Prime example is the infamous Chris Lasoya incident playing against the Miami Raiders (for which Chris did openly apologise for) Chris is an amazing guy off the field and has always takes time to chat to players and pass on advice. But, and he will readily admit himself, as soon as it's game on, he just wants to hurt people.
Chris is a good friend of mine but before we became good friends, he overshot the hell outa me in a tournament in the Astrodome in Toronto; I wasn't really amused because the game had hundreds of people watching and so I felt a bit as though he had mugged me off.
And so after the game I went up to him and made my position quite clear, he realised quite quickly that his position [standing up] was becoming increasingly less likely ...... he defused the situation by apologising profusely and at that point he pretty much took the wind outa my sails.
If that apology had not been forthcoming then violence would most certainly have ensued and I woulda got my ass thrown out of the event and we woulda both been made to look like ridiculous morons, and rightly so.
Point being, sometimes the behaviour on the field extends to the post match arena ... and when it does this, it can go up a few notches very quickly and begin to get real serious for those involved.
With this in mind, it's worth bearing in mind just how all this
cr@p came about; somewhere in the mists of paintball time, and I am pretty sure it begun in the pro ranks Stateside, a way of thinking arose that it was somehow cool to eliminate players by over-shooting them as some form of punishment for a perceived crime ... that crime was altogether personal and may not even have been anything against the rules but nevertheless it opened the door to such behaviours; and that behaviour included overshooting players, and in the more dangerous cases, focusing on the head as the 'supreme' retribution.
Once the Yank pros had adopted this ethos of play, it wasn't long before the filter down [to amateurs and novices in the US] and the filter across [the Atlantic] became apparent ..... people love to emulate what they perceive as the top bad boys and they think if they copy such behaviour then it identifies them with those top Yank pros ... it doesn't at all, people just think they are the stupid little as$hole they've always been.
As for this guy in our midsts, I don't give a sh!t that this kid can allegedly 'play ball'; to me, that's even worse because it means it's a waste of a good player when his personality would have him trying to hurt fellow players in such a way...... it's just insane, stupid, immature and moronic.
If anybody needs reminding of what shots to the head can do, one of the best known individuals in our sport, and certainly one of the best guys you could ever meet, once shot a guy in the back of the head whilst playing, and the consequences were fatal.
I am not gonna name the person who did it [100% accidentally] because I wouldn't want him to be reminded of this if somebody mentioned it to him because of this post and it also serves no purpose anyway but it just goes to show ... dire consequences are but a roll of the dice away .... a sobering thought I'd hope for anybody, well anybody with a brain that is.
Playing with people's health [and in some cases lives] by shooting them in the head just because you wanna look like some sort of tough guy [which this idiot most certainly isn't] or you wanna be thought of as some bad-boy pro player, has to be stamped out .... one final point here ... we .. that is the paintball fraternity in which we all inhabit, will be judged on the way we conduct ourselves; part of that judgment will always be in looking at the adjudication structure we have in place, that means the rules we abide by and the adjudication processes we have in place for dealing with players.
We have to have the approriate rules in place that cover idiots like this guy and we must also use those rules to impose punishments that reflect the severity of any rule that is broken.
If we do not impose appropriate and reasonable punishments then you will ultimately have a sport that has no active deterrents ... and when this happens, the inmates rule the roost ... in fact, I'll change that to the 'ingrates rule the roost'.
Now if this guy likes hurting people. he should take up boxing or cage fighting or whatever ... I tell ya one thing tho, it has been my experience that the people who do this sort of crap are sniveling cowards when it comes to real violence, that is violence that is bi-directional in the confines of something like a boxing ring.
These type may like the thought of hitting people but the prospect of being hit back tends to make them darken the lining of their underpants ..... typical ...
Let's get this crap out of our sport .... it's just another flushing of the paintball toilet!!!
