What a weekend! This is going to be a HUGE right up due to the fact that it was a HUGE competition.

I arrived on the Friday to find a regs game already on. So I tubied up and went in on the weakest side. WOW! How crowded. 12 a side is fine in public games but regular players use a lot of space and move fast so that was a difficult one to warm up in! It was quiet cool to trade shots with someone you haven't seen in a month or two and using the 3 second of "defense shield" you have to shake hands with them and say Hi before playing on!

The actual line up was huge, 3 welsh teams (Babydragonz, Barry Island, Team Wales), 4 Irish (Motu Specials, MRS, Jammy Dodgers, KY Jellybabys), Southmouth, Bad Company, Bradford, Endangered Species as well as 4 Bedford teams; Oliver's Army, Freeplay, Team Snipe and Watch the Midget. And of course, BORG.

With 16 teams, the format was rather complicated, the result however was 4 groups with the teams then going to knock out, 4th place team Vs a third place team, the winner playing a second place team who then plays a 1st place team. The Final 4 (BORG, South Mouth, MRS and Bad Company) then went to an even more complicated set up to find a winner. While complicated, the set up devised by Alan was of course, extremely fair, ensuring an unlucky draw did not mean the end of the weekend. During this stage, Bad Company took a leg off BORG and many thought they stood a chance of winning it, unfortunately in a playoff against Southmouth, Neil injured himself. If he had not, maybe they could have gone all the way, but we will never know. All I can say is that we watched the screen with dropped jaws as BORG lost a leg and hopefully it wont be the last time.

The 1's and the 2's have previously been a diversion at comps I have attended, but not this time. There were three events, with the creation of a new "Lower Tier" 1's. This was played on the Sunday and was as interesting viewing as any other event. I myself got knocked out in the second round by Rob "Peanut" Sexton, who went on to be one of the three finalist. He played a round robin against Joeyjoejoe of Freeplay and "Roadrunner" Jamie from Barry Island. By playing a fantastic game against a more experienced player, Joey pulled through and won, with all the support of Bedford players watching around him. Fantastic game mate, 6 months play and you can do that? Maybe thats what Neil meant by "natural talent"!

I didn't get to see it but Rob and Wu of the BORG came through to win the 2's, showing all the audience what great team work can do.

The main 1's was, however, the highlight for me when it comes to watching matches. We will get straight to it: Neil won. He had to play through 3 BORG to get there but he did. Against Shaun, you could count the number of times Neil got shot on one hand. Next up against Rob, we thought it was all over. Going in to the second leg, Neil was 9 down and it looked like it was going to be an all BORG final. However, one by one, Neil pulled back the shots to take the leg and the match to the cheers of the crowd. The first leg of the Final against Trigg ended with both packs going "return to energizer" at the same time, so with everything riding on the second leg, things were tense. But Neil pulled it off 20 shots to 10! I had heard a lot of talk about who was the best UK player before the comp and now we know the answer!

That's about it really. Special thanks to my team, "Watch the Midget". We won a leg, so we could have done a lot worse considering we had never played as a team before. Rob, keep up the play, we will see each other on Sundays and improve at the same pace till we can kick butt! Pete, thanks for playing! Alan could have given me a lot worse but you were sharing top gun slot with me on and off and what more could I have asked for in a player than someone who can get best the score in the game? Very cool! And to Little Chris too! Keep it up and you will be a force to be reckoned with one day. Neil started at 14 and look at him now, when you get to 21, I don't want to be on the receiving end of your pack! (unless its a bong...). Also thanks to Bruce for stepping in at the last minute to sub.

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