Beyond that it seems to me if the proverbial shoe was on the other foot some peeps would be squealing like a bunch of Catholic schoolgirls at a college kegger. Here everyone is more than happy to pronounce the 'Phinest' a pack of cheaters, for all intents and purposes, yet where's the proof? Brits in general seem to be an amazingly prickly lot when it comes to your PB pride but y'all got no problem dissing the next guy and feeling holier than thou in the process.
Paul:
The UK tourney scene is still small enough and the gun is unique enough that if someone tries to use the gun here, it will be noticed. Since we don't know any of the details of when or where it was stolen from (other than 'at campaign cup over the weekend') we really don't even know where to look. I think that people will be a little less sympathetic to the loss of this particular gun as it's generally accepted that Spesh didn't pay for it, and smart parts will probably replace it without too much concern.
That dosn't make it right, but it does make it a different situation than if 'Johnny paintballer' spent his hard earned money from his summer job on a gun and had it stolen.
As for the guns, they were ramping like crazy, and the proof is the fact the penalty that was assessed against Eric Dearman. We would have banned several other players too, but sadly we lack the equiptment in europe to test the guns, and the judges lacked the resolve to simply pull the guns based on what they were seeing.
Philly's guns were ramping out of control. I watched every one of their games, pointed out ramping guns to the judges, sat with three different gun techs from the sideline, and they all agreed that the guns were ramping, but Steve Morris, and the Judges refused to do anything about it on the grounds that there was no way to test and prove the guns were ramping. Apparently just because you can see, and hear the gun ramping, that's not enough 'Proof'
They were asked politely to control their guns, as was Trauma who did play with what appeared to be stock and legal boards. They did sort some of the guns out after we penalised Eric Deerman, but not all the guns were legal, there was a 'superman' blue and red shocker that was out of control almost all weekend. I think the thing that really bothers me about it was that we were totally powerless to control it. What scares me is the idea that these kinds of boards will eventually make their way to the UK, into the hands of lower ranked teams.
I think the point that most English and European paintballers feel is that Philly are of a calibur that they don't need to have this kind of gun cheat to win against the open x-ball teams. Trauma certainly didn't.
Having said all that, none of the teams who played Philly got too upset about it, they were more excited that they siimply got to play one of the best teams in the world.
