The 2002 Rotorua 10-Man Tournament
Paul 'Spider' McKay

Rotorua was host to an untried event for NZ on the 5th of May, a ten man hopper ball event using a combination of Super Air and concept barricades. Personally I thought the small plywood barricades would fall over at the first touch, but they were pegged into the ground like their inflatable counterparts.

Anyway I arrived late (got the venue wrong) arrived in time to see the end of the 2nd game. I was surprised to see that they had quite a crowd of spectators that had probably never seen the game before, or at least not at the level they were witnessing.

Teams in attendance were:
  • Tag & Release.
  • Damage.
  • TNT.
  • Saints.
  • Phantom.
  • Katipo.
    • With the number of players on the field at one time, and the limitation of a hopper of paint, the games went quite quickly, lots of cover, lots of calls going (some of them at the referees), so for the spectator’s it was quite eye catching seeing all these people in bright uniforms running around shooting one another.

    A few of the games where I wasn’t lost in taking photo’s and watching play’s that I found amusing through to impressive I took notes on some.

    Phantom Vs TNT was fairly evenly balanced until Phantom knocked a couple of the TNT players of the field which was quickly evened back up again to a standoff of four to three until Phantom performed a bunker move that ended up fatal for TNT.

    An amusing game was had between Katipo and Phantom. They were pretty much evenly set on the field (about 6 or so left on each side) when a Phantom player punched through on the right and managed to take out the entire remaining Katipo team from their flank only to be taken out by their own player when he was coming back up the field to get the flag. Very impressive work by the Phantom player.

    Saints Vs Katipo was an interesting one. Katipo kept taking out Saints players with regularity, only to be stung by a bunker move up the centre of the field by Saints, the Saint player took out two players, but was hit, the marshals put one Katipo player back in play, but the Saints in the confusion sent another player up the middle and took out a number of Katipo players, and then it was pretty much over.

    Katipo Vs Damage was one that I didn’t expect. The game was pretty much even, for most of the game, right up to the last 60 seconds. One Katipo Vs two Damage players resulted in a paint slinging match until they realised that no one had any paint left. The remaining Katipo player grabbed the flag and started off up the field, only to be tagged by the last remaining paintball on Damage’s inventory. Damage then picks up the flag and runs to the flag station only to be beaten by the clock only feet away from hanging the flag.

    At the end of the day, someone has to win and it turned out to be:

    T&R 335
    Damage 232
    Phantom 206
    Saints 178
    Katipo 135
    TNT 56


    I think the fortunate few people that managed to spot the event and watch from the sideline, probably had the most fun, especially the small kids that couldn’t wait to get out on the field to pick up the paint. Not entirely sure what they would do with it, but they all burst on the field when given the all clear that the day’s play was over.

    Comments on the event were mixed, but most of the people that I spoke to enjoyed the event. 20 players on the field and fixed amount of paint required. Easy to organise for and fun to play in.