Ultimate is flying high in Australia and now comes the news that the inaugural World Masters Ultimate Championships (WMUC) will be hosted on the Gold Coast in 2020.

Says www.afda.com: “With the rapid growth of Ultimate, particularly in the Asian region, it is expected that up to 40 teams from 20 nations will participate in the championships.

“Winning this event is a fantastic achievement for AFDA (Australian Flying Disc Association) who have worked hard to the last two years to develop a bid based on the excellent facilities at Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast…

“The venue will be familiar to many Ultimate players as the same fields were used at Australian Ultimate Championships in 2017 and 2018.”

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As Kelli Browne, Partnerships Manager for Ultimate Australia, says in a recent promo for the game “it’s an exciting time for Ultimate” which is now the biggest university sport in the nation.

“The participation in the sport is exploding. In Australia there are more than 35,000 players and it’s growing at a rate of 30 per cent a year.”

In the last Clubbies Awards, Brisbane-based Extinction Ultimate was a finalist in the Best Club category. So what accounts for the rapid rise of Ultimate down under?

Cat Phillips from the Australian Ultimate Team says it’s a unique experience: “It can be quite different to any sport you play with a ball.

"You might have somebody do a full length 80 metre throw down the field or you might have a big pack grab where you’ll have eight people under the disc and have one person get up over the top of everyone and grab it down.”

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And then there is the little matter of no umpire.

AFDA explains how Ultimate relies upon the Spirit of the Game, which places the responsibility for fair play on every player.

“Players on the field make their own calls when violations occur - there are no referees," says afda.com.

"If there is disagreement regarding an incident, the disc returns to the player who made the last pass and the game resumes. The Spirit of the Game award is a highly coveted award at tournaments.”

Discover more about Ultimate and Other Disc Sports.