rotorua 2010
Monday, June 28th, 2010
Let me just start by saying that these are my thoughts/opinions and not those of my team.
First of all I’d like to say that I enjoyed myself. Rotorua is always a good tournament and it’s return this year was enabled by Brendan, Terry, Maria, Ants and the guys at Aces High Paintball offering to let Pete and his boys run the Queen’s Birthday tournament this year.
The facilities for the tournament were enjoyable. We stayed and played on the grounds of the All Seasons Motel and Camp Ground which meant that we didn’t have far to stumble from our rooms to the field. All teams had covered staging/pit areas and waiting to go on the field was covered as well. Works well with sun or rain. The compressor was covered too which was smart thinking.
I got up to Rotorua late on Friday night so didn’t see the field until early Saturday morning. From what I understand the initial field designs had some quite large open spaces in the middle. The idea being so that people didn’t hang about shooting lanes. From experience, this serves the opposite purpose. If you want people to not hang about and shoot lanes then put some big shit in the middle so you need to get out to the tapes for those kills. The field we played on the weekend ended up blocking the center lanes and most of the dorito side and promoted aggressive play which made for fast games. Great stuff. The only comments I have is we should’ve played with the X (although it is difficult to ref it), the tapes were a little close to the field and the deadbox should have some barrier so that those in there didn’t get shot up (again).
Reffing is always a point of contention. The winners always think the reffing is good and the losers always pick up on the poor calls. Reffing is a thankless job at the best of times. Personally I thought the reffing was good. Nice work from Pom (Ian), Skinny and Boog (I’ve named them because those are the only fellas that were reffing that I know; sorry to the rest). The games ran ahead of time thanks to a lack of bullshit on the field and the admin folks letting teams know that they were playing soon. I read someone suggesting that more time be allowed between games for people to collect pods. I didn’t really noice this being an issue. The refs were pretty on to it by grouping pods for easy collection. It’s your job to police your own pods so stop fucking around telling stories to the other guys in the deadbox about how you got shot and why it wasn’t your fault ;)
We had an OK prelims only dropping 1 game to Arachnids (who ultimately came 2nd) and a close game against Flash Point (well done on winning the tournament lads). So we finished 1st after the prelims and the next closest team was 200 points behind. We had trouble with the paint as did everyone else. Contrary to some beliefs, we were not partying on Saturday night (although that’s why you go to the Rotorua tourmanent). We were in bed relatively early, expecially compared to Friday night and were up at 6am on Sunday morning. It was a team decision to not play Sunday. Some people will understand why we didn’t play Sunday but all explainations will probably come across as elitist or arrogant.
Flash Point should have beaten us if they had kept their heads and communicated better. B2 should have stayed on the tape and Jono (from Contraband) should have run the highway. Worst case, I would have traded with Jono leaving B2 to hang the flag. I was in a bad position being in the snake and coming at me one at a time was silly :) This is not a dig at anyone. Flash Point played well the whole tournament and espcially considering some of the core guys weren’t there it was a solid performance.
Now, to my guys. How about more than 1 of us play some paintball less than 6 months before a national event. Also, let’s walk the field next time and have a reserve LOL.
