As most people know, there was a meeting on the 17th Dec just outside Birmingham with a view to trying to put UK Paintball back on its feet.
Those in attendance were Jim Frensham (Warped), Andy Piper (Kingman), Tommy Pemberton (Dye), Gill Chapple (Just Paintball), Ledz (Planet), Chris Pelling (league), Wendy (league), Jon Payne (JCS), Barry Fuggle (Millennium and Phoenix), Matt Green (Angel Sports) and myself.
Jackie Sosta (Kee) could not make it on this particular day but she is giving 100% support to what we are doing as does Spike (Procaps) whose car decided to go bang on the morning of the meet.
Both of these have made it clear they wish to be part of this new initiative and so the industry is comprehensively represented on this board which opens up the possibility of financial support for the federation if we can meet the needs of these companies.
BZ Paintball has also made it clear they wish to be involved and will be invited to take a position on the board when they next meet with us.
Steve Bull was on holiday but he had made myself and Ledzy aware of his views and he also, is 100% behind our initiative and will be fully involved once he returns.
I think most people would agree that line up has some authority and experience to it and as such, we had all made our minds up, we wanted to do something about the present situation in UK paintball.
Barry Fuggle had recently returned from talks with the PSP guys in Vegas and we had decided to wait till he got back before we had our meting because we knew the Millennium guys would be talking about some form of alignment with the PSP with a view to creating a new world order under the banner acronym of UPBF.
This is basically the genesis of a world umbrella federation that has the US and Europe sitting on top of an organisation that sets out to standardise rules, formats, event practices and so on.
Without going into too much detail on this subject, we will become a major part of this new world order, and we thought it better to know the structure and ethos of this before we all sat down to try and put the UK back on its feet ... it seemed the sensible thing to do.
I think the best place to start is by echoing what Jim Frensham suggested at the start of our meeting and that was, ‘we need to walk out of here today, with an elected board, a proposed structure of responsibilities for those board members and a set of goals for us to pursue’.
In essence, we achieved at least that.
This initiative was about imposing some degree of order on the UK scene, this may sound somewhat presumptuous but if we look around at what’s been happening in the past few years, we can all acknowledge that it’s a mess, an anarchic mish-mash of events and teams.
We have no real direction, no standards of practice, no co-operation, and teams / players leaving our sport daily .....this situation just could not be allowed to continue and had to be dealt with.
Of course, some people will now be saying, who the hell are we to take control of anything?
Fair point I suppose, but if we acknowledge that with no control, we have ended up where we are now, it does seem to suggest that somebody needed to do something positive to sort this problem out, and who better to do that than the people already mentioned????
I am sure there will be people who think they should have been involved but a line had to be drawn somewhere and the portfolio of individuals we have is exactly what we need.
Certainly, from what I saw on Wednesday, the people sat around that table were exactly the ones I would want, they have all the necessary qualifications and clout.
This new UK federation will be set up to sanction events, teams, sponsors, membership and everything that goes to make up a serious and professionally structured organisation.
Nobody will be forced or coerced into joining and we will have an open book policy on anybody wishing to being involved ...but there are conditions.
And these conditions have the player, team and sponsor heavily featured as prime beneficiaries.
This is not about people taking control for their own purposes, this is all about people trying to organise our sport into a responsible, interactive network of interests that has accepted protocols of operation and practice ...and is also wholly accountable both to itself and also to player and industry.
There will be no favours given to anybody, no bias, no industry affiliations will be entertained; the only ethos that will drive this new federation will be an intent to do what’s right for all our members.
Anything less than this means we would be doomed from the get go.
To start with, we will have two sanctioned leagues headed up by Chris and Wendy who will be running dovetailed events north and south of the country.
The reasons we asked these two to become our first two sanctioned promoters were simple, they have a proven track record of holding events, we all knew them personally and they were both extremely enthusiastic about supporting what we are doing.
There is no point in this new federation trying to run before we can walk and by starting off with just two promoters and two sanctioned leagues means we can responsibly control what goes on as the year unfolds.
Chris and Wendy are now in the process of consulting each other to come up with a 2009 schedule that actually makes practical sense for the teams and also dovetails as far as it can, with the Millennium and each other.
We will let you guys know as soon as the 09 schedule has been agreed by Chris and Wendy.
The timing for all this is excellent because as we strive to put our house in order, a new world order is forming with which to integrate and so in this sense, we are extremely lucky here because it provides accountability up and down the paintball ladder and an opportunity to become an integral part of a much larger organisation.
And so with this in mind and with Jim’s suggestion still ringing in our ears we set about organising ourselves into a more formal structure by voting in a chairman to oversee everything and allocate responsibilities to board members.
These are provisional assignments and not cast in stone and so we can reallocate positions if deemed necessary by a board vote.
The proposed structure and designations are as follows:-
UKPSF - Steve Bull
Member Registration - Barry Fuggle
Trade and Retail - Ledz, Gill Chapple (Just Paintball) and Tommy Pemberton
Regional Event Development - Jim Frensham, Gill Chapple and Matt Green
Regional Events North and South - Chris Pelling and Wendy
Sanctioned Event Overseer - Andy Piper
Chairman - Pete Robinson
Jackie Sosta of Kee and Spike of ProCaps will be invited to join the board and will be allocated positions as and when.
We have a unique opportunity here and we will do our best to keep this moving forward but I’m gonna ask one thing of you guys out there, we cannot succeed unless we get your support.
There will be people out there who try to decry what we are doing, or even whether certain people should be involved in this new federation, and maybe even feel they themselves should be involved but we need to get past that sorta cr@p that has so often bedevilled our sport and get on with putting our house in order.
For me personally, I will work hard to maintain the initial momentum but we need much more than that, we need you guys to help us out.
I wanna say a big ‘thank you’ to all of the other board members for putting in the time and effort to help put us all back on track.
Those in attendance were Jim Frensham (Warped), Andy Piper (Kingman), Tommy Pemberton (Dye), Gill Chapple (Just Paintball), Ledz (Planet), Chris Pelling (league), Wendy (league), Jon Payne (JCS), Barry Fuggle (Millennium and Phoenix), Matt Green (Angel Sports) and myself.
Jackie Sosta (Kee) could not make it on this particular day but she is giving 100% support to what we are doing as does Spike (Procaps) whose car decided to go bang on the morning of the meet.
Both of these have made it clear they wish to be part of this new initiative and so the industry is comprehensively represented on this board which opens up the possibility of financial support for the federation if we can meet the needs of these companies.
BZ Paintball has also made it clear they wish to be involved and will be invited to take a position on the board when they next meet with us.
Steve Bull was on holiday but he had made myself and Ledzy aware of his views and he also, is 100% behind our initiative and will be fully involved once he returns.
I think most people would agree that line up has some authority and experience to it and as such, we had all made our minds up, we wanted to do something about the present situation in UK paintball.
Barry Fuggle had recently returned from talks with the PSP guys in Vegas and we had decided to wait till he got back before we had our meting because we knew the Millennium guys would be talking about some form of alignment with the PSP with a view to creating a new world order under the banner acronym of UPBF.
This is basically the genesis of a world umbrella federation that has the US and Europe sitting on top of an organisation that sets out to standardise rules, formats, event practices and so on.
Without going into too much detail on this subject, we will become a major part of this new world order, and we thought it better to know the structure and ethos of this before we all sat down to try and put the UK back on its feet ... it seemed the sensible thing to do.
I think the best place to start is by echoing what Jim Frensham suggested at the start of our meeting and that was, ‘we need to walk out of here today, with an elected board, a proposed structure of responsibilities for those board members and a set of goals for us to pursue’.
In essence, we achieved at least that.
This initiative was about imposing some degree of order on the UK scene, this may sound somewhat presumptuous but if we look around at what’s been happening in the past few years, we can all acknowledge that it’s a mess, an anarchic mish-mash of events and teams.
We have no real direction, no standards of practice, no co-operation, and teams / players leaving our sport daily .....this situation just could not be allowed to continue and had to be dealt with.
Of course, some people will now be saying, who the hell are we to take control of anything?
Fair point I suppose, but if we acknowledge that with no control, we have ended up where we are now, it does seem to suggest that somebody needed to do something positive to sort this problem out, and who better to do that than the people already mentioned????
I am sure there will be people who think they should have been involved but a line had to be drawn somewhere and the portfolio of individuals we have is exactly what we need.
Certainly, from what I saw on Wednesday, the people sat around that table were exactly the ones I would want, they have all the necessary qualifications and clout.
This new UK federation will be set up to sanction events, teams, sponsors, membership and everything that goes to make up a serious and professionally structured organisation.
Nobody will be forced or coerced into joining and we will have an open book policy on anybody wishing to being involved ...but there are conditions.
And these conditions have the player, team and sponsor heavily featured as prime beneficiaries.
This is not about people taking control for their own purposes, this is all about people trying to organise our sport into a responsible, interactive network of interests that has accepted protocols of operation and practice ...and is also wholly accountable both to itself and also to player and industry.
There will be no favours given to anybody, no bias, no industry affiliations will be entertained; the only ethos that will drive this new federation will be an intent to do what’s right for all our members.
Anything less than this means we would be doomed from the get go.
To start with, we will have two sanctioned leagues headed up by Chris and Wendy who will be running dovetailed events north and south of the country.
The reasons we asked these two to become our first two sanctioned promoters were simple, they have a proven track record of holding events, we all knew them personally and they were both extremely enthusiastic about supporting what we are doing.
There is no point in this new federation trying to run before we can walk and by starting off with just two promoters and two sanctioned leagues means we can responsibly control what goes on as the year unfolds.
Chris and Wendy are now in the process of consulting each other to come up with a 2009 schedule that actually makes practical sense for the teams and also dovetails as far as it can, with the Millennium and each other.
We will let you guys know as soon as the 09 schedule has been agreed by Chris and Wendy.
The timing for all this is excellent because as we strive to put our house in order, a new world order is forming with which to integrate and so in this sense, we are extremely lucky here because it provides accountability up and down the paintball ladder and an opportunity to become an integral part of a much larger organisation.
And so with this in mind and with Jim’s suggestion still ringing in our ears we set about organising ourselves into a more formal structure by voting in a chairman to oversee everything and allocate responsibilities to board members.
These are provisional assignments and not cast in stone and so we can reallocate positions if deemed necessary by a board vote.
The proposed structure and designations are as follows:-
UKPSF - Steve Bull
Member Registration - Barry Fuggle
Trade and Retail - Ledz, Gill Chapple (Just Paintball) and Tommy Pemberton
Regional Event Development - Jim Frensham, Gill Chapple and Matt Green
Regional Events North and South - Chris Pelling and Wendy
Sanctioned Event Overseer - Andy Piper
Chairman - Pete Robinson
Jackie Sosta of Kee and Spike of ProCaps will be invited to join the board and will be allocated positions as and when.
We have a unique opportunity here and we will do our best to keep this moving forward but I’m gonna ask one thing of you guys out there, we cannot succeed unless we get your support.
There will be people out there who try to decry what we are doing, or even whether certain people should be involved in this new federation, and maybe even feel they themselves should be involved but we need to get past that sorta cr@p that has so often bedevilled our sport and get on with putting our house in order.
For me personally, I will work hard to maintain the initial momentum but we need much more than that, we need you guys to help us out.
I wanna say a big ‘thank you’ to all of the other board members for putting in the time and effort to help put us all back on track.
