Brit Future

[Robbo]

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.

DW, note the word 'would' in my post, it infers that is what we would need, I ain't saying we have it in any way shape or form mate.
I doubt we have 100 if truth be told.

I am saying that if we do things right and get promoting tourney ball as we should be doing, that when we get to 500 real tourney ballers, then this number gives us a working platform.

 

[Robbo]

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.

Agreed - but I think we need to always aim at being up there with the best in the world, and whatever stage of development we are at, then being the best Brit team is merely a stepping stone to where we wanna get ... you get my drift Tom?

 

[Tom Allen]

Definitely, so lets get something started.

 

[Robbo]

Definitely, so lets get something started.

Tom - I have been trying just that but the response is abysmal.
I spoke to Twizz last week and we were discussing this very problem, Twizz lives and dies this sport like a lot of us do and I think he's been in it for nearly as long as myself and so he knows quite a bit as well, and yet when he was offering free seminars at the D7's, hardly anybody responded.

We keep getting these sad indictments of Paintball in the UK and I just wonder when people who have been trying to kick start this cultural change just give it up.

I have been in this sport for nigh on 20 years now and the first steps toward any improvement are always inextricably linked to the acquisition of knowledge, if you don't know what to do, how to go about things, you can't ever practice them and yet we have the vast majority of UK ballers either thinking they know it all or just not caring.
For some reason I just can't bring myself to accept this because as soon as I do, then I will lose hope in us ever getting back up there and I just don't wanna go down that road.

 

[NorthIrish]

I'm all for a unified UK league as i think it will give us what we need.

Sure, teams like Kelly's etc may romp the first couple of seasons, but that will encourgare the teams who want to be competitive to train harder and improve their game.

It will also act as a beacon for the really serious players, imagine if all the top players wanted to play for one UK team and there was only limited spaces, you'd bust youur balls to get that place.

Local BBC news teams have run articles on paintball in the past, and Grandstand have covered the X-games before now, so the media are not against covering paintball.

Increased coverage would promote the sport, encourage players to train harder to be seen as a superstar in their chosen sport. It would also encourage new players into the sport, something established teams could promote with young gun teams etc. Do you mean to tell me football would be as big as it is without the coverage it recieves?

I know this is fairly one sided, it could go the other way and a huge gulf open between the top teams and the 'nearly' teams that might impossible to cross, but it would still provide a concentration of players for the top teams to scout from.

For too many people paintball is a closed community. We take the piss out fo peolpe for buy an ion, or worse a mech marker. Why not support newbies instead of intimidating them and making them feel like they gotta own the latest marker? 15bps is enough. I'm not having a go at these forums, i think they are the most balanced i've found. Other forums i'm on (no names) tend to be a group of mates who don't like newbies.

When your local site run walk on days contact them. Offer your spare set up to anyone who wants to play but doesn't own their own kit. Then you can sell it to them

 

[Buddha 3]

Irish,

You touch a good point, but I don't fully agree with you. I don't think that a national league is the way to go per se, and it's not the coverage in the media that's going to save paintball.

However, promotion is a big part of what is needed, but this does not have to be promotion via TV. As has been pointed out, there needs to be a better link between rental days to walk ons to tournament ball.This has to start at ground level, which means that the site owners have to start TELLING people that there is more than just rental days. Invite players to come back for a walk on day, and you will see a snowball effect.

But what is needed is an "I can be the best" attitude. There are too many players that call themselves athletes, but do not deserve the title. In the UK there are a number of pro teams, for example Nexus, Tigers and Shockwave. Every serious player should aspire to be on one of those teams.
Spots on those teams are obviously limited, but of you show yourself to be the best damn player in the country, there won't be a team manager that's gonna decline you. In order to get to that level, you need to put in many hours of practice. I'm not talking three times a month, or once a week, I'm talking several times a week.
Every player knows which teams are the big dogs and every player would love to be on those teams. After all, it is the proverbial sh!t if you get to travel all over to shoot people and most, if not all of it is paid for by your sponsors.

If the top thing to aim for however is some national league, the appeal to be in the best team(s) looses a lot of its appeal. After all, you don't go to strange and exotic places. You would see all the same faces at every tournament, so what is the point in working your ass off, if you get to go to every same event, have as much fun with people who are your mates and you don't have to train three times a week to be able to do it?

Leaving the obvious economic problems aside, for paintball as a sport it would be fantastic if the pro leagues would have their own events where no other divisions would play and pretty much all sponsor money would go their way. It would certainly focus people to start doing some real training in order to maybe one day achieve that level, rather than muck around in some lowly league, but rubbing shoulders with the pros at the same time, because all teams and divisions are heaped into the same event?

One of the reasons kids aspire to become pro soccer players is exactly because of its exclusivity.

 

[Tom Allen]

Irish,


If the top thing to aim for however is some national league, the appeal to be in the best team(s) looses a lot of its appeal. After all, you don't go to strange and exotic places. You would see all the same faces at every tournament, so what is the point in working your ass off, if you get to go to every same event, have as much fun with people who are your mates and you don't have to train three times a week to be able to do it?

.

With a national league, there will still be teams like shockwave, nexus, etc. These teams would be made up from the best of the uk league, and operate outside the league. This gives every hopeful uk player aspirations to be the best.
No different to the current setup, for the top players, but to the newbie paintballer, there is an enormous gain.

And for any company contemplating investing in paintball, there would be a solid single league system that they could identify with. Rather than the current range of series, each with there own set of rules.

Lets say the total number of tournament players is listed. You may have 30% at the PA, 20% at D7's, 30% at Koth, and 20% at the masters. If you were a potential sponsor, you'd run a mile if you saw those figures. Now if there was one league with, lets say 4 divisions (sounds familiar) a sponsor would know he/she would be getting 100% coverage of paintball players.

And if you look at it from a spectators point of view, he/she would find it far easier to understand and enjoy if it was just one league.

 

[Syd (NSPL)]

Lets say the total number of tournament players is listed. You may have 30% at the PA, 20% at D7's, 30% at Koth, and 20% at the masters. If you were a potential sponsor, you'd run a mile if you saw those figures. Now if there was one league with, lets say 4 divisions (sounds familiar) a sponsor would know he/she would be getting 100% coverage of paintball players.

Tom, please don't forget the NSPL which is the largest UK 7-Man series this season. Sorry to threadjack, but I've worked too hard for too long to sit complacently by as my series is overlooked. I wouldn't normally be so defensive, but I've noticed you've missed the NSPL a couple of time. I'm sure it was just a slip of the fingers though.

On your point about a national league, I've sat around numerous tables for the past five years discussing this and I have supported every venture from the UKPL, to the PA, to the Pro Tour and more. Things are agreed and, personally, I've done my very best to see plans through, but it never happens mate. Every year it feels like we're banging our heads against a brick wall on this subject. I just don't think it will happen any time soon unless an outside force pulls everyone together with enough incentives to make sure the leagues do as they say they will.

At the moment, the focus definately needs to be on teams re-organising themselves to ensure the motivated players are in motivated teams, those teams learning everything they need to enable them to train and improve quickly, and then a focus on grass roots: getting new players in to replace those guys in a couple of years time and build on the numbers. The latter needs to be done at site level as has been suggested over and over again.

Robbo gave us the answer a month or so back. That thread seemed overlooked and the response to it was discouraging. These answers were suggested as a solution after a lot of thought and discussion and anything else is simply going over old ground and wasting our energies. I will try to find the post and put up a link to it after I've finished writing this.

The good news is that there are glimmers of hope. Tournament teams do seem to be re-organising themselves to some degree. Its a slow start, but it is a start. Also, many teams have dropped out of tournaments to focus on training recently. Finally, there are a growing number of people like you, me, Robbo, MarkieC, Dave Stewart, and others that really do seem to give a sh!t.

Back to my point though, I don't think focussing on a national league is a productive way to move these discussions forward. It is worth discussing and perhaps pursuing, but not in this context.

 

[Tom Allen]

Tom, please don't forget the NSPL which is the largest UK 7-Man series this season. Sorry to threadjack, but I've worked too hard for too long to sit complacently by as my series is overlooked. I wouldn't normally be so defensive, but I've noticed you've missed the NSPL a couple of time. I'm sure it was just a slip of the fingers though.

.

Lol Syd, it was just a general view to make a point, not meant to be accurate at all.

 

[Syd (NSPL)]

Understood mate. I would be very privaledge to be a part of your general view in future.

Damn it - I can't find that thread now. Robbo, could you supply a link please?