I personally didn't know what to expect from them, never seen them play, wasn't sure how many were veterans and how many would be new blood. They had asked us before Sunday if we wanted to do the open training session on the Thursday in Belgium before the CPS and I wasn't too sure as I didn't know how these guys would challenge us compared to another team from the Semi Pro division. Turns out they challenged us pretty fucking well.
We were there to scrim and build on our team play, we didn't necessarily want to win all the points so long as when we were losing we were going down as a team, communicating well. To boost this communication we decided not to use coaching for the entire session. We also wanted to give as many reps as possible to Adam on the snake side, as we are looking at losing Liam at the end of the season when he gets back to his university studies. We had already played the field a lot on the lead up to and including the CPPS round 2 so we didn't need to work out breakouts or anything like that. The session was also good for getting our less-committed players some reps playing with the team, with Harry, Malone & Parkey getting some reps in as well as a guest appearance from Kayleigh who played a few points with us.
We came out with our relatively conservative breakout - knowing it's a lockdown field, however ECI were pushing it pretty hard. We were using training paint and not walking on bounces - amongst ourselves we always walk on bounces but when scrimming against another team it's best to only walk on breaks unless your doing breakout drills, as it can cause more unnecessary "I shot you!" arguments. This meant our lock down approach wasn't really working as well as it had in the tournaments, giving ECI the edge with their aggressive snake play.
ECI also threw in some practice of winning 30 second points, making some super aggressive moves down the middle and cutting us up. Whilst I do see the importance of practicing winning points in 30 seconds, in a tournament situation your opponent is also going to be aware that you only have 30 seconds to score the point and so will be breaking out to counter that. As opposed to ourselves who were under the assumption we were playing normal points and so breaking out accordingly.
Training at Bricketwood is a bit different with the astro turf. The sun was out however there was still a puddle behind one of the teabag corners which I had a run in with. I decided I would avoid it by running wide but when people are shooting at you you tend to throw that out the window and I dived (flopped) chest first into the puddle that consisted of stagnant water and rotting paint.
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| Pictured: Sun and good times. Not pictured: Asswater and copious spitting until I felt safe from disease. |
I personally used the scrimming session to be played out of position, instead of always playing the teabag attack I played a few points in the snake, playing the insert (not my favorite role) and sometimes the back player / middle attacker.
Playing the snake was fun, I got a few G's from it the few points I was in there, however the importance of relying on your teammates to communicate with you was massive. I got 2 G's shooting guys on my side of the field from Snake 1 in my point in there, before I started to wrap thinking my side was clear, however their snake corner got a blind shot on me - I had no idea anyone was in there! It's a lot more heads down than playing the teabag attack, I'm used to personally having a good field awareness from the taller bunkers which isn't gained as easily from a non-coached snake side.
Playing the insert was hard. Instead of trying to contain their attack I was also then wrapping to see if I could get shots on my mirror, trying to do too much cost me where I would get shot by the teabag 1 when pushing the wrap. I should have just kept on him and carried on doing my job. I feel that playing predominantly the teabag attacker has given me an instinct for looking for the kills which I haven't yet conditioned myself to switch off when playing the insert.
Being the 3rd player however is a lot more fun. Shooting lanes off the break is something I've come to enjoy as it's only recently come natural for me to be able to put my paint almost exactly where I want it to go off the break; choosing which lane to shoot is still a dice game when you're looking at multiple options however. From this position I was able to watch for their middle moves, either shooting them out or making them have to stop somewhere they didn't want to, but also it gave me opportunities to mirror their moves through the center of the field or to run through and eliminate the threat with a counter-punch. It's fun getting to make these moves from these positions, you get an extra level of field awareness in the tall back center bunkers making it easier to break the games open.
In one point from this position they had made it to the teabag side of the M and were preventing us from moving so I made the move to run through and trade out with him. After coming through their side of the M and shooting him, I switched hands as I saw someone making a move on the other side of me, I thought I had shot him out as I had caught him by suprise and he fumbled mid move to shoot back at me.. however I must have bounced and/or missed as he shot back at me. Thinking I was in the right and in the heat of the moment I went to carry on going, causing a bit of a fallout with him but we talked it out on the way off the field. If you're reading - sorry pal!
There was another heated moment involving myself where we had shot most of their players out and I was about to make a move to shoot out the last guy in the teabags as I heard people shout to end the game. The guy I was about to shoot was arguing that he was still in - little did I know that he was arguing with Parkey who thought he had already hit him, so as he was shouting "I haven't been hit, I'm clean!" I thought he was shouting it at whoever decided to stop the game and so I went to 1-ball his hopper to stop the fussing. A combination of my bad aim and a greasy barrel meant I shot him in the arm (sorry!), however he shot me in the back as I walked away so I feel we're square in the eyes of the paintball gods.
Paintball is a very adversarial game and even though there was nothing on the line and it was a friendly scrimmage, it's easy to lose your cool when you're trying to shoot guys who are trying to shoot you and your boys. Fortunately though that was the extent of the bad blood and to top the day off, Dave Simpson went to his car and brought out a bunch of beers for us all to share, which was a very kind gesture and really brought the session to an end on a high note. Overall it was a great day, very productive for all and it was good to get some spins playing out of position. However I honestly can't tell you how or why this happened
After ECI had finished I did some 1v1's against Andy and Adam in preparation for the 1v1 tournament in Belgium. I'm looking forward to it and won most of the games I played although as I started to fatigue Adam got a few shots on me towards the end. Time to work on some cardio!
After today's games I was confident that ECI will give us a good challenge in future and so I confirmed them in to train against us on the Thursday of Belgium. This will hopefully make it more productive than the last pre-event training session against Helsinki Cyclone where we just rinsed them most points.
I'm looking forward to watching these guys play and seeing how they get on in Belgium and beyond.
This coming weekend we are scrimming at Cribbs on the new layout with our REC boys, Reflex & Snatch. Andy Leach from Disruption, not unfamiliar to wearing an Entity jersey, is guesting for us in Belgium and so will be coming to join us next weekend at Cribbs.
Last but not least we shot 24 cases between the 7 Entity players, so we're looking at 3.4 cases each of which I probably shot a bit more due to the 1v1's so I'm going to round up to 7000, making it a total of 87,500 for the year.
P.S check out this picture by Amy of "Stroodle Paintball" from CPPS Round 2. I mean I'm not vain but.. wow.. look at me.. such majesty.
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