Millennium Apathy !

[Mark Toye-Nexus]

Glen

I like it. Remember when you could break out to the corners and had to run forwards rather than directly sideways in a hail of paint from the back centre?

Remember when refs would engage their brains before doing the 1-4-1 dance?

Remember when paintball was a little bit fun?

There is definately a cut between the haves and have nots (or can dos and cant dos) and what should be their expectation and what is delivered.
Over priced, over officious and poor value for the majority is why UK ballers are staying away.

The level of play in the uk is by far and away the worst it has been in living memory. Three nights in a hotel, entrance fees, 2 days holiday plus its holiday silly season and you can see why the recreational tournament player stays away.

Oh, I could go on.............

 

[Lucky]

I believe the millennium situation is just the pinnacle of the failure of British ballin' Currently our paintball scene is imploding. Old players leaving, new players staying away. The image and lack of structure is decimating our beloved game.

Without a structure, the only way is down, and unfortunately there is no incentive for anyone to do anything about it? Until site owners start losing revenue or struggling to pay bills, nothings going to happen.

The outside world see's us as freaks and for anyone new who doesn't already know a player, it's really hard to start playing and get into a team. I believe paintball has to push itself out there and get the small scene going before the main event will stabilize. At any event there is nothing to draw anyone in to come and watch, if i go to a game my wife stays away (some like this) because a day spent sat in a field is so boring if there is nothing to do?

I love drag racing, and if you go to Santa Pod for a race meet, then you get 10 different varieties of food, stalls selling everything and then some, and a funfare and rave to finish your day off. Now drag racing is a fringe motorsport just like paintball is a fringe teamsport.
I know it's a limp comparison but until there is more to paintball we'll never win. Currently we pay a lot of money for 25-100 minutes of game time and spend six hours sitting in a field eating burgers and telling each other how great we are?
Enticing isn't it?

A lot of major show events take place across the country in the form of the county shows. i still believe that there is something to be had here if an event series could be organized within these shows. Obviously safety would be paramount but having 100-200 thousand people wandering past your paintball event would surely arouse some interest? Throw in a few shooting ranges, novelty prizes, and a better presented explanation hosting and image, and we may just attract some external increase in our player base and structure.
Just a thought
Later

 

[Robbo]

Pretty much on the money Lucky, and on that note I would like to hear from people who attended the Masters event at the weekend just gone.

I am not gonna diss anything or anyone (it makes a change i know) but the Masters was held last weekend and I got a pm from someone who was there and they said it wasn't good because all they had for cover was one tarpaulin sheet that had numerous holes in it.

Now when I got that PM, it kinda made me sad to think this was the state of our tourney scene, that it had been reduced to this.
I like Wendy who runs this series and I got a lot of time for her and what she's trying to do but I would like to hear sensible comment from that event because if it's true then we really need to work on what Lucky suggests and that is getting these type events up to a certain quality and maybe the rest will fall into place.
Over to you Wendy ..and any other sensible people for comment re last weekend

 

[KitsuneAndy]

Pretty much on the money Lucky, and on that note I would like to hear from people who attended the Masters event at the weekend just gone.

I am not gonna diss anything or anyone (it makes a change i know) but the Masters was held last weekend and I got a pm from someone who was there and they said it wasn't good because all they had for cover was one tarpaulin sheet that had numerous holes in it.

Now when I got that PM, it kinda made me sad to think this was the state of our tourney scene, that it had been reduced to this.
I like Wendy who runs this series and I got a lot of time for her and what she's trying to do but I would like to hear sensible comment from that event because if it's true then we really need to work on what Lucky suggests and that is getting these type events up to a certain quality and maybe the rest will fall into place.
Over to you Wendy ..and any other sensible people for comment re last weekend

The cover in the main staging area wasn't anywhere near good enough IMO. I know when I briefly spoke to Wendy on Saturday evening she was running around trying to get something sorted for the staging area and there was no prize giving on the day as they didnt have really have a staging area to do it in! Judging by Wendy's comments on the Sunday she knows that it wasn't up to standard, but, as this was the last time the Masters are using the Uttoxeter grounds, was there any incentive for the site owners to improve it for the one day of use?

 

[Dark Warrior]

The cover in the main staging area wasn't anywhere near good enough IMO. I know when I briefly spoke to Wendy on Saturday evening she was running around trying to get something sorted for the staging area and there was no prize giving on the day as they didnt have really have a staging area to do it in! Judging by Wendy's comments on the Sunday she knows that it wasn't up to standard, but, as this was the last time the Masters are using the Uttoxeter grounds, was there any incentive for the site owners to improve it for the one day of use?

Uttoxeter as a suitable venue is sadly no more, but then players are used to the flat fields of Lincoln and Ancaster now. What is required is a field of similar standard to Lincoln to be found in the West Midlands. The UK Masters has honoured its commitment to Uttoxeter for 2007 and despite the bad weather the event ran its course without major incident. The staging areas original cover, I believe, was destroyed in a storm and the replacement was rather makeshift and last minute. Hindsight leads us to the conclusion that a Marquee would have been better but previously one has never been needed for this amount of teams at this venue.
Site owner must be commended for providing a free towing service for the vehicle stuck in the mud.
The chapter is closed, don't see the need to PM people about it

 

[KitsuneAndy]

Uttoxeter as a suitable venue is sadly no more, but then players are used to the flat fields of Lincoln and Ancaster now. What is required is a field of similar standard to Lincoln to be found in the West Midlands. The UK Masters has honoured its commitment to Uttoxeter for 2007 and despite the bad weather the event ran its course without major incident. The staging areas original cover, I believe, was destroyed in a storm and the replacement was rather makeshift and last minute. Hindsight leads us to the conclusion that a Marquee would have been better but previously one has never been needed for this amount of teams at this venue.
Site owner must be commended for providing a free towing service for the vehicle stuck in the mud.
The chapter is closed, don't see the need to PM people about it

Totally agree and regardless of the wet weather, we still had a great time

I didn't realise that the site owner was helping tow people, good on him

 

[Robbo]

Uttoxeter as a suitable venue is sadly no more, but then players are used to the flat fields of Lincoln and Ancaster now. What is required is a field of similar standard to Lincoln to be found in the West Midlands. The UK Masters has honoured its commitment to Uttoxeter for 2007 and despite the bad weather the event ran its course without major incident. The staging areas original cover, I believe, was destroyed in a storm and the replacement was rather makeshift and last minute. Hindsight leads us to the conclusion that a Marquee would have been better but previously one has never been needed for this amount of teams at this venue.
Site owner must be commended for providing a free towing service for the vehicle stuck in the mud.
The chapter is closed, don't see the need to PM people about it

Thanks DW, just one thing though, the person who Pm'ed me wasn't trying to cause trouble in any way, in fact, the PM was focusing on something else and this was mentioned as a sideline, nothing more.

Let's just hope our paintball scene ain't regressing back to yesteryear coz this is what I was reminded of as the site was being described to me.

Just one point though, I have no idea what agreement Wendy had with the Uttox
people but it seems to me that it should have been more important to uphold her responsibilities to her customers than the Uttox people and it would seem from what has been said, adequate provision for players just wasn't there.

Still, from what I know of Wendy, I doubt this will reoccur so hopefully this was a one off.

 

[Dark Warrior]

Thanks DW, just one thing though, the person who Pm'ed me wasn't trying to cause trouble in any way, in fact, the PM was focusing on something else and this was mentioned as a sideline, nothing more.

Let's just hope our paintball scene ain't regressing back to yesteryear coz this is what I was reminded of as the site was being described to me.

Just one point though, I have no idea what agreement Wendy had with the Uttox
people but it seems to me that it should have been more important to uphold her responsibilities to her customers than the Uttox people and it would seem from what has been said, adequate provision for players just wasn't there.

Still, from what I know of Wendy, I doubt this will reoccur so hopefully this was a one off.

I assume when Wendy got there on Saturday and realised that the staging tarpaulin was destroyed it would have been too late to get a Marquee. I know 3 fixed porta-cabins where available to allow teams to stage in them. I would say that the provision of service was only slightly down, in some ways, than in previous events. The main things is that our standards have gone up a fair way, and it rained

 

[Robbo]

I went to the Campaign site at Basildon today and got a guided tour by Barry Fuggle of the Millennium board and I gotta say, I was impressed by the set up.
They have a well designed set up with fields and vendors integrating, to at least give a chance of a great atmosphere.
There is a sophisticated tannoy system that has music pumping out giving a much needed backdrop to proceedings and also allows on field (CPL and SPL)conversations from the head judge to be switched over the tannoy to allow the spectators to listen into proceedings.
The refreshment tent is huge and as stated is run by the Outback people and I hope it will be able to deal with the inevitable rush you often get at events like these.

Parking is easy and close by and so no moans there whastoever.

All in all, it looks great over there and all that remains is for the tournament to unfold around it and everyone should go away happy..leastwise that's the theory

I think they have worked quite hard at trying to put things right after Crystal Palace and so I wish them well and hope everybody has a good time.

 

[Gadget]

Just got back from the site and I was dead impressed - at CP you kind of wandered around and everything was so dispersed that there was no atmosphere - that's not going to be the case at Basildon.

Most of the fields are grouped together, surrounding the trade stands (of which there seemed a lot), although there are a couple of fields on the running track rather than the grass which are slightly more out of the way.

There's not a lot of distance between us and the Basildon Festival and all the car parking for the festival is located right by the tournament, we're going to have thousands of people driving/walking past the fields and having a shufty.

If the weather holds out I reckon this could be a top event