Over the years in club ultimate, narratives have emerged that certain teams just do not match up well with other teams. It’s not clear if this is driven by style of play, player match-ups, or some psychological effect. One of the most discussed narratives of bad team match-ups is Machine’s repeated struggles against Ring of Fire over the years (full disclosure: I played on Machine from 2011–2015). This has even evolved to some good twitter trolling between the teams. The first tweet is from Ring of Fire after they upset Machine in pre-quarters at 2014 Nationals. The second is from Machine after we finally broke through and beat Ring of Fire in quarters at 2015 Nationals.

So if we look at the Men’s and Women’s divisions this decade, have there been certain teams that match up with certain opponents better than others? Based on the analysis below, the narrative between Machine and Ring has some statistical grounding. Let’s take a look.