Shame on me !!!!! ....................
UK Paintball saw the 90’s completely and utterly dominated by the Predators; Marcus’s team were the best by far, not just in the UK but the whole of Europe; in those days, it was basically France and Germany and a handful of Scandinavian teams who made up the European contingent.
The reason I even mention the following is not a bout of big-headedness but because this article is a personal account and as such, it’s necessary to comment upon how things were perceived back then even though some of those perceptions were somewhat skewed.
Please bear this in mind when reading what comes next and just in case there’s any confusion regarding the skewed perspective, I’m not referring to the Pred’s dominance.
A peculiar anomaly arose in UK paintball, although the best team was acknowledged to be the Preds, I was supposed to be the best player - modesty prevented me from acknowledging this fact … but only for 3.5 nanoseconds at which point I was Larry-Larging it up at every opportunity.
There was a magazine poll at about this time that canvassed UK ballers to choose their top ten UK players and I was lucky enough to win it even though my mum had only sent in 5,978 votes.
I felt quite chuffed about it really but a lot of my peer players dreaded such a result believing that I would become even more intolerable if I was voted the winner … they were dead fuhkin right, I was even more intolerable.
Secretly, I always thought Marcus was a better player because his eliminations were more spectacular in that he would sometimes bunker players but I was lazy, I used to let my gun do the running and just shoot them if they showed me too much.
Still, I wasn’t gonna demand any recounts – there were of course the inevitable cries of ‘fix’ but the real truth was, the guys on the magazine didn’t want me to win either, they could just about tolerate me if I had came in tenth but to win it?
I think they all went on the missing list for a week or so when the results came in.
Woo hoo, I was the guv’ner and even though humility was conspicuously absent from my dictionary of life, I did try to contain myself but with little success …oh bollox ….if ya got it, flaunt it.
As I came to realise, humility wasn’t ever gonna be my strong suit and if I could get one over on the Preds by being the best player, then you bet your ass I was gonna milk it dry … and I did just that.
Little did I know just how far I was gonna fall from grace and end up questioning everything in my paintball life ..
As for the ‘incident’ I keep mentioning in previous chapters?
It’s stuck at the end of my finger-tips in what feels like digital constipation as they dance above the keyboard - the reality is, I’m not proud of it and I hate thinking about it but here goes anyways. …. Nah, I can’t do it, sorry ………… …………. ………………only joking
Well, remember I mentioned in Chapter 3 about people being hypersensitive about things written or maybe things that are unwritten in a magazine causing offence?
Good, well, it happened to me when I was busy in my office of the engineering company I owned back then, the magazine came through the post as per usual and included in that edition was an interview with Marcus talking about the UK scene.
I began reading …. Word followed word …. followed word … no mention of NWC, not a frikkin syllable nor acronym,
For some reason, which I find incredulous now, I got really pis$ed off with this glaring omission believing it to be a veiled insult, well not so much veiled as glaring … and as the day went by, I began stewing on it till I made a phone call and found out Marcus’s location – he was down the very same paintball shop my brother and myself had opened in Dartford but by then we had sold it on to Doug Setters.
I picked up a baseball bat and raced down the shop .. Marcus was playing one of the machines as I walked through the door ….. the next few seconds were somewhat of a blur of bats and fists but the upshot was, I ended up standing there with the inside of my mouth having been ripped open after Marc had somehow grabbed me in the mouth and pulled which tore the tissue inside my mouth.
I hadn’t hit Marcus on the head with the bat [thankfully] and then a strange thing happened, and to this day, I really don’t know how or why but we both just stopped ….the silence was deafening and only broken by heavy breathing - we stared at each other for about 5 seconds but within those 5 separate seconds, I felt all aggression drain from me, only to be replaced with a mounting shame …. All within those 5 looooonnng seconds.
Regardless of damage reports, I had lost the confrontation, I lost any respect Marcus had for me but worst of all, I lost respect for myself.
If I was gonna go confront him then I should have done it like a man and had a stand-up straightener with him and not picked up a fuhkin baseball bat.
The ironic tragedy was, I really didn’t hate Marcus, I just hated his team dominance over me.
Marcus could have easily continued and he would have been perfectly justified had he done so but I couldn’t …
I couldn’t continue because there was no way I could use the baseball bat in my hand .. it was beneath me but it wasn’t until Marcus just stood there looking at me as though I was some sort of maniac that I realised what the fuhkin hell I was doing.
He began screaming the question I did not want to answer, ‘why, what the fuhk have I done' !!!!!
As the blood-splattered answer made its torturous way outa my mouth I realised what a coward I’d been because to attack a man for ‘not mentioning my team’, it was as absurd as it was insane, and to use a bat?
It was a step too far … even for me - I couldn’t look at Marcus in the face.
To Marcus’s credit, he coulda gone for me when it all stopped, and he would have been 100% justified; the reason he didn’t go for me had nothing at all to do with the bat or what I might do with it but more to do with him not needing to – I had lost the confrontation purely because of what I had held in my hand.
Regardless of who was hurt the most, the second my hand wrapped around that baseball-bat, I lost, he knew it, and I knew he knew it.
I felt sick and realised this sport was getting to me because when you boil it down, WTF was I getting wound up for anyways - just because he didn’t mention my team???
Er yeah, just that .. I really did feel ashamed to my bones.
I would have much rather had a straightener with him and got beat up bad than what had just happened … I couldn’t turn the clock back ….I was stuck with what I'd done.
Marc forgave me for that incident and we went on to become good friends and I’m grateful for that because he could so easily have just ignored me and left me stewing in my own shame.
We now meet up with the wives and talk crap about old times with each of us finding things out about how we used to think back then.
The irony was, I picked up the baseball bat to stamp my authority on proceedings but the truth was, all I stamped on was my weakness …
Before that incident, there was always a feeling of détente between us such that we both respected the other’s ability in paintball and also as ex amateur boxers, we didn’t need to prove anything one way or another – I had just fuhked that mutual respect thing right up.
The surprising thing was though, Marc never took advantage of his ascendency in later times, he just got on with what he loved, just playing the game – he was now the bigger and better man … ouch, I flinched at that !
The fact I was supposed to be the UK`s best player counted for Jack-Shlt, I had finally blown it, big time.
I went home and stewed on it for hours but things felt like they were closing in on me, I knew what I had to do.
I retired from playing; but it turned out to be a half-hearted gesture.... as I mentioned before, this game gets to you and it wasn’t long before I made my return to the game I was beginning to love and hate.
Paintball was now beginning to affect my domestic life and there were casualties, emotional ones but for some reason, you don’t see them as they unfold until it’s sometimes too late.
At the weekends, I was playing, and midweeks, I was either writing about it or on the phone talking about it .. my life was beginning to be ruled by my obsession with our sport and I didn’t see the warning signs even though they were ten-foot high, flashing and neon’d up to the ass.
When I look back, I paid a hefty price for indulging myself in the sport I loved, it was a price I reluctantly ended up paying but by then, it was all too late.
If I could go back and change anything, I would, I wouldn’t go anywhere near a paintball site that’s for sure.
Every single second I had been away from my kids while playing was now lost forever.
Sounds a bit harsh and dramatic maybe but it’s a lesson hard-earned but maybe people who try to get to the top in any sport suffer domestic casualties, it’s maybe par for the course but when the time for paying the ferryman comes, a sick feeling overwhelms you when you realise the sheer depth of the irreparable damage you’ve inflicted even if it wasn’t deliberate.
There’s no acceptable excuse … not even close.
On with the show ..
In those early nineties a few American teams were coming over and Europe’s best event, the Mayhem tournament, became their testing grounds but the Preds stood firm and resolute.
The Yanks couldn’t win an event over here even though by the early nineties, a fair number were crossing the pond to here to see what it was like, teams like the world champions at that time, The All Americans.
The Ironmen also came across over with teams that played host to a mixture of players from various pro teams Stateside such as a team called Bo Peep that had a few Aftershock players thrown in.
I remember playing against the All Americans one time at the Mayhem finals fully expecting to get our ass spanked but as the game went on, it was obvious they weren’t the superstars we all believed, they had the same markers as us and as long as we didn’t become over-awed by them, we had a chance.
The game was tied but there was an unexpected twist of fate lurking in the woodland - during that game against the All Americans I was lucky enough to shoot about four of them out which included Adam and Billy Gardner, the two brothers who owned the team and also owned Smart Parts the hugely successful paintball company..
Those eliminations must have made an impression for some reason because I was subsequently asked to go play for them in the US.
I thought, ‘fuhkkkk’, these are the present world champions and they were asking me to go play for them.
For some reason, I stalled but when I got to think about it, the one thing every pro player aspires to is the top .. and the top was, a chance at winning the world cup.
I might not be able to do it with NWC but this was an opportunity that comes once in a life-time … I just couldn’t turn it down … but ….
I think I was stalling because I didn’t wanna fail and really didn’t think I was that good, it was the only bout of humility I was to ever suffer from in my entire paintball life.
It’s all well and good being a big fish in the Brit pond but this was another thing altogether - my butt squeaked … I was unsure.
Just like soccer, the world cup is the zenith for any paintballer and the only way I was gonna have a chance at the ultimate goal was to either join the Preds or go Stateside and join the All Americans and so I finally capitulated, I called Billy Gardner and went to play for them – I had to know if I was good enough and if I failed, fuhk, I would have tried.
Squeaky bum time ….
I think the first time I went over with the All Americans was to a national one-on-one championships the Yanks used to host in Knoxville, Tennessee.
It was held inside a stadium which was kinda funky I suppose and it was also televised which added pressure to the proceedings.
I was understandably nervous but I had already won a couple of these ‘one-on-one’ events in the UK but against 163 Yanks?
This was something else …..
I was apprehensive but whatever happened, I had to make sure I didn’t get eliminated in the first round….
Luck was on my side, the first round had you play about 8 qualifying games which whittled the 164 players down to the final eight and I went into that final 8 as the top seed, I hadn’t lost to anyone but now it was straight knockout and so squeaky bottom time for all of us.
One of the vagaries of that event was that if you were the higher seed going into a match then if it was a tie [3 minute game time], it meant that the higher seed went through, whoopee, I had qualified as the top seed of the 8 who made the finals and all I had to do was sit and wait for a time-out and not have to go hunting for them.
I think I shot the first quarter final guy easily enough but then the semi-final was another affair, it was against Travis Lemanski who’s an extremely well know pro and much respected .. and still is.
I made the best of my advantage and trod water till the time out elapsed, 3 minutes doesn’t sound a long time but when you’re playing indoors with a few hundred people watching and televised as well, it was pressure paintball indeed.
Travis is one of the real good guys in paintball but I didn’t let that affect me as I closed him out in that game.
And so, I wormed my way into the final; I’m not gonna make excuses here, I got beat by a guy who shot me out, I have no problems with that at all.
What I did have a problem with were the judges, I had no idea about the rules or whatever’s going on, all I knew was, if you were in a knock-out game, if your seeding was higher, then you went through in the event of a time-out with neither party being shot.
I got ready for the final game, someone told me it was the best of three but for some reason they made it a one-off game; I didn’t give a shlt coz I was just gonna tread water and wait anyway …. As I went out into the arena, the head judge calls me over and delivers the normal crap but he informed me , the final game had the rules changed and someone had to be eliminated to win, there was to be no time-out result for the final – I had to shoot him out if I was to win.
I thought it kinda strange but what the heck, I’ll just out-snap the guy.
The guy I was playing against was from Knoxville and obviously knew all the judges but in all honesty, I don’t think he had any idea of what went down prior to me walking in to that final game.
His name as Jay and was from Knoxville and was a real genuine fellah, I liked him.
The game itself was nip and tuck and the local guy knew damned well if he gave me an inch, I’d clip him as I’d done the others.
I might not have been the most athletic of ballers but I could stay tight and shoot straight and it had stood me in good stead all through the previous games.
We both bobbed in and out of our cover points, and during one of those interactions my loader got clipped and he was the winner. I walked up and congratulated him, I was pleased I’d gotten so far to be honest but there was a sting in the tail to come.
My paintball life never seemed to run simple, there always seemed to be these ‘stings in the tail’ waiting for me round the next bend.
Billy Gardner of the All Americans and Smart Parts came up to me and asked why I had played peeky-boo with Jay, why hadn’t I just waited for him like I had done with Travis Lemanski.
It was obvious that Billy wasn’t aware of the ‘new’ rule of a no-tie result that the head judge had imposed.
I told him what the judge had told me and we both went off to see the guy who ran the event to find out what the fuhk was going on … the promoter informed us the advantage should have held in final and I didn’t have to actually shoot my opponent to win ….. fuhkkkkkkkk !!!!
I wasn’t amused; I told the promoter what I’d been told by the head-judge and stormed off to find him.
It’s bad enough I lost but knowing the dice were somewhat loaded, it irked me somewhat.
As I began pacing toward the bunch of judges still at the entrance to the playing area, I realised I was now gonna face my real test .. a test with myself.
I had had these feelings in my stomach many times before and it was generally always followed with someone getting hit … I genuinely didn’t give a sh!t if he was standing with his hick mates - I knew there was a good chance I would drop him if he said the wrong word or talked down to me.
I was like a Pavlovian dog back then … the head- judge was now ringing my bell ….
I’m not saying any of this to look hard or whatever, I’m just telling you what went through my mind.
For all I knew, he may have been able to beat me but I knew how to hit someone so they dropped - I also knew he wouldn’t be expecting it – the judge’s fate was gonna be on a knife-edge .. as was mine.
But this time, I had to restrain myself because I was effectively playing for the All Americans now and if I had dropped the head-judge, it woulda been curtains for my world cup chances and of course acute embarrassment for all parties concerned with me not least of all the magazine, PGi.
I was now representing PGi when I went anywhere, the last thing Matt [the owner of PGi and my friend] would have needed was for me to get involved in hitting a head-judge on foreign soil … it had happened far too many times already in the UK but this was now different, the magazine was trying to break into the US market.
No matter how much I felt justified in clumping the head-judge because of his chicanery, I knew other people would condemn me and be after my head.
Even though my mind was racing this way and that, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do - I went straight to the head-judge responsible for telling me and he denied he had told me .. and none of the other judges heard him say it either … hmmmmnnn ….. I stood there simmering …..
I was being made out to be a bad-losing Brit when the reality was something quite different.
The butterflies in my tummy had morphed into turkeys as I struggled to keep a lid on things; as I walked away, I was finding it hard to justify my decision [in my head] not to have dropped him where he stood.
I‘d been tucked up by those low-lifes but the real tragedy was, Jay, the guy who won, really did have no idea what went on, and he deserved to win, he played better in that final than myself but the victory was soured by some cheating -ass, hick locals who thought they would give their home-grown boy a helping hand, the tragedy was, he didn’t need any, he beat me fair and square.
The main thing was though, I’d made an impression and the Yanks knew I was in town and could play a bit.
I felt I could now take my place in the world champions, the All Americans ..
Semi-auto now ruled the roost and had fundamentally changed the game into a paint-fest for players - gone were the days of target-orientated paintball, we now settled into a volume orientated game that encouraged suppressive- fire as a principal tactic.
The players embraced this socialist paintball revolution because it evened up the pack.
Anybody could now pick up a gun and spray & pray as against acquiring the skill of accurate shooting.
This ‘evening - up’ of the players was greeted enthusiastically by the main corpus of players because it put them all on an equal footing; all you had to do now was to flick your finger as fast as you could which of course was great for the wives and girlfriends but it took some time before the players developed new skills that differentiated good and bad players.
The sport of paintball was now beginning to mature leaving the game of paintball behind, it was now a whole new ball-game, pun intended.
The paint manufacturing companies started to lick their lips as the new game unfolded around pallet loads of paintballs blanket-bombing opponents around the world, as for the players?
The technicians of the past were now replaced with suppressive sprayers which effectively closed the game down until athleticism and technical proficiency began to pay tactical dividends.
Little did we know just how far the technical frontiers of gun manufacturing would take us.
X-ball was years away but the writing was splattered upon the wall with the advent of the semi-auto … ‘one box - one kill’ almost became an ironic mantra as our game groaned and squeaked under the deluge of paint now being used.
The sport of paintball was now experiencing yet another bout of growing pains as it entered puberty but before it could assume the role of a mature sport, it had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the woods …. The purists would howl like banshees as Hyperball and arena ball started to make an appearance at tournaments but that was to come some time later.
Next chapter – Politics schmolotics and the Preds assault for the ultimate goal in paintball, Jerry Braun’s World Cup – a sorry tale of chicanery that would forever blight Marcus’s view on paintball.
All Roads Lead to Jerry …… and much more besides.
UK Paintball saw the 90’s completely and utterly dominated by the Predators; Marcus’s team were the best by far, not just in the UK but the whole of Europe; in those days, it was basically France and Germany and a handful of Scandinavian teams who made up the European contingent.
The reason I even mention the following is not a bout of big-headedness but because this article is a personal account and as such, it’s necessary to comment upon how things were perceived back then even though some of those perceptions were somewhat skewed.
Please bear this in mind when reading what comes next and just in case there’s any confusion regarding the skewed perspective, I’m not referring to the Pred’s dominance.
A peculiar anomaly arose in UK paintball, although the best team was acknowledged to be the Preds, I was supposed to be the best player - modesty prevented me from acknowledging this fact … but only for 3.5 nanoseconds at which point I was Larry-Larging it up at every opportunity.
There was a magazine poll at about this time that canvassed UK ballers to choose their top ten UK players and I was lucky enough to win it even though my mum had only sent in 5,978 votes.
I felt quite chuffed about it really but a lot of my peer players dreaded such a result believing that I would become even more intolerable if I was voted the winner … they were dead fuhkin right, I was even more intolerable.
Secretly, I always thought Marcus was a better player because his eliminations were more spectacular in that he would sometimes bunker players but I was lazy, I used to let my gun do the running and just shoot them if they showed me too much.
Still, I wasn’t gonna demand any recounts – there were of course the inevitable cries of ‘fix’ but the real truth was, the guys on the magazine didn’t want me to win either, they could just about tolerate me if I had came in tenth but to win it?
I think they all went on the missing list for a week or so when the results came in.
Woo hoo, I was the guv’ner and even though humility was conspicuously absent from my dictionary of life, I did try to contain myself but with little success …oh bollox ….if ya got it, flaunt it.
As I came to realise, humility wasn’t ever gonna be my strong suit and if I could get one over on the Preds by being the best player, then you bet your ass I was gonna milk it dry … and I did just that.
Little did I know just how far I was gonna fall from grace and end up questioning everything in my paintball life ..
As for the ‘incident’ I keep mentioning in previous chapters?
It’s stuck at the end of my finger-tips in what feels like digital constipation as they dance above the keyboard - the reality is, I’m not proud of it and I hate thinking about it but here goes anyways. …. Nah, I can’t do it, sorry ………… …………. ………………only joking
Well, remember I mentioned in Chapter 3 about people being hypersensitive about things written or maybe things that are unwritten in a magazine causing offence?
Good, well, it happened to me when I was busy in my office of the engineering company I owned back then, the magazine came through the post as per usual and included in that edition was an interview with Marcus talking about the UK scene.
I began reading …. Word followed word …. followed word … no mention of NWC, not a frikkin syllable nor acronym,
For some reason, which I find incredulous now, I got really pis$ed off with this glaring omission believing it to be a veiled insult, well not so much veiled as glaring … and as the day went by, I began stewing on it till I made a phone call and found out Marcus’s location – he was down the very same paintball shop my brother and myself had opened in Dartford but by then we had sold it on to Doug Setters.
I picked up a baseball bat and raced down the shop .. Marcus was playing one of the machines as I walked through the door ….. the next few seconds were somewhat of a blur of bats and fists but the upshot was, I ended up standing there with the inside of my mouth having been ripped open after Marc had somehow grabbed me in the mouth and pulled which tore the tissue inside my mouth.
I hadn’t hit Marcus on the head with the bat [thankfully] and then a strange thing happened, and to this day, I really don’t know how or why but we both just stopped ….the silence was deafening and only broken by heavy breathing - we stared at each other for about 5 seconds but within those 5 separate seconds, I felt all aggression drain from me, only to be replaced with a mounting shame …. All within those 5 looooonnng seconds.
Regardless of damage reports, I had lost the confrontation, I lost any respect Marcus had for me but worst of all, I lost respect for myself.
If I was gonna go confront him then I should have done it like a man and had a stand-up straightener with him and not picked up a fuhkin baseball bat.
The ironic tragedy was, I really didn’t hate Marcus, I just hated his team dominance over me.
Marcus could have easily continued and he would have been perfectly justified had he done so but I couldn’t …
I couldn’t continue because there was no way I could use the baseball bat in my hand .. it was beneath me but it wasn’t until Marcus just stood there looking at me as though I was some sort of maniac that I realised what the fuhkin hell I was doing.
He began screaming the question I did not want to answer, ‘why, what the fuhk have I done' !!!!!
As the blood-splattered answer made its torturous way outa my mouth I realised what a coward I’d been because to attack a man for ‘not mentioning my team’, it was as absurd as it was insane, and to use a bat?
It was a step too far … even for me - I couldn’t look at Marcus in the face.
To Marcus’s credit, he coulda gone for me when it all stopped, and he would have been 100% justified; the reason he didn’t go for me had nothing at all to do with the bat or what I might do with it but more to do with him not needing to – I had lost the confrontation purely because of what I had held in my hand.
Regardless of who was hurt the most, the second my hand wrapped around that baseball-bat, I lost, he knew it, and I knew he knew it.
I felt sick and realised this sport was getting to me because when you boil it down, WTF was I getting wound up for anyways - just because he didn’t mention my team???
Er yeah, just that .. I really did feel ashamed to my bones.
I would have much rather had a straightener with him and got beat up bad than what had just happened … I couldn’t turn the clock back ….I was stuck with what I'd done.
Marc forgave me for that incident and we went on to become good friends and I’m grateful for that because he could so easily have just ignored me and left me stewing in my own shame.
We now meet up with the wives and talk crap about old times with each of us finding things out about how we used to think back then.
The irony was, I picked up the baseball bat to stamp my authority on proceedings but the truth was, all I stamped on was my weakness …
Before that incident, there was always a feeling of détente between us such that we both respected the other’s ability in paintball and also as ex amateur boxers, we didn’t need to prove anything one way or another – I had just fuhked that mutual respect thing right up.
The surprising thing was though, Marc never took advantage of his ascendency in later times, he just got on with what he loved, just playing the game – he was now the bigger and better man … ouch, I flinched at that !
The fact I was supposed to be the UK`s best player counted for Jack-Shlt, I had finally blown it, big time.
I went home and stewed on it for hours but things felt like they were closing in on me, I knew what I had to do.
I retired from playing; but it turned out to be a half-hearted gesture.... as I mentioned before, this game gets to you and it wasn’t long before I made my return to the game I was beginning to love and hate.
Paintball was now beginning to affect my domestic life and there were casualties, emotional ones but for some reason, you don’t see them as they unfold until it’s sometimes too late.
At the weekends, I was playing, and midweeks, I was either writing about it or on the phone talking about it .. my life was beginning to be ruled by my obsession with our sport and I didn’t see the warning signs even though they were ten-foot high, flashing and neon’d up to the ass.
When I look back, I paid a hefty price for indulging myself in the sport I loved, it was a price I reluctantly ended up paying but by then, it was all too late.
If I could go back and change anything, I would, I wouldn’t go anywhere near a paintball site that’s for sure.
Every single second I had been away from my kids while playing was now lost forever.
Sounds a bit harsh and dramatic maybe but it’s a lesson hard-earned but maybe people who try to get to the top in any sport suffer domestic casualties, it’s maybe par for the course but when the time for paying the ferryman comes, a sick feeling overwhelms you when you realise the sheer depth of the irreparable damage you’ve inflicted even if it wasn’t deliberate.
There’s no acceptable excuse … not even close.
On with the show ..
In those early nineties a few American teams were coming over and Europe’s best event, the Mayhem tournament, became their testing grounds but the Preds stood firm and resolute.
The Yanks couldn’t win an event over here even though by the early nineties, a fair number were crossing the pond to here to see what it was like, teams like the world champions at that time, The All Americans.
The Ironmen also came across over with teams that played host to a mixture of players from various pro teams Stateside such as a team called Bo Peep that had a few Aftershock players thrown in.
I remember playing against the All Americans one time at the Mayhem finals fully expecting to get our ass spanked but as the game went on, it was obvious they weren’t the superstars we all believed, they had the same markers as us and as long as we didn’t become over-awed by them, we had a chance.
The game was tied but there was an unexpected twist of fate lurking in the woodland - during that game against the All Americans I was lucky enough to shoot about four of them out which included Adam and Billy Gardner, the two brothers who owned the team and also owned Smart Parts the hugely successful paintball company..
Those eliminations must have made an impression for some reason because I was subsequently asked to go play for them in the US.
I thought, ‘fuhkkkk’, these are the present world champions and they were asking me to go play for them.
For some reason, I stalled but when I got to think about it, the one thing every pro player aspires to is the top .. and the top was, a chance at winning the world cup.
I might not be able to do it with NWC but this was an opportunity that comes once in a life-time … I just couldn’t turn it down … but ….
I think I was stalling because I didn’t wanna fail and really didn’t think I was that good, it was the only bout of humility I was to ever suffer from in my entire paintball life.
It’s all well and good being a big fish in the Brit pond but this was another thing altogether - my butt squeaked … I was unsure.
Just like soccer, the world cup is the zenith for any paintballer and the only way I was gonna have a chance at the ultimate goal was to either join the Preds or go Stateside and join the All Americans and so I finally capitulated, I called Billy Gardner and went to play for them – I had to know if I was good enough and if I failed, fuhk, I would have tried.
Squeaky bum time ….
I think the first time I went over with the All Americans was to a national one-on-one championships the Yanks used to host in Knoxville, Tennessee.
It was held inside a stadium which was kinda funky I suppose and it was also televised which added pressure to the proceedings.
I was understandably nervous but I had already won a couple of these ‘one-on-one’ events in the UK but against 163 Yanks?
This was something else …..
I was apprehensive but whatever happened, I had to make sure I didn’t get eliminated in the first round….
Luck was on my side, the first round had you play about 8 qualifying games which whittled the 164 players down to the final eight and I went into that final 8 as the top seed, I hadn’t lost to anyone but now it was straight knockout and so squeaky bottom time for all of us.
One of the vagaries of that event was that if you were the higher seed going into a match then if it was a tie [3 minute game time], it meant that the higher seed went through, whoopee, I had qualified as the top seed of the 8 who made the finals and all I had to do was sit and wait for a time-out and not have to go hunting for them.
I think I shot the first quarter final guy easily enough but then the semi-final was another affair, it was against Travis Lemanski who’s an extremely well know pro and much respected .. and still is.
I made the best of my advantage and trod water till the time out elapsed, 3 minutes doesn’t sound a long time but when you’re playing indoors with a few hundred people watching and televised as well, it was pressure paintball indeed.
Travis is one of the real good guys in paintball but I didn’t let that affect me as I closed him out in that game.
And so, I wormed my way into the final; I’m not gonna make excuses here, I got beat by a guy who shot me out, I have no problems with that at all.
What I did have a problem with were the judges, I had no idea about the rules or whatever’s going on, all I knew was, if you were in a knock-out game, if your seeding was higher, then you went through in the event of a time-out with neither party being shot.
I got ready for the final game, someone told me it was the best of three but for some reason they made it a one-off game; I didn’t give a shlt coz I was just gonna tread water and wait anyway …. As I went out into the arena, the head judge calls me over and delivers the normal crap but he informed me , the final game had the rules changed and someone had to be eliminated to win, there was to be no time-out result for the final – I had to shoot him out if I was to win.
I thought it kinda strange but what the heck, I’ll just out-snap the guy.
The guy I was playing against was from Knoxville and obviously knew all the judges but in all honesty, I don’t think he had any idea of what went down prior to me walking in to that final game.
His name as Jay and was from Knoxville and was a real genuine fellah, I liked him.
The game itself was nip and tuck and the local guy knew damned well if he gave me an inch, I’d clip him as I’d done the others.
I might not have been the most athletic of ballers but I could stay tight and shoot straight and it had stood me in good stead all through the previous games.
We both bobbed in and out of our cover points, and during one of those interactions my loader got clipped and he was the winner. I walked up and congratulated him, I was pleased I’d gotten so far to be honest but there was a sting in the tail to come.
My paintball life never seemed to run simple, there always seemed to be these ‘stings in the tail’ waiting for me round the next bend.
Billy Gardner of the All Americans and Smart Parts came up to me and asked why I had played peeky-boo with Jay, why hadn’t I just waited for him like I had done with Travis Lemanski.
It was obvious that Billy wasn’t aware of the ‘new’ rule of a no-tie result that the head judge had imposed.
I told him what the judge had told me and we both went off to see the guy who ran the event to find out what the fuhk was going on … the promoter informed us the advantage should have held in final and I didn’t have to actually shoot my opponent to win ….. fuhkkkkkkkk !!!!
I wasn’t amused; I told the promoter what I’d been told by the head-judge and stormed off to find him.
It’s bad enough I lost but knowing the dice were somewhat loaded, it irked me somewhat.
As I began pacing toward the bunch of judges still at the entrance to the playing area, I realised I was now gonna face my real test .. a test with myself.
I had had these feelings in my stomach many times before and it was generally always followed with someone getting hit … I genuinely didn’t give a sh!t if he was standing with his hick mates - I knew there was a good chance I would drop him if he said the wrong word or talked down to me.
I was like a Pavlovian dog back then … the head- judge was now ringing my bell ….
I’m not saying any of this to look hard or whatever, I’m just telling you what went through my mind.
For all I knew, he may have been able to beat me but I knew how to hit someone so they dropped - I also knew he wouldn’t be expecting it – the judge’s fate was gonna be on a knife-edge .. as was mine.
But this time, I had to restrain myself because I was effectively playing for the All Americans now and if I had dropped the head-judge, it woulda been curtains for my world cup chances and of course acute embarrassment for all parties concerned with me not least of all the magazine, PGi.
I was now representing PGi when I went anywhere, the last thing Matt [the owner of PGi and my friend] would have needed was for me to get involved in hitting a head-judge on foreign soil … it had happened far too many times already in the UK but this was now different, the magazine was trying to break into the US market.
No matter how much I felt justified in clumping the head-judge because of his chicanery, I knew other people would condemn me and be after my head.
Even though my mind was racing this way and that, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do - I went straight to the head-judge responsible for telling me and he denied he had told me .. and none of the other judges heard him say it either … hmmmmnnn ….. I stood there simmering …..
I was being made out to be a bad-losing Brit when the reality was something quite different.
The butterflies in my tummy had morphed into turkeys as I struggled to keep a lid on things; as I walked away, I was finding it hard to justify my decision [in my head] not to have dropped him where he stood.
I‘d been tucked up by those low-lifes but the real tragedy was, Jay, the guy who won, really did have no idea what went on, and he deserved to win, he played better in that final than myself but the victory was soured by some cheating -ass, hick locals who thought they would give their home-grown boy a helping hand, the tragedy was, he didn’t need any, he beat me fair and square.
The main thing was though, I’d made an impression and the Yanks knew I was in town and could play a bit.
I felt I could now take my place in the world champions, the All Americans ..
Semi-auto now ruled the roost and had fundamentally changed the game into a paint-fest for players - gone were the days of target-orientated paintball, we now settled into a volume orientated game that encouraged suppressive- fire as a principal tactic.
The players embraced this socialist paintball revolution because it evened up the pack.
Anybody could now pick up a gun and spray & pray as against acquiring the skill of accurate shooting.
This ‘evening - up’ of the players was greeted enthusiastically by the main corpus of players because it put them all on an equal footing; all you had to do now was to flick your finger as fast as you could which of course was great for the wives and girlfriends but it took some time before the players developed new skills that differentiated good and bad players.
The sport of paintball was now beginning to mature leaving the game of paintball behind, it was now a whole new ball-game, pun intended.
The paint manufacturing companies started to lick their lips as the new game unfolded around pallet loads of paintballs blanket-bombing opponents around the world, as for the players?
The technicians of the past were now replaced with suppressive sprayers which effectively closed the game down until athleticism and technical proficiency began to pay tactical dividends.
Little did we know just how far the technical frontiers of gun manufacturing would take us.
X-ball was years away but the writing was splattered upon the wall with the advent of the semi-auto … ‘one box - one kill’ almost became an ironic mantra as our game groaned and squeaked under the deluge of paint now being used.
The sport of paintball was now experiencing yet another bout of growing pains as it entered puberty but before it could assume the role of a mature sport, it had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the woods …. The purists would howl like banshees as Hyperball and arena ball started to make an appearance at tournaments but that was to come some time later.
Next chapter – Politics schmolotics and the Preds assault for the ultimate goal in paintball, Jerry Braun’s World Cup – a sorry tale of chicanery that would forever blight Marcus’s view on paintball.
All Roads Lead to Jerry …… and much more besides.
