Ah … The 1970s. A time for  politicians, musicians, celebrities to improve the world with their own brand of … Ok let’s not go there!
It was though the decade when guts was undoubtedly the premium frisbee sport. Our mentor Dr Stancil Johnson in his groundbreaking book ‘Frisbee’ believed that guts would become “the standard game for Frisbee”. Indeed he devoted 9 pages of text and photos to guts (whereas ultimate and disc golf got just 6 pages between them). If the same book was written today I would guess that guts would barely get a mention as a footnote. Why? Why has ultimate grown to such a degree that it can justify a professional league whereas guts registers barely a mention?

At the recent World Ultimate & Guts Chamionship held in London under the auspices of the World Flying Disc Federation there were only 8 teams in the guts competition (and USA and Germany had two each) but 31 in the men’s ultimate competition alone. School kids in America embraced ultimate from the 1980s onwards but ignored guts and I am struggling to understand the reasons.

A quick scan through the Internet will reveal few entries for guts and nothing for the game in Britain. There is just no guts scene here.

Guts, though, is an enigma. On the one hand a frisbee was born to be thrown and caught. Indeed on the underside of the Pluto platter (one of the first mass-produced frisbees) is written “play catch – invent games”. It is a sociable game. When the students on the east coast of America were tossing pie lids to each other; when Fred and Warren were trying to sell their prototypes at trade fairs, they were throwing the frisbee to be caught. A throw in Guts though is not meant to be caught. The purpose of Guts is to throw the uncatchable throw. On the other hand it is human nature when playing catch to try something a little harder – to test your partner’s ability (“ok you’ve caught that easy throw, let’s put a bit more zip in the next one”). Frisbee would not have grown to the mass-appeal piece of merchandise of today were it just a simple throw-and-catch game for kids.

Guts is, at its heart, a macho game. Indeed it has been branded as the original extreme sport and is certainly not for the faint-hearted. For the uninitiated the purpose of the game is to throw the frisbee so the opposition cannot catch it. To make things even more difficult valid catches are only allowed one-handed without touching another part of the body! Although players may try to claim that is all about angles and trajectory of the throw, let’s be honest, it tends to be the speed that matters. I played it with friends and was hit full in the face! Try explaining that to a triage nurse in the A&E – road accidents, stabbings, football-related injuries and my “oh I got hit in the face with a frisbee”. It is finger-dislocating fun! I play an indoor version with my boy using a material frisbee which is almost as much fun but results in less trips to the hospital (more about that on a different blog).

Is there room for more than two frisbee sports? At this stage of frisbee development I don’t think so. Both disc golf and ultimate seem to be on an upward curve of popularity that shows no sign of abating. What does disc golf offer the frisbee-loving community? Target-based, accuracy, distance. Ultimate offers free-flowing, invasive games, hippy counter-culture and (perhaps most importantly of all) a chance to play with the opposite sex. What about Guts? Having watched games there is a lack of flow, the time between points is interminable. It just seems to lack an x-factor.

Guts seems to be stuck in the ’70s and as we all know nothing good came out of that decade.