U.K. Woodland Masters 10 Man Classic

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 working harder than needed to secure the field.

So Tigers black take the coveted first place. Alan Smith, Craig Turley, Henry, Oliver etc etc.. all played amazing.

ECI.. running close to a full Rushers lineup, can't take first (I know first place requires a lot of stars to align... but that is a team that just don't miss) Ed, Lauchlan, Cam, Stefan, Billy, Ryan, Dave, Giles etc etc... that is a stacked roster.

The Turks. A mainstay and historic U.K. team, are always really good at woodsball, It's rarer for them to not podium. They manage a respectable although i'm sure disappointing to them 3rd place. Oh.. and did you see they were shooting some of their new team anno CS3's with the mechanical frame (including internal timer)?

As a testament to the quality of teams, we saw other UKWM mainstay teams that missed a podium.

N.B. From here down, it's no result order, simply the order in which I chose to comment on the teams.

Where were the Hawks?! with a full team of players they know and have plenty of time with. Jake, Chris, Freddy, the twins.. This is a team who ACTUALLY BUILT THE FIELD, so you can't tell me they wouldn't have been in the running for it on paper Sunday morning.

SBOS have put in the time, they are no weak team. Guests they had were brilliant. perhaps the only big issue there was too many ideas and not enough commanding presence on the field (the on field gameplay was a bit disjointed and ended up looking like 3 person squads who just happened to have the same colour arm bands). If I was to be super critical, I would have split LB, Adam and Zak as far apart as possible to help manage the combination of Diane, Cameron and Leon a little more. Where Joe was succeeding for that team on one side, we didn't see the information making it's way back to the rest of the team.

Tigers Gold had the fastest shooter at the event on the team in the form of Mr. Gary Mabbott... and players like Mark Howes, Gary Henderson etc. Stacks of experience and players that have single-handedly turned games around throughout their paintball careers.

Leaving OAPB, gotta love em. But look at the rest of the teams.. it's not really fair. This hobby needs these more casual organisations and they bring a lot of positives to events. From smiles in the pits, to reminiscent stories of "the glory days", or perhaps more importantly the fact that they can say "I was there when" and still now... they are there. 

These are the lords and ladies of our hobby, their victory stories are when the wind fills the sails and they win games against any of the more scary rosters. 

When I get there... maybe I too will be able to say I was there.