When i saw the title of the thread,i thought Mmmmm.......i'll leave that one well alone but having seen the heavey weights that have joined in,with various observations. Stuff it, here's my five euro's worth.
If i wanted to pay a load of alchy/junkies to marshal you could find legions of them in any city in any country in the world at about 2am. If the organisers don't get a grip on the state of the marshals then chaos will ensue. I pay to play and that includes being marshaled soberly.
As for Ton Tons, since time began all good teams have sh*t thrown at them. Some of it sticks some of it don't and if you throw enough. Well you get the picture
As Robbo said you can only say what know for definate, not what you've heard. Of all the teams i've played against and it's been a few, ton tons are the ones that have riled me the most.
I was running the NWC am team and we played them 3 times in fairly quick succsession Game 1 in germany : 7- 1 defeat and i know i shot 2 of them but we were having a crap time and it was pissing down. So i let it go but did not forget it.
The next time we played them was at Mayhem another 7 -1 defeat and this time i was first out and was joined toot-sweet by 5 other team mates. The one remaining player was in a world of Sh1te with a lot pain coming his way. Valiantly (5seconds) he held out before being dumped on. Now here's the strange bit, his heroics had accounted for no less than 5 ton ton players who were in the dead zone before the flag was hung or indeed he was in the dead zone. I went ballistic at the judges for not pulling the players and then at the captain who just shrugged his shoulders which incensed me even more and i had to be dragged away foaming at the mouth
At the reseeding we been drawn against them again. This time i sit myself out but inform Pete Martin and the ton ton captain that if there is a repeat of the previous game all hell will be let loose.
The result is much the same a 7 -4 loss but at least they enter the dead zone at regular intervals.
The point is, that they are a good team and have no need to take the piss out of lesser teams in order to win. If they were playing their 'equals' i can see a few liberties being taken in order to get an edge but again it's down to the judges to be on the ball.
Still if you don't like what the ton tons do then freeze them out of the tournaments (if thats possble)
So hands up who's not going to Tolouse if they are there !!!!
ps i love france and the tolouse area and event is especially nice but
pp.s.
Many years ago at tolouse,we'd been F***ked over by the french marshals but had still got the semi's. Most people thought that we were making it up untill it started to happen to a very well known american team. The American captain asked "what was wrong with the French". I replied "fancy asking an englishman, we've been fighting them on and off for 5 hundred years
