The NXL & ESPN
- Thread starter Baca Loco
- Start date
I think it all sums out to poor training of the refs on the part of PSP. You can't blame the refs for making calls they thought they were supposed to make.
It's not the refs or the players fault, it's the lack of organization, training, and forethought that the PSP has.
Unfortunately, because the refs were making calls that they thought they were supposed to make, they are the ones that are going to catch hell for it.
It's not the refs or the players fault, it's the lack of organization, training, and forethought that the PSP has.
Unfortunately, because the refs were making calls that they thought they were supposed to make, they are the ones that are going to catch hell for it.
Well then. I'll run down the entire incident from my perspective, then we can go from there.
First of all, the marker in question is a 2001 Angel LCD that has been extensively modified by the WDP Master Techs. In fact, this marker served as a prototype for the LCD Conversion that they now offer. An article about this gun appears in various forms on my site, Crossfire Magazine, and the latest Paintball Sports. As it went onto the field, the TR setting was at 2, the hopper setting was at Fast. In addition to the modifications for the "EyeQ" or "Angel Eyes" mods, the gun was treated to a magnetic trigger job. Needless to say, it's very, very fast.
It made it past the chrono/bounce ref with no incident. The only modification made to the board was to allow the marker to use the original 6 Volt battery, rather than the 4.8 Volt battery that current generation Angels use.
The young man using the gun, Tim Heffernan, is known locally as a very fast shooter, but nobody is expecting you know all this. During the latter part of the game, Heffernan ran up a tape and fired a long string of shots towards the back center or tape (I was outside the field on the opposite tape) at which time I saw you stop Tim and start conversing with him. He says that you told him that the gun was "adding shots" and it was illegal. He didn't argue with you and eventually you came over to where I was standing and told me that the gun was illegal. I told you that it was not, and your reply was "Are you calling me a liar?" to which my response was "No, but you obviously don't know what you're looking at" at which point you informed me of the penalty to be assessed upon my team and Tim, and if I had a problem with it, I could take it up with Rosie.
During the conversation we had with Rosie, he refused to test the marker despite my repeated requests to do so, and eventually we left Rosie after trying to make our point, to no avail. During the course of the event we spoke with Rosie several more times regarding this issue, and a local promoter Rico Fernandez also spoke with him. After it was all said and done, the penalty was reversed. Why I don't know, but I do know that Heffernan was on the Shocktech field later in the event as a photographer, and he saw a marker that he felt was 'adding shots' and asked the ref near him if he planned on doing anything about it...the ref's response was "No, we're not doing that anymore...Rosie came down and chewed our asses last night for doing that".
First of all, the marker in question is a 2001 Angel LCD that has been extensively modified by the WDP Master Techs. In fact, this marker served as a prototype for the LCD Conversion that they now offer. An article about this gun appears in various forms on my site, Crossfire Magazine, and the latest Paintball Sports. As it went onto the field, the TR setting was at 2, the hopper setting was at Fast. In addition to the modifications for the "EyeQ" or "Angel Eyes" mods, the gun was treated to a magnetic trigger job. Needless to say, it's very, very fast.
It made it past the chrono/bounce ref with no incident. The only modification made to the board was to allow the marker to use the original 6 Volt battery, rather than the 4.8 Volt battery that current generation Angels use.
The young man using the gun, Tim Heffernan, is known locally as a very fast shooter, but nobody is expecting you know all this. During the latter part of the game, Heffernan ran up a tape and fired a long string of shots towards the back center or tape (I was outside the field on the opposite tape) at which time I saw you stop Tim and start conversing with him. He says that you told him that the gun was "adding shots" and it was illegal. He didn't argue with you and eventually you came over to where I was standing and told me that the gun was illegal. I told you that it was not, and your reply was "Are you calling me a liar?" to which my response was "No, but you obviously don't know what you're looking at" at which point you informed me of the penalty to be assessed upon my team and Tim, and if I had a problem with it, I could take it up with Rosie.
During the conversation we had with Rosie, he refused to test the marker despite my repeated requests to do so, and eventually we left Rosie after trying to make our point, to no avail. During the course of the event we spoke with Rosie several more times regarding this issue, and a local promoter Rico Fernandez also spoke with him. After it was all said and done, the penalty was reversed. Why I don't know, but I do know that Heffernan was on the Shocktech field later in the event as a photographer, and he saw a marker that he felt was 'adding shots' and asked the ref near him if he planned on doing anything about it...the ref's response was "No, we're not doing that anymore...Rosie came down and chewed our asses last night for doing that".
The problem was that they changed the ruling half way through the event. That is the worst thing they could have done.
Steve is a great ref who I know gives 100%. It sounds like different fields had a different criteria for what was considered 'bounce'.
That is a criticism that must be leveled at the organisation and Ultimate judge. Its easy to blame the refs on the field but it sounds like the lack of consistency was due to lack of communication and education re. the general gun criteria at the event.
I feel for all the players that were penalised only to see the rules change later in the event to allow the same things that they were bumped for.
Nasty!
Steve is a great ref who I know gives 100%. It sounds like different fields had a different criteria for what was considered 'bounce'.
That is a criticism that must be leveled at the organisation and Ultimate judge. Its easy to blame the refs on the field but it sounds like the lack of consistency was due to lack of communication and education re. the general gun criteria at the event.
I feel for all the players that were penalised only to see the rules change later in the event to allow the same things that they were bumped for.
Nasty!
oh, and how funny is it that he thinks the old grey grizzled guy with no personality wasn't Steve Morris? lol!
That ones a keeper!
That ones a keeper!
I remember that gun clearly and I can tell you that I am totally convinced from what I saw that it was adding shots and I think by now I can recognize that. In every instance of guns adding shots it was very clear to me or we let it go.
As for Rosie "chewing us out" it is true that we were stricter about double-tap bounces the first day than we were supposed to be. As I said earlier, the line was drawn here: if the gun bounced so much that it burst then we banned it. If it added shots or stacked shots we banned it. And I have never before seen or felt more guns adding shots.
So there we have it: I say the gun was clearly adding shots and you say not. There's not much we can do about it. Except send me to a personality improvement course.
I just hope we can get this season behind us and start with a much better gun situation next season with more scientific testing.
Steve
Obviously we are destined to disagree, sir. In the end I (and the gun) was vindicated via the reversal of the call and restoration of our points for that game, albeit it was too little, too late.
I too hope that more scientific testing becomes available in the future, rather than depending on the 'expertise' of field refs.
I too hope that more scientific testing becomes available in the future, rather than depending on the 'expertise' of field refs.
The area of "expertise" and subjective judgments has been a major headache for me and us this whole season because I felt morally obligated to not turn a blind eye (horrible pun intended) to the illegal gun issue in the Millennium Series. The headache was compounded by lack of proper testing equipment.
I hope I'm not deceiving myself by thinking that we made a lot of progress in stopping or at least inhibiting the use of illegal markers. Obviously there were a lot of cheating guns that got by scott-free but I also believe there would have been a megaton more crazy guns if we hadn't tried to put the brakes on.
Unfortunately there were a lot of innocent and/or well-meaning players who were inconvenienced by our tests and some who simply lacked the technical support or expertise to make their guns legal.
Again, I'm working to make next season simpler with a better set of rules and with proper test equipment.
Wadidiz:
Good to hear. Unfortunately, it may be a case of "too little, too late" for the PSP.
You do have to remember that you were but one ref on one field, and your area of expertise will differ greatly from anothers who might not make the same call or see the same thing that you would. And to say that the players lacked "the technical support or expertise" is a bit self centered. I'd say that most of the refs lacked the "expertise" as well. Unless every ref knows every gun and every cheat that is out there, there's no way you can say that the ref's were absolutely right either.
Thus, this is why there is a need for a third party intervention. Where most sports have "instant-replay", paintball needs an unbiased, and preferebly mechanical, third party to check the legality of markers. Relying on one persons "expertise" is, to most players, unacceptible, because the "expertise" will differ from one person to another, whereas a machine doesn't differ.
I have no doubts that using subjective judgement to make a call on the legality of a marker has been a major headache for you all season long, especially when you make mistakes.
It seems to me that you and I are in agreement that there needs to be something more scientific and unbiased in reference to judging whether or not a maker is legal. The NPPL Robot immediately comes to mind, as it's a mere machine, not a human subject to making mistakes. However, there is considerable debate on the real effectiveness of the "Robo-Ref", so while it's probably a step in the right direction, it's probably not the final destination.
Perhaps in the off season something better will be devised, to take the call out of a ref's hands and put it in the hands (or clamps, whatever the case may be) of a machine that can't see what marker it's testing and apply a bias to it. Mistakes were made, and the people paying the money to support the league they play in deserve better.
It seems to me that you and I are in agreement that there needs to be something more scientific and unbiased in reference to judging whether or not a maker is legal. The NPPL Robot immediately comes to mind, as it's a mere machine, not a human subject to making mistakes. However, there is considerable debate on the real effectiveness of the "Robo-Ref", so while it's probably a step in the right direction, it's probably not the final destination.
Perhaps in the off season something better will be devised, to take the call out of a ref's hands and put it in the hands (or clamps, whatever the case may be) of a machine that can't see what marker it's testing and apply a bias to it. Mistakes were made, and the people paying the money to support the league they play in deserve better.