Geographic Team Names...A good thing????

[Liz]

The same info is available to all parts of the UK. "The North" gets to hear about this stuff in exactly the same way you do - via these boards & the various web sites, plus any announcements in PBUK. Try www.pbuk.biz, www.ukpaintballleague.com, www.midlandmasters.com, www.tournamentpaintball.co.uk & www.southwestpaintball.co.uk - all these sites have various info on the tournaments and all of them have been referred to in recent posts.

 

[stongle]

Liz et all,

The whole point of this thread was to discuss the fact the localising Paintball in the UK is bad for UK paintball internationally (the town team name could be a symptom of this). How can UK tournaments provide the same level of competition as Millenniums? It's a higher level of game FACT.

Teams who forego Millenniums for Domestic Tournaments cannot and should not expect to be competitive on International level. It seems to me that, we have decided to concentrate on Domestic game rather than being competitive internationally. If the UK can't cut the mustard internationally, how we going to grow the sport???? And lest we forget Paintball Manufacturers will still be the biggest form of support for teams not their local corner shop. If UK teams cannot cut it where it counts for the Pball Companies, why bother supporting these teams???????

There is some talk of Pro / Super Pro ball being played at a different Format for next season, if the UK is only just going to 7 man, how are we going to produce the stars for the future, or is domestic ball going to be constantly in catch up mode??????? If we couldn't have X Ball cos of Franchise or Copy write, we should / could have Y or Z Ball, played similar............

I think people over estimate 1) the size and take up or tournament paintball (UK) and 2) the importance and relevance of the local media. If a UK team were to go over to the states and start smashing up the NPPL and winning events, that would be more news worthy than who won the CPL, M25, SWPL, etc (ooooop's I've just named Nexus then ).

I repeat this point for those who missed it, I'm not against Domestic or local tournaments they are valuable, but I believe we should concentrate more on how to propel UK ball to the top of the International spectrum, and that should be the aim of the multitude of UK Paintball groups.

 

[Hatts]

Dear Mr. Stongl.

May I enquire as to just how long you've been in paintball, at what level and what your direct involvement is with the paintball industry, media and promotions...if any at all.

Cheers

 

[ThunderCat]

The problem with your argument as I see it is that you are expecting us to miraculously be able to afford all this intensive training that will take us to the level we need to be at to compete in the international arena.
Of course Lincoln Storm intends to go to Vegas etc. and woop ass! But there is no point us spending thousands of pounds on airfare, accomodation etc. to go and have our asses handed back to us by a bunch of yanks!
At the stage we are at right now, we need to train hard and raise our profile with sponsors who will give us the fat cash and thats gonna be the non-paintball sponsors. The way to get them is to be relevant to their customers, otherwise we are useless to them. That means representing the area they sell to and being seen by that area in the media etc.
This doesn't mean we will only play in The lincolnshire area or that we will stop bothering to train when we've got a couple of brand names on our shirts. Quite the opposite!

Obviously I'm talking from the perspective of a fairly new team. If you are in a team which is consistantly beating all the competition you get in the UK, then you are at the point where you can seriously consider making a mark for your team and for the UK on the world paintball scene, but can you afford it? Driving across the UK for a tournament costs about £20-50 in petrol which you can split between 4 players. Flying to the states is a little more costly. where is the money gonna come from? If you can't guarantee walking away with the $25000 first prize, surely it'd be a good idea to have "Kingsmill bread" "Pepsi cola" "Colmans Mustard" or whatever on your shirt in exchange for travel costs??

 

[Collier]

Originally posted by stongl
Liz et all,

The whole point of this thread was to discuss the fact the localising Paintball in the UK is bad for UK paintball internationally (the town team name could be a symptom of this). How can UK tournaments provide the same level of competition as Millenniums? It's a higher level of game FACT.

True the Milleniums are a higher level, if we and I'm sure most teams could play all the MS/NPPL etc they would, but we can't.

Originally posted by stongl

Teams who forego Millenniums for Domestic Tournaments cannot and should not expect to be competitive on International level. It seems to me that, we have decided to concentrate on Domestic game rather than being competitive internationally. If the UK can't cut the mustard internationally, how we going to grow the sport???? And lest we forget Paintball Manufacturers will still be the biggest form of support for teams not their local corner shop. If UK teams cannot cut it where it counts for the Pball Companies, why bother supporting these teams???????

It ain't a case of foregoing them its a case of not being able to afford them! Hopefully Mr ( insert brand name here) will be interested in the teams due to the town name association and that will pay of the following season.

Originally posted by stongl

There is some talk of Pro / Super Pro ball being played at a different Format for next season, if the UK is only just going to 7 man, how are we going to produce the stars for the future, or is domestic ball going to be constantly in catch up mode??????? If we couldn't have X Ball cos of Franchise or Copy write, we should / could have Y or Z Ball, played similar............

I think people over estimate 1) the size and take up or tournament paintball (UK) and 2) the importance and relevance of the local media. If a UK team were to go over to the states and start smashing up the NPPL and winning events, that would be more news worthy than who won the CPL, M25, SWPL, etc (ooooop's I've just named Nexus then ).

I repeat this point for those who missed it, I'm not against Domestic or local tournaments they are valuable, but I believe we should concentrate more on how to propel UK ball to the top of the International spectrum, and that should be the aim of the multitude of UK Paintball groups.

Again it's all down to cost.

I Understand what you're saying and in principal I agree, but that doesn't help when it comes to the ££££££££££££'s

Paul

 

[Collier]

As an example to play all the MS legs. We estimated an annual total of approx £20,000 around 10 times the cost of playing all the CPL/Series2k4/SWPL.

Paul.

 

[stongle]

Ok Ok, far enough, I must admit when I started this I thought I'd be a little cheeky and facetious, obviously it didn't read that way. I had caveated Repeatedly that I had no problems with the PA Cup etc, and it was obviously a good event; unfortunately these were missed in the rhetoric, hence I will APOLOGISE if you thought I was being critical.

What I will stand by though is

1. We have to look Internationally to improve our game (within existing team structures), maybe my outlook is skewed by my interest in the International & US game.
2. The Domestic scene needs better promotion to be taken seriously (UKPL, UKPSF, PA, CPL etc) all a little confusing, made a little more so by lack of a cohesive structure in the South East.
3. A central body should be working on improving standards / coaching etc, not just individuals or teams, and that is my personnal belief for a 2004 priority.

hence I concede, apologies to those I offended (hatts, liz, P8 in general), off to eat some pie of the humble variety. I'll stick posting sh*te, of the non-paintball variety. The Importance of Being Bling Discuss.................

 

[Collier]

Originally posted by stongl
.

What I will stand by though is

1. We have to look Internationally to improve our game (within existing team structures), maybe my outlook is skewed by my interest in the International & US game.
2. The Domestic scene needs better promotion to be taken seriously (UKPL, UKPSF, PA, CPL etc) all a little confusing, made a little more so by lack of a cohesive structure in the South East.
3. A central body should be working on improving standards / coaching etc, not just individuals or teams, and that is my personnal belief for a 2004 priority.

1. Agreed!

Paul

 

[JoseDominguez]

Originally posted by stongl
Liz et all,



Teams who forego Millenniums for Domestic Tournaments cannot and should not expect to be competitive on International level. It seems to me that, we have decided to concentrate on Domestic game rather than being competitive internationally. If the UK can't cut the mustard internationally, how we going to grow the sport???? And lest we forget Paintball Manufacturers will still be the biggest form of support for teams not their local corner shop. If UK teams cannot cut it where it counts for the Pball Companies, why bother supporting these teams???????

.

I agree completely............. look at soccer Vodafone are one of the Uk's biggest manufacturers of football kit, as are Vauxhall, Carling etc..... you don't see other sports getting massive sponsorship from businesses outside of their field

If we raise our profile then we can get outside sponsorship........yes SP, DIablo etc... will sponsor a team because it's the best in the UK...........but no-one outside of the sport gives a toss. Think about it........if Storm do really well in a tournament then everyone on the team, their sponsors and a few of their freinds are interested. Call them Lincoln storm and suddenly a whole city takes a look.
As for local rags.......... well if every towns "local rag" runs a story on that local team (and it's easy if you represent the town....took me one E-mail and we got a half page colour article) then that's a lot of people suddenly noticing our sport.

And do we have to look internationaly to improve our game? I think we need to get ourselves sorted domestically before we start looking abroad...... We aren't the states, if we try to run things the same way we'll fail.... We do need to do it better, that doesn't automatically mean "just like America". We need local teams with decent sponsorship just to address the discrepancy in the cost of paintball.
But if one tourney is attracting players and sponsors and media attention, then that will probably become the big one...... teams will switch to it, maybe then other series will join with it. You never know, currently too many chiefs and not enough indians.
And all of the info on the PA is freely available and easy to find.....their are only two paintball mags easily available in the UK and it's heavily featured in one of them......... the rest of the info is available on the internet......and I didn't realise it had a North/South divide.
So instead of endless meetings, more committees than teams and so many series that some teams are going to have one to themselves.....Maybe the way to go is one organisation taking things a step further and sorting a league so good that no-one wants to play in the others......... that would centralise things nicely.
Sound familiar?

 

[Urban]

Originally posted by JoseDominguez
...Maybe the way to go is one organisation taking things a step further and sorting a league so good that no-one wants to play in the others......... that would centralise things nicely.
Sound familiar?

Errr.. yeah it does.. sounds like every series in the UK... the only thing differing between them so far as I see is that they have all seem to have taken different steps....

Urban