Brit Future

[Silky]

99% of UK teams couldn't TRAIN to save their lives. And that is why we fail.

the above is as close to the truth as i can see to be honest.
i trained 6 months every weekend, skills and drills, scrimming against shock and nexus. didnt even set foot at a tourney. i learnt more in those 6 months than i did in the 18 months of tourney ball after it. comes down to the atitude of the players, i wanted to play at the highest level i could and learn from the best players in the country, i needed to get better or i was just gonna get hammered training against the likes of shock and the nexoids.

as mentioned training to some means wearing thier newly bought kit when thier 2 month old stuff is no longer "cool", taking a box of paint out on a sunday and shooting half of it over the chrony and the other half showing thier mates how fast thier new toy shoots. whereas the limited amount will spend the money on paint, work on skills and drills for hours and maybe scrim a bit at the end of the day.

in my mind without doubt a player would get more from £150 worth of paint training correctly, than spending £150 on a uk tourney and getting 40 mins of paintball best case scenario. if you havent trained correctly then all your doing is going out and puttin incorrect techiniques into practice.

just my 2 cents, it all comes down from what you want from your paintball i spose. neither is right or wrong but only one way will get you to the top of your game.

 

[KitsuneAndy]

While the idea of companies "sponsoring" coaches and training sessions would be excellent.

What's in it for the company involved?

To me it doesn't look like the UK scene is big enough to make a huge difference to the income of any of the bigger companies, unless every single player decided to shoot a Dye/Eclipse/WDP gun. The sales will be a tiny proportion of what is made outside of the UK.

If we could improve our player base, that would give us a great pool of players and more chance of finding those elusive world class players (ok, there'd be more chance of crap players too, but that's not the point).

In turn, companies are more likely to take notice/help if their potential sales are higher.

I know that improving tourney ball is our main objective, but I do think that we have to look at further down the ladder as well. Any improvements on the number of players at lower levels is still increasing the potential customer base for the same companies that we buy guns from.

Of course, this alone wouldn't change the tournament scene and the levels of training etc being done, but I don't think there is any one thing we can do to improve UK ball. I think it's going to have to be a combination of things that have some sort of impact on all levels of play.

 

[Tom Allen]

To get a top team, you could plunder the current teams to get what you want, and you may succeed in the short term. But the problem is still going to be there, because we are not feeding these teams with new players. Paintball sites are where the new players will come from, but what incentive is there to get the sites to promote players into sup-air. After all in theory they will loose money each time a punter turns to sup-air, so there has to be some sort of incentive instilled into the future players. What would be better than to be the best in their country.

 

[Robbo]

What would be better than to be the best in their country.

Many things actually Tom, especially when said country isn't exactly the European hotbed for aspiring teams.
What you suggest sounds sensible but I'm afraid the aspiration of being the best in the UK isn't gonna get us anywhere significant.
We need to aim much higher than this and perhaps when we have this bedrock of talent I keep mentioning, maybe then being the best in the UK will actually mean something.

 

[Tom Allen]

My point is, if we don't try to make the foundations good, there will be no building.
And at the end of the day, we are British, and each of us must aspire to being the best in Britain, and the best in the world.

 

[Dark Warrior]

.....To spawn a team who could compete would need a cherry picking pool of about 500 players (real players i.e. real tourney ballers) and this would give rise to say 20 players who would provide a cauldron of talent from which to choose a team......

I very much doubt there are anywhere near 500 real tournie players in the UK. We are giving UK ballers too much credit. Of all the UK Sup-Air tournie players 90% of them play SupAir as a recreational sport nothing more, no way does that final 10% equal 500 players.

 

[Exile]

And then the process really begins, and it's a road that is about one year long.

You really think only a year? I would have said two to three before expecting any form of consistant results, and four to five before full potential is realised - anything less only invites complacency in the training regime if any early success is forthcoming.

Actually, while I think of it - Robbo, you're probably in a position to be able to answer this better than most: Does the Russian Legion follow Sergey's vision to the letter, of is it more a case of he provides the funding and ultimate goals/mission statement and the Coach(es) take care of the day to day and short to mid term goals and planning? And does this approach differ from say, the way you ran Nexus, or Rich Telford runs XSV?

AndyDane - in the short term, nothing. No gains for the companies involved. But in a five to ten year model, I would expect to see a significant gain in terms of brand loyalty to the companies involved in the development of the budding young ballers. If, for example, Dye/Proto took on the costs of a three man coaching staff @ D7's, instead of subsidising/"sponsoring" two or three intermediate teams with cheap guns and gear, then in the short term they would lose the brand exposure (however minimal) of those teams. In the long term though, all the kids passing through that Coaching academy would have a mental conditioning equating that brand/company with their development and progress. In essence, they would see Dye/Proto as an important part of how they improved as players.
Also the companies involved get to cherry-pick the young talent as it comes through the training process, rather than having to send scouts out to minor/major events looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

The major flaw in this idea is that it requires a long-term investment, and the patience to see it through for at least three to four years before any real results could be assessed. And I personally have not seen this sort of long-dollar thinking evident in the UK heirarchy to date.

 

[Twizz ECI]

Training

Would just like to say something about coaching and acadmy's, i have tried to set set up an acadmy at Dartford at the begining of the year, which pro caps were going to help with paint and some free kit for players to use if they had no kit, and i was going to do for free, when i told people about this on this forum i had 38 players say they were up for it, but when i put 2 dates up, not one person said they would be there!!! so i went up to the Nothern Quarter in Manchester and done a training day which went really well with about 28 people there, but since then i still post up on this Forum about training days for free (only a green fee for dave @ D7's) and have been doing so for the last 6 months and so far only Halloween have had a day with me and enjoyed it and came 1st at the 5 man last weekend (well done lads) and so i say again i will still do FREE TRAINING DAYS for ANYONE who would like a hand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[JoeJr]

Would just like to say something about coaching and acadmy's, i have tried to set set up an acadmy at Dartford at the begining of the year, which pro caps were going to help with paint and some free kit for players to use if they had no kit, and i was going to do for free, when i told people about this on this forum i had 38 players say they were up for it, but when i put 2 dates up, not one person said they would be there!!! so i went up to the Nothern Quarter in Manchester and done a training day which went really well with about 28 people there, but since then i still post up on this Forum about training days for free (only a green fee for dave @ D7's) and have been doing so for the last 6 months and so far only Halloween have had a day with me and enjoyed it and came 1st at the 5 man last weekend (well done lads) and so i say again i will still do FREE TRAINING DAYS for ANYONE who would like a hand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

whens the next one?

 

[Robbo]

You really think only a year? I would have said two to three before expecting any form of consistant results, and four to five before full potential is realised - anything less only invites complacency in the training regime if any early success is forthcoming.

Actually, while I think of it - Robbo, you're probably in a position to be able to answer this better than most: Does the Russian Legion follow Sergey's vision to the letter, of is it more a case of he provides the funding and ultimate goals/mission statement and the Coach(es) take care of the day to day and short to mid term goals and planning? And does this approach differ from say, the way you ran Nexus, or Rich Telford runs XSV?

.

For a coach who knew what he was doing, it would take a year of hard work and commitment before he could get a team into the top ten, this can be done with the right talent on board and resource package.
As for what the RL do, they follow Sergey's dictates to the letter, he is sent every working day an Excel spread sheet of player's performance results, he then scans them and makes suggestions if necessary.
Rich and I were much more hands on, Sergey runs his team from the background whilst Rich and I were on the front line, Rich moreso because he still actually plays.
Players these days have to have two strings to their bow, and when i met Sergey a couple of weeks ago, he too had recognized this, players need to have not only talent but the right mindset.
Sergey will no longer have anything to do with just talented players, they have to have the right character.
It's no good being a great player if you are selfish, think you know it all, think you are great and so on...you get the picture?
Players have to be humble to some degree otherwise they can't learn form either, experience or their coach.