Syd, this is what I know :- every time I have seen a group of young guys (and to a lesser extent girls) who are playing as rentals who then see pros (or whoever, as long as they are serious ballers) playing alongside, the interest shown is significant.
The majority of them look on with huge interest in what's going down. I am talking from actual experience here in that when Nexus train amongst ourselves and sometimes against others and those dog-ball games are seen by rentals, it pretty much blows their minds as to what real paintball is all about.
They see a bunch of guys screaming out to their primaries, diving here there and everywhere and it truly is a spectacle of athleticism and one that they previously would never have associated with the sometimes sedentary woodland game of rental paintball.
It's an eye opener for them and as such seems hugely attractive, this is not idle speculation here, I have seen this time and time again.
I know this sport of ours has huge potential but the next step, that of selling the game so that we convert that significant interest into recball and ultimately tourney players somehow then goes awry.
I am all in favour of what you suggest but at the back of mind it seems as tho we may be just arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic a little differently; I also readily acknowledge we have to start somewhere.
We do need a coherent tourney circuit and leagues such as Bully’s Wendy’s and the PA all go some way toward fulfilling this requirement.
The pro league sits atop of this pyramid of leagues and any assertion that differs from this runs contra to the interests of overall consolidation because we need to recognize actual (and not perceived) hierarchies here before we move forward.
I think what you suggest can certainly help with what we need to do and good luck to you is what I say, I just seem to be thinking the more fundamental of our problems is a systemic lack of ambition from our players and as such, no matter what arrangements and infrastructures we make available for them in terms of walk on venues, I’m just worried we ain’t got the numbers to make them viable.
This is as things stand now I hasten to add but……if we educate people or rather showcase tourney ball (like those flash Yank vids we often see) to rental players then I think we can generate interest in the right demographic of young people.
Coz at the moment, we just don’t have the right people in paintball playing for the right reasons.
But I just can’t imagine our average Del Boy site owner going down this road and this perhaps suggests we need to have visionaries start the process of enlightenment and hopefully others will follow.
Make no bones about this Syd, this is a process, and will take time and money but if you’re up for it then I am sure there are enough right minded people to help you.
But…you must choose them wisely because for every person who really knows what they are doing in this country, there are another 20 lined up behind him ‘saying’ they know what they are doing….and they don’t.
but why not have a second squad just to play uk tournies for the players who may have the talent but not the experience to play the nppl or other us tourneys yet?
