So you think you know about Paintball ?

[James ECI]

The only qualifier on the skill-set required of any prospective player would be that they will have to have played the game but it's not mandatory these players have played pro or semi-pro.

Ok so basically as long as they have played paintball and have a concept of the game and skills required they can be considered - Cool

not so well-financed teams?

Making Money

I don't believe you need to be well financed for this to work.. you just need to be clever with what you spend.

EG. Ref events as team, agree to have a team kit sale... Then the proceeds go to the team owner to make the decision where the money is best spent

Players shouldn't expect a free ride.. and should look to do something as a team to make money

@Robbo - Am i to assume the team would have a good management structure?

Spending Money

Pretty much all guns since 07 can keep up and compete with the most recent guns. Especially as now you can only carry two pods on the field.

I say this because if you go back to the basics of what a players needs you don't need to commit to a gun "sponsor" i use quote marks as sponsors are normally support models where you get a discount.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what a kit deal costs at the moment? £800 - £1000?? times that figure by 5 - 10 players £4k - £10k

That sort of money would be best off spent on paint and green fees?

How much is a custom jersey? £60 - £100? again same as above, do the maths <--- Obvious benefits to a custom top are to promote any sponsors or supporters - but it isnt a necessity

What holds a team together?

Well you would hope that the goal of getting to the top would... but maybe that's not enough? There are examples of teams out there that had GOOD industry support but didn't last past a season or two

Does it come down to the actual players? - Obviously.

What tears a team apart? - When the grass looks greener? - Thinking you are bigger than the team?

How do you stamp this out? - Remove personal identity!

Say goodbye to your name and number on your playing top... you play for the team not your name!!

This is probably an alien concept to most, and believe me it was to myself, but i was shown the light

Another plus point - same top, same goggles, the team looks the same - fcuk with one of them, you fcuk with all of them

Supporters

Pick one and build a good relationship - Local works best in my opinion. But there will always be exceptions to the rule.

If you're going to buy team kit, work out what you need and why you need it. The business you put through your local store will help to build a better relationship.

Might cost you a couple quid more, when you're starting out... but later down the line, they will be more inclined to help you as you're the one putting money into their shop, keeping them in business!



I guess by this post i will open myself up to having stones thrown at me but lets see what happens
I may also have gone off topic?

 

[I used to good.Honest]

@Stan - you were right to mention how Nexus were created and even more right to identify Sergey's achievements with his Russian Legion.
However, those were very privileged examples not least because of the financial support that Nexus and the Legion both enjoyed.
And so, we can maybe assume my initial proposition is correct that in fact, you can get a team to be competitive in the time restraint mentioned but can we extend this to include other, not so well-financed teams?

And remember, I'm not suggesting this newly created team has to be a world-beater, I'm asking if they can be competitive.
The only other thing I need to clarify is, the major determinant in the success of this hypothetical new team is of course the skill-sets and/or potential of each player.
And just to prod you along a bit, most of us have heard of the U.K. Predators from years back, they ruled Europe for nigh on ten years and were one of the top three teams in the world.
I was out with Marcus and a couple of other Preds on Tuesday and the reason I mention them is because they had about 3 great players in that side and I don't think they'd disagree about that but their strength/success came from somewhere else.
That 'somewhere else' should help you address the question this thread posits.

The Strength of a great team is a great leader who can identify aspects of each player and utilise those skills in each game,For instance for a major tournament we would walk the fields and play the fields at least a week before the tournament.a few times we'd walk the fields and we'd pick our spots that we would break to, marcus would then tell us where we were going to go and rarely if ever did those spots match the ones we wanted to go to. But you know what, he was usually right, he'd push you further than you wanted to go and have a specific goal for you to achieve. another example is when we played the world cup and no one wanted to play the 5 man as well as the ten man, so some of us volunteered to play, marcus just sat silent for a minute or so, then just said matter of factly. that the preds was not a democracy and he'd tell us who was playing the 5 man and they'd do it his way.
now most of the oldies amongst us will know of dougie knight, now he was never a great player but without doug in the team the preds would never have been a great team without him, dougie had a role in the team and there was no one else who could do his role, he was the peacemaker the father and brother to all of us he was as important to the preds as marcus was. it wasn't just his gold cards which we would regularly hammer that's an example of a role within the team.
So a great leader is essential to a winning team, not necessarily a great coach , you need a coach now in sup air, but you need a great leader more, whether he's a player or just the coach I'd say is irrelevant.
I also see a lot of teams that turn up , play their two games and then go back to their hotel or wherever straight away, we would hang around and watch other teams and not just once but at least twice, to see where they would break, and any secondary moves that we hadn't thought of or just so we knew when we played them what they would do.
This is even more essential in supair, because the field of play is identical, and most teams have set plays , so it seems obvious that you should watch teams and make notes of where each player goes, even if you're not in their division, because you just don't know who you will play in the next round or in the final. you'd be amazed at how many teams don't do this.
Bonding outside of playing is also essential, team meetings every week and doing things like skiing or go carting or even just all going out for a meal. This gives you a sense of not just being part of a team but part of a family.
the other thing is no wives/husbands or boyfriend/girlfriends at tournaments, the atmosphere with them around is completely different , and sometimes just downright disruptive.
Nepotism is a killer in any team too, I've seen teams that have a couple of players in that really shouldn't be there, but they are friends of a couple of team mates and they are in there at the expense of better players just to keep the others sweet. all well and good if you just want to play with your mates and have fun, but if you want to win and keep winning or competing at the top level then you need a ruthless captain/leader who isn't afraid to cut a player or just get rid from the team.
Finances are also important, but if you get a great team together and win or do well, it's not long before a sponsor or two or three will come along, eventually you will get to the point of being able to pick and choose your sponsors, that comes with success.
Just because the game is played differently now and the games are a lot shorter, it's still just shooting paint at each other and making moves. so a lot of what was important then should surely be important now.
It's also no good just having a great player if he's not a team player, so you don't necessarily have to have the 10 best players from the country, but you do need the best team players.
well that's my two pence worth.
I just wish I was a lot younger because I'd love to play supair at the top level. but sadly the body does eventually slow down, the mind may not but the body is quite crucial in most sports.

 

[Dusty]

I'd say yes, if you teach people properly from the start then they should be able to compete as they know what's expected of them.

Now, if the person teaching them is an idiot then it's a different story.

It's another story entirely if you're trying to coach someone who is and I'm stealing this phrase, physically illiterate.

Average group of players, if they're willing to listen and work hard could be made locally competitive with the correct guidance.

I'd also go so far as to say that people who work together well but are of average skills at best will always beat a team of better players who cannot work together.

 

[Twitch91]

Yes, absolutely.

Just look at Leicester City Football Club.
5000/1 to go down but thanks to some great team spirit and managerial tactics look what happened.

 

[Robbo]

I'm afraid that socialist principles have little to no place in successful paintball teams though Dynasty might wish to take issue that with some justification.
Marcus dominated the Preds not only with his personality but also his obsession/dedication/commitment to winning - as Steve [I used to be good. Honest] suggests above, the strength in that team was a direct derivative of its captain but that's not the only way to structure a successful team.
Marcus was unique, the like of whom won't come along too many times but not all successful teams need/have an on-field captain/coach/mentor to compete at the top.
The 'dominant male' model has been utilised many times in the past with teams such as the eponymous Bob Long's Ironmen, Rich Telford's XSV and many more that evolved with the man at the top running the show.
What I will say is, teams do need a guiding light, or a coach that effectively focusses the teams' attention and provides a blueprint for development, a point that Jim [Dusty] has previously made.
How this applies to this thread's initial question is obviously up for debate but in its simplest form we can conclude there's more than one road to success.
Prospective teams may not have their own brand of Marcus Davis to provide their guiding light but they can focus their attention on somebody who knows what he's doing without him/her having to be involved on the field as a player.
I'm quite pleased to see such contrasting ideas as to whether a team are able to compete within a year given the right factors.
As has already been mentioned, the Russians kept their training in-house and were able to take their place at the head of the pro table in what seemed like an unnaturally short time.
I'm not going to harp on too much about Nexus but I will say this much; to an extent, we did our training in-house [not exclusively but mainly] and we used to split the team down the middle and had 'five on five' games as our vehicle for development, it worked.

If you've got a team of fat-ass donkeys on the roster, you got no chance of achieving anything and so we do need to choose the players carefully but I'll mandate that no pros are allowed and you can have a maximum of two semi-pros - the remainder, you can cherry-pick from other leagues/divisions.

All that remains is to implement a plan of action but you can't just go and buy one, you'll need to come up with it on your own but that's easier said than done.
How do we identify the appropriate training elements and how do we chart its success?
If you go and ask people for what they think is important, well, that's a recipe for failure because you'll get a different answer from every person you ask; how the hell are you going to work out which answers are the ones that will prove successful?
Bottom line is, you don't - some elements will sound appropriate but this part of the process is fraught with difficulty but I can say this much, try and identify what you think are the fundamental components of paintball play.
Things like gun-running, snap-shooting, lane-coverage, shooting accurately at different distances, break-outs and so on .... these elements will have varying degrees of relevance and so training time has to be divided up with this relevance very much in mind.
Have fun !!

 

[Tony Harrison]

Can you create a new team that can seriously compete without ever playing against/training with another team?

Yes.

 

[Robbo]

Silky, it might help if you qualify your answer in some way mate .... a basic 'yes' or 'no' is not overly helpful or indeed enlightening.
I'm sure you will have reasons to back up your 'yes' and so let's hear them and allow others an insight.

 

[Tony Harrison]

Silky, it might help if you qualify your answer in some way mate .... a basic 'yes' or 'no' is not overly helpful or indeed enlightening.
I'm sure you will have reasons to back up your 'yes' and so let's hear them and allow others an insight.

Will do.

Yes, you can. But your first problem is money. The second & third problems are also money. The fourth problem is finding 10-12 young people who will listen to you and do what they are told. The fifth problem is keeping them together for a couple of years - competitive paintball is a long haul.

Twizz is taking the opposite approach - he has a Tigers CPPS D5 team, all youngsters, and they are doing well. Let's see if they can stay together for a couple of years, and not implode like London Outcast.

Edit - you need a Coach who has "been there & done that" in the modern game. So the obvious candidates are Twizz & Markie C, who as you know are involved with the UK squads. Markie in particular has solid experience in team building, as he has taken his team fighting through the divisions not once but twice and achieved promotion to the CPL twice also.

 

[Robbo]

Will do.

Yes, you can. But your first problem is money. The second & third problems are also money. The fourth problem is finding 10-12 young people who will listen to you and do what they are told. The fifth problem is keeping them together for a couple of years - competitive paintball is a long haul.

Twizz is taking the opposite approach - he has a Tigers CPPS D5 team, all youngsters, and they are doing well. Let's see if they can stay together for a couple of years, and not implode like London Outcast.

Edit - you need a Coach who has "been there & done that" in the modern game. So the obvious candidates are Twizz & Markie C, who as you know are involved with the UK squads. Markie in particular has solid experience in team building, as he has taken his team fighting through the divisions not once but twice and achieved promotion to the CPL twice also.

Well, seeing as there is very little money sloshing around the sponsorship pool for aspiring teams, we'll assume the players will have to go some way into self-funding along with whatever pittance they can attract from the industry.

Keeping any team together is a perennial problem but this can be addressed somewhat by ensuring there is a constant improvement in the players ... there's nothing quite like improving skill-sets when it comes to ensuring players want to hang around but this is down to the coach's ideas for improvement and its subsequent management.
In my opinion, you don't have to have the experience you think is needed - how on earth did the Legion improve when Sergey had no experience of playing/managing at the top end of our sport?
It's true to say they had money but that's just one factor ...

In my opinion, it's not so much experience in the things you suggest, it's having the talent/intellect/whatever to break down the game into its component parts, and then to train those elements in the right way.
It's all about recognition and correct implementation, it's certainly not rocket-science.
I've seen a bit of how our teams have addressed training in the past years and with no disrespect, it's relatively unsophisticated and ultimately, not overly-effective - it's going through the motions and if you look at the results ... what do you see, I mean, what's really been achieved here?
And when I used the word 'sophisticated' I didn't mean complex, I meant it to represent a wholly relevant and appropriate approach that's threaded together on the back of a profound understanding of our sport.

You drew a distinction between the modern game and its predecessor but I'm not sure what that relates to ...
Arenaball formats have been around since the late nineties and fully adopted in the early 2000s and so if you can give me an idea of where you think the differences [tactical or technical] lie in your opinion because in principle, the game hasn't changed that much - players break out to primaries, shoot paint, avoid being shot, occasionally move, and either win or lose ... And so if we are to try and understand this sport of paintball, wouldn't it be best if we approached our sport differently over here because from where I sit, we're not exactly overflowing with quality teams in the UK and haven't been for some time.
Anyone can start a paintball team - anyone can say they're gonna coach a team - anyone can say they've won things [when they haven't] - anyone can say whatever the fuhk they want .... the proof however, is always gonna be, what have you really achieved?
It's an interesting subject because this thread has the capacity to tease out all the myths and misconceptions our sport seems to breed .. and hopefully, when we drag ourselves through this thread to its ultimate finale, the readers might have a better grasp of what's relevant and what's practicable.
Look, I'm not for one second suggesting I'm the one with all the answers here.
But I tell you this much, I know a lot of them, and if some people are pis$ed off or offended with my apparent lapse in humility, I'd have to be a complete idiot to have been around this sport for as long as I have and not learned something - And I hope I'm not an idiot ...
Keep the posts coming guys because at its very least, it keeps our readers abreast of some of the finer points of paintball even though some of those points have their origin in a dinosaur.

 

[lettucecheesecake]

Yes but without cherry picking the players it would be difficult to know if they're actually good enough yet without playing tournys as they can only play against themselves so there's no standard to get to. Granted they'll improve but getting beaten is the best way to learn (I think anyway)