Hmm, well I doubt too many people are rushing forward to give him credit now ...... in my opinion, this can now only go one of two ways, either down, or down :/
When I look back on this whole affair, it could have sooo easily been prevented:- all he had to do was to keep his word when he promised me he wouldn't include a certain company in any of the posts he made to promote his events on p8ntballer [for free] ..... and, if he hadn't told people, he had 'run me out of paintball' ..... when that got back to me, there was only one way this was gonna unfold.
Everything else he got up to with other people in terms of dicking them over in some way or threatening them, the whole 'Support for Soldiers' thingy, all of that was added to my ammunition box as events unfolded and the thread gathered momentum.
He never really managed to staunch the flow of revelations from disenchanted people who had fallen foul of his shenanigans and this thread afforded those people a sense of safety because they would never have come out and told their story had this thread not existed.
This thread then began to have a life of its own, and it's growth wasn't so much organic but logarithmic.
And when it breached 100,000 views, it dwarfed all other paintball threads, from what I heard, only PBnation had a thread of this magnitude but it achieved it over a much longer period of time.
All of tb's wrongdoings came home to roost in the garish clarity of testimonial declarations made in this thread.
I think some people will regard this as inevitable and possibly think it's a good thing but if only he had employed his skill-set more responsibly then he could have been a positive for our sport instead of the ghastly figure he came to portray.
The guy had some good ideas but maybe it's like saying, 'If my aunt had bollox she'd be my uncle' ... perhaps he could never disentangle his dark side from the pariah he came to portray.
I've upset a few people in our industry but I can honestly say, I've never had anyone over in terms of money or anything like that ... If his interests in paintball now die on the vine as a result of this insolvency notice above, he will leave a legacy that could have been so different had he behaved himself.
Basically, he thought he was more important than he ever was or could have been, his treatment of some of the most respected people in our industry was uncalled for and extreme.
I wish it had all gone in a different direction but it looks like he allowed his aberrant personality to play his hand and this was ultimately the reason that has brought about this situation.
In a way, it's sad it had to come to this and I never thought I'd say anything like that about him but he did have plus points but as I said before somewhere, ' ......So did Adolf Hitler' .... an unfortunate comparison yes, but not too inaccurate in terms of principle :/
