Don’t believe all you hear …
DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE THE SENSITIVE TYPE or OVERLY JUDGEMENTAL !!!!!
This is an addendum to the main chapters and not part of the main history of our sport - it's an indulgence on my part, nothing more.
My first pro team, NWC, was created by my brother, John and myself - I suppose with hindsight, we weren’t the most approachable of teams and consequently, as time went by, rumours began to circulate regarding ‘events’ that we were allegedly involved in …
I will mention two incidents that happened exactly as I tell them – I’m not proud of them nor am I trying to justify them in any way - here goes ..
Through the early and mid-nineties, it’s fair to suggest NWC was the subject of a few rumours that included eating babies and causing any number of fights with near fatal injuries … both extremes were absolute bollox but was there any smoke without fire?
We were a bunch of normal guys who could maybe have a row if the need be but maybe my opinion was through rose-tinted glasses, you decide.
A lot of people who have been in this game for a long time and read this will know of some of what I’m about to reveal :-
I will say this much – as a team, and as individuals, we didn't go around bullying people - I concede we didn’t look like choirboys, that’s for sure but the only time we reared up was when someone took the pis$.
Maybe our response was sometimes disproportionate but the people who tried to fuhk us over knew the score, except for one poor soul.
His unfortunate experience comes in the second half of this post that’s entitled, ‘The West Country Incident’ …
I apologise up front if this offends anyone but I have warned you beforehand and so there’s no excuse.
Here we go :-
The Essex Incident !!!
During the 90s a lot of site owners wanted to put themselves on the paintball map by promoting tournaments and so a lot of the pro teams around at that time were being invited to play particular events.
The event in question was a five-man , it was an un-remarkable site but owned and managed by a person who I shall now refer to as Idiot.
A few of my guys wanted to play the event and so sent off the required deposit of £125 - I wasn’t gonna play for one reason or other but on the Friday before the event, one of my guys, Big Rick, rang the promoter to make sure all was ok for the Sunday.
The promoter then tells Rick that the five-man has been cancelled at which point, Rick asked [politely] for the return of the deposit.
So far so good …
Rick felt somewhat aggrieved because the guy hadn’t rung us before to tell him of the cancellation and if Rick hadn’t rung him on the Friday then the team would [presumably] have gone all the way to the site on the Sunday for no reason, only to be told the event was cancelled.
Rick told me what happened and I just assumed the promoter would send Rick the money as Idiot had promised … he did no such thing.
Rick rang this guy several times and ended up telling the guy to pay up and stop fuhking around ….
After about two weeks had passed, Rick called me and asked if I would ring the guy and tune him up.
Back then, most everyone in paintball knew of my team, and also knew of my players.
And so we found it somewhat surprising this prick was fuhking us about with our money.
I called the guy up, introduced myself over the phone and advised he do some homework on us and to please pay what he owed before things started to get silly.
I called him on a Friday and told Idiot he had one week to pay .. he agreed.
The money/ cheque for £125 was to be sent to Big Rick by no later than the coming Friday, I didn’t think much more of it until the phone rang on that Friday … Rick tells me the money hadn’t come through and he felt we should go and collect it on the Sunday in two days time.
We had found out the guy was running a novice/amateur event there and so we knew he would not only be there but also have sufficient money to pay us what he owed.
4 of us made the trip in my car, the line-up was myself, Big Rick, even bigger Steve and a 300 pound psychopath nicknamed ‘Swede’, those of you familiar with the film ‘Heartbreak Ridge’ will remember the character ‘Swede’ and so have some idea what our Swede was like.
Swede wasn't a trained fighter in that he had boxed or anything like that but he was big and could punch like a train.
We set off on the Sunday morning all crammed into my car which at that time was a Lotus Excel – lord only knows why we took my car because as we all clambered out the damn thing, it looked like a hippo giving birth to quadruplets.
All we wanted was what Idiot owed us, we arrived on site amid a tournament with players milling around the safe zone but we couldn’t see the guy we wanted.
I think all of the players there knew damned well who we were and even though they weren’t aware of our problem, they knew we weren’t there for a picnic with Winnie the Pooh.
Everyone's eyes followed us around the safe zone and they must have been wondering what the fuhk we wanted there. I walked up to a cabin that housed the food/drinks and asked for some tea and we just stood around drinking our tea and awaited the return of who we went to see ….Mr Idiot.
After a few minutes, we could make out a group of players and guys with orange tops on coming toward us – we got up, walked toward the throng of people and I stopped about twenty feet in front of them; they stopped also, they knew something wasn't quite right; I asked to talk to Mr Idiot, the guy who owed us the money; all the guys had stopped dead except one who continued walking toward us - he was obviously Idiot, by name and now by action.
I was getting ready to introduce myself and tell him we’ve come for the money but Big Rick slid ominously past me to confront Idiot - Rick didn’t so much confront Idiot as crack the guy on his jaw which was unfortunate really but not entirely underserved.
The guy was knocked out cold and all of the players and judges just stood there looking on in astonishment – it was deathly quiet that was disturbed only by the memory of that bone on bone sound as knuckle connected with jaw-bone.
Actually, I was quite surprised because Rick hadn’t’ said he was gonna do anything like that, as far as I was concerned we went there to pick up our money … I was wrong.
I walked up and knelt by the prostrate figure who had assumed the foetal position and started to bring him round by gently shaking him - he eventually opened his eyes, saw me and tried to get up.
I asked him, ‘ why the fuhk didn’t you just pay us what we were owed, it didn’t have to come to this’ …
He was a bit shaky for obvious reasons but I held on to his arm while we made our way to one of the cabins to collect our money.
He wasn’t saying much which as you will find out later, was somewhat strange.
He went to a desk-draw in one of the cabins and started to count out the money he owed and stopped at the amount of what we had sent him.
I explained that because of his reluctance to pay, we had to give up a few hours of our Sunday, jump in the car and incur traveling expenses to come and get what he owed.
We asked for and received another 100 quid to offset our costs for the day, I think that was fair really considering the inconvenience.
As soon as we had our money, we jumped back in my car and back on the A12 to London.
I suggested we stop at a Little Chef on the A12 and use some of the money we collected to have breakfast.
Nobody objected and so we pulled in at the next Little Chef.
As we were all sitting there drinking our teas waiting for the breakfast to be served up, big Rick took advantage of a gap in the conversation and announced he had something to tell us … it sounded too formal almost hesitatingly; I wondered what the fuhk he was gonna say …. He said, ‘guys, ya know I said that we were gonna wait until Friday [2 days before] to see if he sent the money before going down the idiot’s site to get it’?
We all nodded in agreement… and then he dropped the bomb in our laps, he added, ‘well, I did get the money on the Friday’ … our jaws slumped as we were trying to come to terms with what he told us; Rick kindly added, ‘Sorry guys but I didn’t like the way he talked to me on the phone and I really wanted to sort him out and so when the cheque did arrive on the Friday, I didn’t tell you’ … Oooops!!!
The upshot of that event was to come in the form of another sting in the tale on the money morning after Sunday's event - I went into PGi’s offices in Colchester when I saw Matt [PGi’s owner and friend] he looked kinda worried and asked me into his office and went onto explain that the police had been on to him saying I had demanded money with menaces and also assaulting Idiot and they wanted to see me.
It’s ironic that idiot finally got around to finding out who we were after he got popped, why the frikkin hell he didn’t do his homework before was beyond me because it would have avoided all the crap but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
I hadn’t even got the chance to tell Matt what had happened and the police were already on my case – that’s all I fuhkin needed on a Monday morning.
I never touched the frikkin guy but apparently when he woke up from his unfortunate loss of consciousness, the first face he saw was mine kneeling over him and he automatically assumed it was me who popped him .. oh fuhkin’ ell, that’s all I need, the problem was, there was no way I could say it wasn’t me without putting Rick in the frame which of course wasn’t gonna happen.
It’s not as if everyone there didn’t see who popped idiot and so I pretty much guessed old bill didn’t have much of a case against me ... I realised that sooner or later any witnesses would confirm I hadn't hit idiot and so I was clear.
Matt was looking worried because I was a representative of the magazine and so anything like this was gonna look bad …. And this is where fate played its hand and I have no reason as to why it went this way but … there was no way I was gonna call the police and give myself up, if they wanted me that much, they would have to come get me.
And then, nothing happened; I don’t know if the police had realised it was gonna be tricky to get a successful prosecution or maybe they felt the guy got what he deserved, either way, I was in the clear … woo hoo !!!
Rick tore up the cheque when he got back home … I wonder why
The West Country Incident …..
As I mentioned in the previous account, a lot of pro teams were being asked to attend events all over the country in the 90s and it was another example of this that had us driving down the M4 to some hick location where they were having a local tournament with about dozen teams.
We were the only pro team there and so were pretty much expected to win the thing but whenever we did attend events like this, we always handed any prize money over to the last placed team. We used it as practice ...
All the teams there were pretty cool to us and we had no problems with them but as in so many occasions before, events would overtake us …
We played the first two games and everything was fine, we played well and the other teams duly lost, that’s how it should be but out third game was against the site team, they all seemed pretty cool guys as I seem to remember and so we foresaw no real problems.
During the game, I heard a lot of shouting over on one side but had no idea what the fuhk was going on, we played the game out to a draw which was uprising and so we were kinda disappointed but I still had no idea what the shouting was all about.
As we walked back to the staging and safety zone, I was being told about a judge who had wiped one of the local players down right in front of ….. er …. yeah, Rick again, Big Rick – oh sh!te. Rick then told me he had lit this guy up only for the judge to wipe him down and put him back in the game, Rick wasn’t too impressed with this and exhibited his displeasure by raising his voice.
Rick is about 6ft 3, 270 pound and his voice was kinda loud … but, the disagreement hadn’t escalated from a shouting match which I was relieved about.
We headed back to the staging area with Rick ominously quiet …… the entrance to the staging area/safety zone had a corridor of netting you had to walk through from the playing fields, the idea being that you put your barrel plug in gun barrel in long before you entered the staging area. The corridor was about 30 feet long and about 12 feet wide.
The fact we drew with that team didn’t prevent us from potentially winning the event - the points at that stage were such that if we won all of the remaining games, we would win the event but we couldn’t afford any more draws or any penalty points.
No problem, cool, we’d sail through it easily enough … or so I thought.
Big Rick was kinda miffed as we both walked back toward the safety zone and I’d known Rick for a long time and knew the way his mind worked; I was watching him like a hawk.
The rule of the site was that all barrel plugs should be in before reaching the safety zone, in fact, on one of the signs on the outside of the netting indicated all barrel plugs should be in before you walked into the corridor from the field. The operative word there is ‘before’ …
At the entrance to the netting corridor, a marshal with yellow goggles and an orange jacket was standing there checking players as they came in from the fields.
He never said one word to me or Rick as we entered the corridor of netting to get to the safe zone.
I got my plug in just as we entered the corridor and Rick walked about 3 steps into the corridor and inserted his barrel plug long before we got anywhere near the staging area …. As we continued along the corridor toward the staging area entrance, we heard a shout from behind us - the judge called us back in a rather irreverent tone - we weren’t really used to being talked to like a fuhkin piece of sh!t and so when we got to the judge at the entrance to the corridor, we both felt a bit miffed.
He informed Rick that he would be given 25 penalty points for breaking the rule that stated plugs have to be in the barrel before you entered the corridor.
The judge pointed toward the sign outside the safety zone, and rather dismissively advised us Rick had broken that rule …. the 25 points killed us …. We knew straight away what had gone on with the local judges helping their local team out against the bad boys from London, the fact we were a pro team made us targets it seemed.
The judge, if he had been doing his job right should have stopped Rick at the entrance of the corridor and asked Rick to plug his gun and then let him continue but this judge thought he’d fuhk us up.
Rick’s head was dropping as the judge confirmed his decision to give 25 penalty points and I knew what was coming and so I quickly grabbed hold of Rick’s arm and pulled him away and told Rick, ‘Fuhk him, we’ll pack up and go, we ain’t staying here to be fuhked over like this’ ..
Rick had the habit of looking down to the floor in confrontations like this only for him to launch a right hand on someone’s chin .. I didn’t want this to happen for obvious reasons.
We walked through the corridor and into the safety zone and up to our staging table. I told all the other players we are fuhking off and Rick calmly put his marker and pack down, saying nothing to anyone … he stood there just looking at his gear for about 10 seconds and then muttered, ‘Fuhk it, I ain’t having that’ … I knew what was coming and so by the time Rick had gone back through the corridor toward the judge with the yellow goggles and orange coat on still standing at the entrance, I had caught up with him but it wasn’t soon enough.
In fact, by the time I did get to Rick, 3 punches had already landed, the first punch to the chin ironed the guy out with the next two redesigning the guy's rib cage.
Rick stood above the poor soul with one foot either side of him lying there, Rick looked down at the guy and never said a word; he wheeled back around toward the safe zone whereupon we executed our withdrawal from the event.
Another one of those stings in the tail was now readying itself as we drove back toward London Town.
My mobile started to ring … it was another time when I shouldn’t have answered that damn phone but to be fair, I had no idea what was coming, lord only knows how many times I had been in that situation before.
It was from a guy still back at the site who had my mobile number.
He told me some awful news … what we didn’t know was that when the judge awarded Rick the penalty points, he then went straight to see the head-judge on the field …… and another judge took his place at the entrance to the corridor wearing exactly the same gear of yellow goggles and orange top … Rick had hit the wrong guy … Ooops !!
I know it sounds terrible now and I feel really bad for the innocent victim but it was one of those things that happened back then.
The team was beginning to get a bad name …. Or more accurately, I was getting a bad name and I was now being blamed for everything that happened within a ten mile radius of the team.
I of course felt persecuted and thoroughly misunderstood, all because my mum didn't give me enough toys to play with when young .…. however, the noose was tightening .... but was I deterred?
Was I fuhk ....
Some names have been changed to protect the paranoid and innocent.
DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE THE SENSITIVE TYPE or OVERLY JUDGEMENTAL !!!!!
This is an addendum to the main chapters and not part of the main history of our sport - it's an indulgence on my part, nothing more.
My first pro team, NWC, was created by my brother, John and myself - I suppose with hindsight, we weren’t the most approachable of teams and consequently, as time went by, rumours began to circulate regarding ‘events’ that we were allegedly involved in …
I will mention two incidents that happened exactly as I tell them – I’m not proud of them nor am I trying to justify them in any way - here goes ..
Through the early and mid-nineties, it’s fair to suggest NWC was the subject of a few rumours that included eating babies and causing any number of fights with near fatal injuries … both extremes were absolute bollox but was there any smoke without fire?
We were a bunch of normal guys who could maybe have a row if the need be but maybe my opinion was through rose-tinted glasses, you decide.
A lot of people who have been in this game for a long time and read this will know of some of what I’m about to reveal :-
I will say this much – as a team, and as individuals, we didn't go around bullying people - I concede we didn’t look like choirboys, that’s for sure but the only time we reared up was when someone took the pis$.
Maybe our response was sometimes disproportionate but the people who tried to fuhk us over knew the score, except for one poor soul.
His unfortunate experience comes in the second half of this post that’s entitled, ‘The West Country Incident’ …
I apologise up front if this offends anyone but I have warned you beforehand and so there’s no excuse.
Here we go :-
The Essex Incident !!!
During the 90s a lot of site owners wanted to put themselves on the paintball map by promoting tournaments and so a lot of the pro teams around at that time were being invited to play particular events.
The event in question was a five-man , it was an un-remarkable site but owned and managed by a person who I shall now refer to as Idiot.
A few of my guys wanted to play the event and so sent off the required deposit of £125 - I wasn’t gonna play for one reason or other but on the Friday before the event, one of my guys, Big Rick, rang the promoter to make sure all was ok for the Sunday.
The promoter then tells Rick that the five-man has been cancelled at which point, Rick asked [politely] for the return of the deposit.
So far so good …
Rick felt somewhat aggrieved because the guy hadn’t rung us before to tell him of the cancellation and if Rick hadn’t rung him on the Friday then the team would [presumably] have gone all the way to the site on the Sunday for no reason, only to be told the event was cancelled.
Rick told me what happened and I just assumed the promoter would send Rick the money as Idiot had promised … he did no such thing.
Rick rang this guy several times and ended up telling the guy to pay up and stop fuhking around ….
After about two weeks had passed, Rick called me and asked if I would ring the guy and tune him up.
Back then, most everyone in paintball knew of my team, and also knew of my players.
And so we found it somewhat surprising this prick was fuhking us about with our money.
I called the guy up, introduced myself over the phone and advised he do some homework on us and to please pay what he owed before things started to get silly.
I called him on a Friday and told Idiot he had one week to pay .. he agreed.
The money/ cheque for £125 was to be sent to Big Rick by no later than the coming Friday, I didn’t think much more of it until the phone rang on that Friday … Rick tells me the money hadn’t come through and he felt we should go and collect it on the Sunday in two days time.
We had found out the guy was running a novice/amateur event there and so we knew he would not only be there but also have sufficient money to pay us what he owed.
4 of us made the trip in my car, the line-up was myself, Big Rick, even bigger Steve and a 300 pound psychopath nicknamed ‘Swede’, those of you familiar with the film ‘Heartbreak Ridge’ will remember the character ‘Swede’ and so have some idea what our Swede was like.
Swede wasn't a trained fighter in that he had boxed or anything like that but he was big and could punch like a train.
We set off on the Sunday morning all crammed into my car which at that time was a Lotus Excel – lord only knows why we took my car because as we all clambered out the damn thing, it looked like a hippo giving birth to quadruplets.
All we wanted was what Idiot owed us, we arrived on site amid a tournament with players milling around the safe zone but we couldn’t see the guy we wanted.
I think all of the players there knew damned well who we were and even though they weren’t aware of our problem, they knew we weren’t there for a picnic with Winnie the Pooh.
Everyone's eyes followed us around the safe zone and they must have been wondering what the fuhk we wanted there. I walked up to a cabin that housed the food/drinks and asked for some tea and we just stood around drinking our tea and awaited the return of who we went to see ….Mr Idiot.
After a few minutes, we could make out a group of players and guys with orange tops on coming toward us – we got up, walked toward the throng of people and I stopped about twenty feet in front of them; they stopped also, they knew something wasn't quite right; I asked to talk to Mr Idiot, the guy who owed us the money; all the guys had stopped dead except one who continued walking toward us - he was obviously Idiot, by name and now by action.
I was getting ready to introduce myself and tell him we’ve come for the money but Big Rick slid ominously past me to confront Idiot - Rick didn’t so much confront Idiot as crack the guy on his jaw which was unfortunate really but not entirely underserved.
The guy was knocked out cold and all of the players and judges just stood there looking on in astonishment – it was deathly quiet that was disturbed only by the memory of that bone on bone sound as knuckle connected with jaw-bone.
Actually, I was quite surprised because Rick hadn’t’ said he was gonna do anything like that, as far as I was concerned we went there to pick up our money … I was wrong.
I walked up and knelt by the prostrate figure who had assumed the foetal position and started to bring him round by gently shaking him - he eventually opened his eyes, saw me and tried to get up.
I asked him, ‘ why the fuhk didn’t you just pay us what we were owed, it didn’t have to come to this’ …
He was a bit shaky for obvious reasons but I held on to his arm while we made our way to one of the cabins to collect our money.
He wasn’t saying much which as you will find out later, was somewhat strange.
He went to a desk-draw in one of the cabins and started to count out the money he owed and stopped at the amount of what we had sent him.
I explained that because of his reluctance to pay, we had to give up a few hours of our Sunday, jump in the car and incur traveling expenses to come and get what he owed.
We asked for and received another 100 quid to offset our costs for the day, I think that was fair really considering the inconvenience.
As soon as we had our money, we jumped back in my car and back on the A12 to London.
I suggested we stop at a Little Chef on the A12 and use some of the money we collected to have breakfast.
Nobody objected and so we pulled in at the next Little Chef.
As we were all sitting there drinking our teas waiting for the breakfast to be served up, big Rick took advantage of a gap in the conversation and announced he had something to tell us … it sounded too formal almost hesitatingly; I wondered what the fuhk he was gonna say …. He said, ‘guys, ya know I said that we were gonna wait until Friday [2 days before] to see if he sent the money before going down the idiot’s site to get it’?
We all nodded in agreement… and then he dropped the bomb in our laps, he added, ‘well, I did get the money on the Friday’ … our jaws slumped as we were trying to come to terms with what he told us; Rick kindly added, ‘Sorry guys but I didn’t like the way he talked to me on the phone and I really wanted to sort him out and so when the cheque did arrive on the Friday, I didn’t tell you’ … Oooops!!!
The upshot of that event was to come in the form of another sting in the tale on the money morning after Sunday's event - I went into PGi’s offices in Colchester when I saw Matt [PGi’s owner and friend] he looked kinda worried and asked me into his office and went onto explain that the police had been on to him saying I had demanded money with menaces and also assaulting Idiot and they wanted to see me.
It’s ironic that idiot finally got around to finding out who we were after he got popped, why the frikkin hell he didn’t do his homework before was beyond me because it would have avoided all the crap but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
I hadn’t even got the chance to tell Matt what had happened and the police were already on my case – that’s all I fuhkin needed on a Monday morning.
I never touched the frikkin guy but apparently when he woke up from his unfortunate loss of consciousness, the first face he saw was mine kneeling over him and he automatically assumed it was me who popped him .. oh fuhkin’ ell, that’s all I need, the problem was, there was no way I could say it wasn’t me without putting Rick in the frame which of course wasn’t gonna happen.
It’s not as if everyone there didn’t see who popped idiot and so I pretty much guessed old bill didn’t have much of a case against me ... I realised that sooner or later any witnesses would confirm I hadn't hit idiot and so I was clear.
Matt was looking worried because I was a representative of the magazine and so anything like this was gonna look bad …. And this is where fate played its hand and I have no reason as to why it went this way but … there was no way I was gonna call the police and give myself up, if they wanted me that much, they would have to come get me.
And then, nothing happened; I don’t know if the police had realised it was gonna be tricky to get a successful prosecution or maybe they felt the guy got what he deserved, either way, I was in the clear … woo hoo !!!
Rick tore up the cheque when he got back home … I wonder why
The West Country Incident …..
As I mentioned in the previous account, a lot of pro teams were being asked to attend events all over the country in the 90s and it was another example of this that had us driving down the M4 to some hick location where they were having a local tournament with about dozen teams.
We were the only pro team there and so were pretty much expected to win the thing but whenever we did attend events like this, we always handed any prize money over to the last placed team. We used it as practice ...
All the teams there were pretty cool to us and we had no problems with them but as in so many occasions before, events would overtake us …
We played the first two games and everything was fine, we played well and the other teams duly lost, that’s how it should be but out third game was against the site team, they all seemed pretty cool guys as I seem to remember and so we foresaw no real problems.
During the game, I heard a lot of shouting over on one side but had no idea what the fuhk was going on, we played the game out to a draw which was uprising and so we were kinda disappointed but I still had no idea what the shouting was all about.
As we walked back to the staging and safety zone, I was being told about a judge who had wiped one of the local players down right in front of ….. er …. yeah, Rick again, Big Rick – oh sh!te. Rick then told me he had lit this guy up only for the judge to wipe him down and put him back in the game, Rick wasn’t too impressed with this and exhibited his displeasure by raising his voice.
Rick is about 6ft 3, 270 pound and his voice was kinda loud … but, the disagreement hadn’t escalated from a shouting match which I was relieved about.
We headed back to the staging area with Rick ominously quiet …… the entrance to the staging area/safety zone had a corridor of netting you had to walk through from the playing fields, the idea being that you put your barrel plug in gun barrel in long before you entered the staging area. The corridor was about 30 feet long and about 12 feet wide.
The fact we drew with that team didn’t prevent us from potentially winning the event - the points at that stage were such that if we won all of the remaining games, we would win the event but we couldn’t afford any more draws or any penalty points.
No problem, cool, we’d sail through it easily enough … or so I thought.
Big Rick was kinda miffed as we both walked back toward the safety zone and I’d known Rick for a long time and knew the way his mind worked; I was watching him like a hawk.
The rule of the site was that all barrel plugs should be in before reaching the safety zone, in fact, on one of the signs on the outside of the netting indicated all barrel plugs should be in before you walked into the corridor from the field. The operative word there is ‘before’ …
At the entrance to the netting corridor, a marshal with yellow goggles and an orange jacket was standing there checking players as they came in from the fields.
He never said one word to me or Rick as we entered the corridor of netting to get to the safe zone.
I got my plug in just as we entered the corridor and Rick walked about 3 steps into the corridor and inserted his barrel plug long before we got anywhere near the staging area …. As we continued along the corridor toward the staging area entrance, we heard a shout from behind us - the judge called us back in a rather irreverent tone - we weren’t really used to being talked to like a fuhkin piece of sh!t and so when we got to the judge at the entrance to the corridor, we both felt a bit miffed.
He informed Rick that he would be given 25 penalty points for breaking the rule that stated plugs have to be in the barrel before you entered the corridor.
The judge pointed toward the sign outside the safety zone, and rather dismissively advised us Rick had broken that rule …. the 25 points killed us …. We knew straight away what had gone on with the local judges helping their local team out against the bad boys from London, the fact we were a pro team made us targets it seemed.
The judge, if he had been doing his job right should have stopped Rick at the entrance of the corridor and asked Rick to plug his gun and then let him continue but this judge thought he’d fuhk us up.
Rick’s head was dropping as the judge confirmed his decision to give 25 penalty points and I knew what was coming and so I quickly grabbed hold of Rick’s arm and pulled him away and told Rick, ‘Fuhk him, we’ll pack up and go, we ain’t staying here to be fuhked over like this’ ..
Rick had the habit of looking down to the floor in confrontations like this only for him to launch a right hand on someone’s chin .. I didn’t want this to happen for obvious reasons.
We walked through the corridor and into the safety zone and up to our staging table. I told all the other players we are fuhking off and Rick calmly put his marker and pack down, saying nothing to anyone … he stood there just looking at his gear for about 10 seconds and then muttered, ‘Fuhk it, I ain’t having that’ … I knew what was coming and so by the time Rick had gone back through the corridor toward the judge with the yellow goggles and orange coat on still standing at the entrance, I had caught up with him but it wasn’t soon enough.
In fact, by the time I did get to Rick, 3 punches had already landed, the first punch to the chin ironed the guy out with the next two redesigning the guy's rib cage.
Rick stood above the poor soul with one foot either side of him lying there, Rick looked down at the guy and never said a word; he wheeled back around toward the safe zone whereupon we executed our withdrawal from the event.
Another one of those stings in the tail was now readying itself as we drove back toward London Town.
My mobile started to ring … it was another time when I shouldn’t have answered that damn phone but to be fair, I had no idea what was coming, lord only knows how many times I had been in that situation before.
It was from a guy still back at the site who had my mobile number.
He told me some awful news … what we didn’t know was that when the judge awarded Rick the penalty points, he then went straight to see the head-judge on the field …… and another judge took his place at the entrance to the corridor wearing exactly the same gear of yellow goggles and orange top … Rick had hit the wrong guy … Ooops !!
I know it sounds terrible now and I feel really bad for the innocent victim but it was one of those things that happened back then.
The team was beginning to get a bad name …. Or more accurately, I was getting a bad name and I was now being blamed for everything that happened within a ten mile radius of the team.
I of course felt persecuted and thoroughly misunderstood, all because my mum didn't give me enough toys to play with when young .…. however, the noose was tightening .... but was I deterred?
Was I fuhk ....
Some names have been changed to protect the paranoid and innocent.
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