Creating an ICON

Taking stock of what really was a pretty special celebration of paintball: The UKWM has reached 10 years of paintball at the historic Holmbush site. To celebrate James, Twizz, and I'm sure a little input from Dave Simpson put on an exclusive 10 man mechanical event (perhaps a swan song, perhaps an example of more to come... perhaps simply an ode to paintball). Huge start banners were ordered, the longest JT strap I've ever seen was hung, and the fields were built to accommodate the double sized teams. Oh, myself and Llucia got to charging our cameras too. In the words of Craig Turley, "5 man is a bar fight... 10 man is an all out brawl" . A quite which held true throughout the day, as even the finals matches came down to smaller numbers than Tigers would have liked. An exciting bait and trap laid by the Turks' Joe Jarvie pulled 3 of the spectator side Tigers players into a heated back and forth leaving Alan Smith and Oliver Turner with the job of re-setting and wo...

As we open our eyes to the 2023 season it’s exciting to see all of our teammates and friends start to pipe up in the group chat or talk about playing x or y event. But how long has it been since we last saw some of these faces on the field? Over the start of a paintball season, we see a flurry of excitement. promises made by both players and their organisations. That they will commit to playing all of one series… Oh and I've been asked to play this event… Oh actually there is also this other thing that a team need one more for something.  How often do we see players get hauled up into division 1… to then find they have other commitments as the year goes on?! Regardless of our personal resources (Money, Time, Industry support, The strain on relationships that being away weekend after weekend can be). We will often find ourselves at one point or another realising that just maybe we did bite off more than we can chew… That was certainly the case for me over the past couple of years t...