Everything wrong about portugal!
Ive seen that there’s been a few threads airing there disgust at the poorly organized and run Portugal event but for those of u that weren’t there and the people that were that i managed to speak to ill try and outline the main points that came across, maybe millennium can take note and try n fix something up 4 the next one,
Ill start by saying that it poured down with rain parts of Friday and all of Saturday, the rain was forecasted but adequate precautions weren’t put into place.
Staging Area
The layout was pretty bad the tables were far too close together i spent the whole day getting bumped into and due to the delays at the changover of teams at lunch, a team was confined to one 10 foot long table with all their kit markers etc.
By the second day straw had been layed to try n soak up the mud that could easily be compared to Glastonbury. Although it only got layed in front of the trade stands, the staging area and spectator stands were still covered n mud with many of the spectators chosen to stand off rather than trapse through mud to watch the games close up.
There were 4 toilets in use for at its peak roughly 900 players all marshals all staff and spectators.
Security
It was non existent, spectators were freely allowed into the teams staging area, at the campaign cup there was numerous staff circulating in the staging area to clear up and keep a general eye on things
Cars were broken into
Box's of paint were stolen front the staging area
A hopper or 2 had been stolen and they were only the ones I heard of.
Really spectators shouldn't mix with players or they should be staff available to look after kit that has been left.
Food
On the first day food wasn't being served till gone 2:30 in the afternoon considering the majority of the players in the morning session had to miss breakfast in their hotel to get there on time it weren’t really acceptable, even on the second day they didn't open till 12,
There wasn’t alot of choice available to the player with a long waiting time for the burgers.
We later found out that this was due to the van only using one burner to cook food, many of the burgers were not properly cooked. If u had a dickey stomach while ur out there that would probably be the cause.
First Aid
Was also non existent, This led to numerous delays on the field for ambulances to arrive, after the second time of being called out the ambulance just decided to stay just in case.
Marshalling
Some of the marshals didn't bother to wipe down the barricades between games particularly a problem on tomohawk and angel fields on the sunday. This lead to a few bad calls that I saw due to players rubbing against them.
There weren’t enough marshals to rotate them, they must of been totally shagged by Sunday and this lead to a few poor decision's.
Some marshals while checking players heavily moved them and left them hanging out of their barricades when calling them back into play rather than tucking them into the barricade b4 continuing.
There was a whole new complex on the JT field that sprung up saturday morning and wasn't available for field walking on sunday.
This later deflated on sunday afternoon leading to further delays,the dispute that came from this should of been handled off the field due to the teams on afterwards were happy to play their game with it.
On the whole the marshals handled the problems well but there was a few poor decisions.
Calling of games
There was no music or tannoy system in operation on the first day to call teams out to their fields.
This was changed on the second day and i think all the teams would like to give a big thank you to the lovely lady that sat their for 12 hours calling out the games, Without her the tourney would have run far more behind that it did.
Safety
There was quite a large problem with the netting the scaffolding had leant over quite badly next to the JT and draxxus field with players being told to where there masks next to the field while waiting to go on. This restricted spectators who wished to watch the JT field as they didn't have masks.
There were a few stray balls that some how found there was to the spectator’s area and nearly hit some people, to promote paintball and a spectators sport the people should be able to watch in a safe area.
Entry onto all the fields were by lifting the netting and going underneath this only got changed on the raven and draxxus field for the second day so non of the netting was pegged down.
Tools pegs hammers and cable was also left next to and sometimes on the fields.
Schedule
We were scheduled to play our first game at 2:00 and didn't get out onto the fields till 5:30-6:00. This was mainly due to the lack of precaution for the weather.
Many teams from saturday afternoon spent sunday morning finishing there games. The afternoon session's last games were played in the dark by floodlight, especially on the tomahawk there was only one floodlight and if you got the right end u were guaranteed winning the game due to not being able to see your opponents
It was one of the worst tournaments ive attended and not up 2the milleniums usual standard
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