for your country at the World Cup. You see a TV schedule for every university and professional match being broadcast on BT Sport and Sky with their own dedicated Ultimate channels and price lists for video games on PS4 and Xbox 1 like WFDF 19 (or WiffDiff) or Pro-Evo Ultimate (or Pew).
In the middle of the shopping centre walkway there is a man advertising Sky Sports and on the TV in glorious 4KHD is a highlights reel from the AUDL. In your excitement, you run to the last remaining HMV and find films in the rack like ‘Bid For It Like Beckham’ where an Indian girl overcomes prejudice to become a top Ultimate player, ‘She’s the Man’ where a girl isn’t allowed to play Ultimate but dresses up as a boy so she can play, and ‘Point’ where a young Mexican boy is spotted by a Glasgow University scout and goes on to become a top professional.
Frantically, you run to a man wearing a San Francisco Flame Throwers shirt and ask, Why does everyone in England hate Maradona? He replies, “Cause Maradona caught the disc just out of the end zone but argued that he was in. The refs missed it and gave the point.”
It’s all too much. You’re in a world where your favourite sport is everyone’s favourite sport. You’ll be able to bring up Ultimate in almost any situation without people groaning and laughing. You call up one of your friends from high school and say,
“Hey bud, any chance of a game of football?”
The derisory reply comes through and puts the final nail in the coffin.
“Is that actually a real sport? I thought it was just you kicking a ball as far as you could on the beach?”
You realise that if you go to any town in the country there will be amateur, youth, Sunday and junior leagues to play in. There will be endless videos and TV channels dedicated to Ultimate for you to watch. There will be money provided for the development and education of young players. The richest sportspeople in the world will be Ultimate players. If you’re ever short of a topic of conversation with friends, just bring up the latest big Ultimate match. Just as you love Ultimate, the WORLD loves Ultimate.
Then as quickly as the exhilaration was born, it rapidly goes extinct. Ultimate is your thing. It can’t be everyone’s thing. It’s just that now it doesn’t need your devout support and devotion anymore. All your commitment and time spent expressing to others how Ultimate is just misunderstood and is actually wonderful was for nothing. The pride you held that Ultimate was growing year on year now means, nothing. The fact that someone could meet Ultimate aged 18 and become a top player within a few years now isn’t possible as kids are introduced to Ultimate as soon as they can grip the edge of a disc. The excitement you felt at introducing your Ultimate to friends and family has dissipated completely as all of them know Ultimate already anyway. Your need to be protective and proud of Ultimate is no longer required.
You realise that deep down you loved Ultimate for what it was. A niche, almost cult sport where those who play together form a bond that comes from being a part of something that leaves you apart from everyone else. It’s a sport which provides camaraderie and companionship unlike almost any other due to the fact that it is ‘other’ to the majority. You may wish Ultimate could be as big as football but the truth is that part of the joy of playing Ultimate is that it’s yours. Those who play it feel an affinity and pride in playing it because it is adored by a select few. You love to defend and eulogise about Ultimate to protect it from the misinformed and poorly educated masses. You love bringing new players into the fold because it feels like you’re letting them into a well-kept secret, like someone playing their friend a singer who is going to be the next big thing they’ve discovered on Spotify or Youtube, or someone bringing a friend to a secret, dive bar buried somewhere in a sprawling city. Ultimate deserves to be bigger, better understood and more widely appreciated and played. Until that day however, you want to enjoy Ultimate for what it is. A growing, explosive, beautiful, alternative, joyous and united sporting experience that you wouldn’t change for the world.
This started as a silly idea and became a bit of a love letter to the sport. Big love to all who play and engage with Ultimate. By, Alastair More.
THE ULTIMATE SPORT 
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