What a weekend, what a Round and what a season we have had! Here comes the essay from Captain Adam Axford: Thank you to everyone for their support over the season, we have had a fantastic journey and have grown each Round as individual players and as a team. We have things to work on, as do all teams and hope to come back stronger next season! Its been a pleasure to lead the Northern Devils this season, we have had our ups and downs, highs and lows but I think everyone will agree its been fantastic! This time last year three of the team (Adam, James and Scott) had just played a charity rental tournament and then made the decision to take our interest in Paintball to the next level and form our own team. Keen as we were, we set about choosing a team name and given our roots in the North-West and our love for Manchester United (we know football is a dirty word to some paintballers but we love both) we chose the Northern Devils. We designed our logo and had some awesome kit made for us by Jerseys Clinic and Conspiration. We made friends with Just Paintball UK who offered to support us for the season and provide us with our paint for the coming year! Quickly joined by Tim and David we took our first steps in to sup air at a rainy Outpost Paintball Chester 3-man, winning only our final game of the day and then to Cribbs Pro Paintball Centre 3-man Cribbs Cup, again only winning in our final game. Both events gave us a glimpse into the Paintball and Sup Air community and we were impressed. We were shown great sportsmanship and team spirit by the other teams and we were eager to get ourselves started in the famous CPPS series. A quick mention here to Kelvin for noticing we were a new team made up of new players and reaching out to offer advice, guidance and friendship as we began our journey into tournament Paintball. Returning from the Cribbs cup we recruited John and Amy into our ranks and looked forward to the first CPPS event of the season. John is a seasoned player with varied experience in the Paintball, bringing an older head and experience to the team. Amy is a fellow newbie whos fella Greg, playing for Bristol Stalions got her hooked on Paintball. Before Round 1 Adam, David and Tim joined Andy Leach from Birmingham Disruption and the lads from Epidemic for some training over at On The Edge Events in Congleton which was a great learning experience as we traded off with players with great skill and experience. We arrived at Round 1, nervous, excited and anxious to get our feet on the Elite field at CPPS playing in the Breakout Division. We had a mixed day, with everyone finding their feet on a sup air field, learning the ropes, sometimes the hard way, taking some calls we felt we harsh, but we had to learn some how. We picked ourselves up and after a poor start we put some wins together and finished a respectable 7th out of 14 teams, not too shabby for our first outing! (Joint 3rd on pts, separated by kills) At Round 2 we improved further, we scraped our way in to the top group after the afternoon re-seed and went on to finish 4th overall, level with the team in 3rd on points and kills, with one extra death costing us a spot on the podium. We were gutted, but wed come a long way, improving massively from Round 1 and coming together as a team. Round 3 came and we were missing a few regular Devils so had to call in some help which we were grateful of as we finished 2nd overall in our morning division and were seeded in the top 4 shoot out for the afternoon. We had a huge break from our final game, lunch and then were late on in the afternoon games which really put us off our game. We lost all 3 of our games and finished 4th for the second round running. We were deflated but again wed taken another step in the right direction and were cementing our spot in the top 4 of the Breakout division. At Round 4 we were running short again and recruited two new Devils in Lewis and Alex. Lewis, Scotts cousin is a young player just out of high school and had never picked up a marker before the event, Alex has some experience which again proved useful on the day. We fought hard and were level 2nd in the group on points and kills however we were again denied on deaths, 2 behind the team above us which meant we were seeded to fight for 5th to 8th place in the afternoon. We won 2/3 games and finished 6th overall. At Round 4 we were photographed by Paintball Magazine, check out the awesome photos in our photo albums!!! Which leads me on to Round 5. We came to round 5 knowing a top 6/7 finish would leave us 2nd overall for the season after a couple of teams opted to not play the round, or to play in another division to get themselves a taster for the 2015 season. After our traditional shakey start losing 2 of our first 4 games we went on to win 4 of the next 6 and finished 6th overall, again only separated by kills/deaths after finishing level 3rd on points with 3 other teams. Ironically we were the only team to beat the overall 1st place team in the morning who then went on to win 2/3 of their 1st/2nd place play off match against our friends and fellow Just Paintball supported team Epidemic 2 who we also beat in our final game of the day. A mixture of emotions at the end of the day, joy at finishing 2nd for the season in the overall standings, disappointment at not managing to clinch a spot among the champagne on the podiums in our final event of the Breakout Division 2014 and pride at beating the top two teams of the day. We had a fantastic day and had come along way since the first round one in March. Again at Round 5 we were photographed by Round 5 and are eagerly awaiting the photos! Myself and the rest of them team have had a fantastic year and are looking forward to collecting our trophy for 2nd place at the CPPS 7-Man next month! Heres a list of the team members who id like to thank for a great season: #23 Scott Wrigley #25 John Borge #26 Alex Bradbury #43 David Aldgate #66 Amy Stroud #69 James Axford #83 Tim Puzzar #89 Adam Axford - Captain #97 Lewis Neville-Cooper Another list of thank yous from me personally and from the team: Just Paintball - What can I say, you guys have been awesome from Day 1 and we hope you display your Northern Devils Jersey in the shop with pride! Jersey Clinic / Conspiration - The gear you guys have made for us is amazing and we will definitely be ordering more and more over the next few years! Epidemic, Birmingham Disruption, Stafford Executives, Going Postal, Northwest Assassins - You guys have all helped us out in one way or another over the season, giving us tips, helping out with gear/equipment, training, we appreciate it from you all and hope to see you all next season and hopefully shoot you all at some point! CPPS - What a venue, huge thanks to Ainsley for helping us in to tournament paintball, the refs for educating us, making paintball possible and helping us to develop as a team. We cant think of anywhere else wed rather play our ball next season so you will be seeing us again. (Sorry for any moaning we may have done along the way) And to anyone else who has offered us advice and helped us grow as a team, Anil / Sam / Wayne / Roy for helping us out when we have been short and making sure we could field a team at every round of the Breakout division! And thank you to everyone who has made it this far reading this end of season review, we have been overwhelmed by the spirit of the paintball community and hope that over the years we will become an established team and we will be able to help the other new players and teams get themselves started in this amazing sport! Cheers Adam
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 15:14:24 +0000