Red Sevens (Singapore) crowned MPOC Division 2 Overall Champion!

Red Sevens presenting the win to Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Major General (NS) Chan Chun Sing

Photo by www.residentevilchef.com

The ear to ear grins, the hugs, the cheers, the screams of joy. We had at last become champions! The year was 2010, and we had won the PALS Thailand for Division 2. It was an amazing feeling to have finally accomplished something that we had been dreaming of since 2007 when the Red Sevens paintball team was formed.

Not everyone was happy for us though, with some people saying that we were “lucky” to have overcome some of the strongest Division 2 teams from Malaysia and Thailand. Coincidentally, the 2^nd leg of MPOC was only a week or two after Thailand and would be the perfect place to prove to our skeptics that our win wasn’t just a fluke. Needless to say, we replicated our performance and managed to win Leg 2 of the MPOC, but were unsuccessful at getting another first for the remaining three legs (although we did get podiums for all three). It was quite disconcerting in the least, and we were left at the end of the season wondering when we were going to be champions again.

Towards the end of 2010 it was suggested by the organizers of the MPOC that we should perhaps participate in Division 1 for the 2011 season. This may have even been the case (and I presume that I would not be writing this if it was), if we didn’t lose around half of our regular roster to work and university. With our line-up in disarray it wasn’t feasible for us to move up against seasoned Division 1 teams with any hopes of winning. And so the beginning of the MPOC 2011 season was the “gelling” period for the new and remaining members of the Red Sevens.

During the first three legs of the MPOC 2011, we earned three podiums and were extremely close to winning Leg 3, but were outplayed in the third and deciding point of the finals by Killer Beez.

We went home with the bitter taste of defeat, mulling over what could have been, vowing that we would redeem ourselves in the weeks to come and defend our PALS Thailand Division 2 title.

Three weeks later, we were back in Thailand after almost a year for the PALS. Being the PALS Thailand 2010 Division 2 winners, the pressure was on us to demonstrate that we were worthy champions. We didn’t disappoint, winning all but one of our preliminaries. It was clear that the team was resolute in defending the title and it looked good for us going into the top eight.

Sunday. The most important day to every tournament paintballer. One would think that on the momentum of the previous day that we would breeze through. This wasn’t the case and we were knocked out, finishing a miserable fifth. In twelve months, we had gone from a championship winning team to non-qualifiers. The feeling that PALS Thailand was OUR tournament had all but dissipated from my mind, if not all of ours. Dejection is the best word to describe the mood that lingered within the team and again we went back trophy-less.

If you thought that was rock bottom for the team, it wasn’t. We placed fifth a week later at Leg 4 of the MPOC. Now for those of you that don’t remember, it was just a year ago that we’d placed first twice in a row at the same tournaments. Now we’d replaced that feat a year later with two fifths.

With no tournaments until the final leg of the MPOC in Putrajaya, we had to suck it up and lick our wounds. Two weeks prior to Leg 5, we held mandatory trainings at the field. We scrimmaged as much as possible against ourselves (Red Sevens and Red Sevens 2) as well as against other teams that were there, trying to get as much practice in as possible.

Fast forward to Putrajaya, 23^rd July. Saturday. We knew we had let ourselves down the previous couple of tournaments and it was vitally important for our sanity that we didn’t repeat Thailand or Leg 4. This tournament was especially important for us because we were contending with Urban X and CMX for the MPOC 2011Overall Champions (http://tinyurl.com/3quvlsq-results tabulated as of Leg 4). If we placed higher than Urban X by at least two places, and CMX by at least four, we would be the crowned overall champions for 2011 as our “Matches Won” and “Total Points” would outdo Urban X and CMX respectively.

We went into our preliminary games with the hunger and thirst for revenge. It was almost as if we held the other teams accountable for our poor performances the last couple of tournaments and decided now would be a better time than ever to make a final stand (see King Leonidas in action: http://tinyurl.com/23hcfb). By the end of our preliminary games, we were 6 – 0, and ranked first. This meant that we were to play the eighth team to qualify. This wasn’t necessarily good news for us as we had a string of tournaments where we’d been knocked out by teams ranked lower. And so we went into the quarter-finals against Rockeeters.

Our quarter-finals got off to a rocky start and we went down one point. I’m sure at the back of all our minds was the thought, “oh… not again”. However, sticking to our game plan that had worked for us the whole preliminaries, we composed ourselves and overcame the Rockeeteers 3 – 2 to make it into the semi-finals.

Note that even with the pressure of trying to win our games, there was the added pressure of how Urban X was doing. CMX were already knocked out, so the ”three-horse race”, became two. “ It was nerve wrecking watching Urban X play and make it into the semi-finals as if they beat KFK Halloween they would be crowned overall champions.

In our semi-finals we played against Ultimate Speed whom we had a lot of respect for as we had crewed in each other’s pits during the preliminaries. Before playing them, we had been throwing new game plans around as they probably knew how we were going to play. In the end, we decided that we would stick to our “traditional” game-style that had been working for us. This proved to be the case and we dispatched of Ultimate Speed 2 – 0.

However, the threat of Urban X still loomed. If they placed fourth, we would win the Overall Championship no matter what, but if they came third, we would be forced to win the leg in order to win the Overall Championship. Guess what? They came third.

Again the pressure was on us. The way we ended our MPOC season was dependent on how we performed in this final match. This time round we decided to mix things up a little and instead of our “traditional” game plan, we went for a more aggressive play-style by planning to send our snakes straight to the 50’s and 60’s when they managed to get in.

The first point got off to a shaky start after our right-side snake got shot out. However, the remaining players were unwavering in their desire for the gold and won the point. The second game we decided to revert to our “traditional” style, mixed with a bit of aggressive game plan. Initially the game went by pretty slow but after the snakes made it to the 60’s, the game was broken. Red Sevens win 2 – 0.

There was silence, literal silence. No one was cheering and no one clapped. We didn’t either until we all got back into our pits, hugging and hi-fiving before we had a final team speech and bellow “Reds!” Pure joy was on everyone’s face, with grins from ear to ear. This was compounded by the fact that not only had we won Leg 5 of the MPOC, we were also most likely going to be overall champions for the series, a first for a non-Malaysian team. After composing ourselves we then went over to thank KFK Halloween for the game, and the refs for their season’s efforts.

After the prize-giving for the winners of the final leg of the MPOC, it was now time for the overall winners of the series to be announced. Grammaton Clerics won Division 3. Now it was for Division 2. We held our breaths, even the non-religious folk prayed (I sure did), before “Red Sevens” was announced. We were ecstatic, it was truly an amazing moment for all of us to win the double.

To conclude this, the Red Sevens family would like to thank all friends, supporters, wives and girlfriends, sponsors and each other for the wonderful support since 2007. To all past and present Red Sevens, this victory is for you! We are still the first Singapore team to win a PALS Champions medal and a MPOC Overall Series Champion medal...

Words by Ivan Rickard Liow, LiquidSnake

Ivan Rickard Liow - First Singapore based player to referee in World Cup Asia 2009

Ivan the "Enforcer"... well, he is from the Special Ops Command...

Ivan with the Red Sevens... er... snake?

You might have seen him, you might have heard him... and you might be wondering who is this chinese looking "ang-mo" guy who speaks with a true British accent? Well, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Ivan Rickard Liow aka Liquid Snake, the suave paintballer that everyone just love... Last weekend, Ivan made Singapore history in becoming the first Singapore based player to referee in the Paintball World Cup Asia (WCA) 2009, the BIGGEST paintball event in Asia!!! We caught up with him to find out more about this fine gentleman. Oh yes, ladies, he is single...

Q: What makes you want to ref in the WCA?

A: Before we go into that, you’d need to know why I wanted to learn to ref at all. For the past two legs in MPOC, I’ve had a few dubious (‘bad’) calls by refs regarding ‘hits’ which was in fact just bunker smudge (really!). Then I got wind of a marshalling course that was going to be held at WCA, conducted by Mr. Junaidi Kalil and Mr. Ulrich Stahr, the head referees of the Malaysian Marshals and Euro Refs respectively. And so I decided to attend to see what marshals go through and if it was really that hard to make ‘good’ calls. It was definitely not the fact that I was going to get a C10 jersey, in ‘zipbra preents’ which was going to look supahstah agg. After the theory course, Big Ben and I approached Junaidi to ask whether I could ref some Div. 4 games, to which he kindly agreed. Don’t forget it’s also the largest paintballing event in the region…how could I not participate in one way or another?

Q: What makes it so special for you to ref in the WCA?

A: For a start, WCA is the first tournament I have ever refereed in. There are so many teams from so many different countries that it makes this extremely exciting to ref in. Prior to this I have never refereed ‘properly’ as I didn’t know most of the rules. So the night before I kept the rulebook with me wherever I went, because I wanted to memorize all of the penalties and eliminations so I didn’t look an idiot when I was on the field. I told this to Junaidi and I guess he knew I’d definitely missed out on some stuff because he quizzed me on the 16 non-hit eliminations just minutes before walked onto the field. Out of the 16, I only got like 5, he let me ref anyway…THANKS JUNAIDI!

Q: So what did you actually do?

A: I asked Junaidi if I could ref some speedball games before I had to ref the GI Milsim 10 on 10 recball game later in the afternoon. Initially, all the fields were full with 8 refs but I got lucky. At around 11.30pm, one the the refs on the Div. 4 field had hurt his ankle and they needed a replacement. Junaidi took me to Field 4 and asked me to see the Head Ref of the field. I introduced myself and said I was a ref from Singapore and he asked me to take up the place of the ref who was injured. If you know anything about paintball I did what all other refs would do at the beginning of a game, such as “Barrel socks off”, “10 seconds” and “Game on”. During the course of the game I would watch a player and would run and side slide to him if he asked me for a “paint check”. If he was clean, but had bunker rub/spray, I would clean it for him, tell him to “play on” then go back to where I was originally standing. If he was hit, I’d just yell “you’re out” or “OUT”, duh. When the players did run-throughs I had to be slightly faster to be in front of him so I could see if he got hit. At the end of the game I would do a “Player freeze for paint-check” on the remaining players who were alive and inspect him/her for hits. I was quite disappointed I didn’t get to give anyone a penalty for playing on as I was looking forward to giving someone a “YOU’RE OUT, 1 FOR 1”. I was also definitely looking forward to giving some of the Singaporean teams some 3 for 1 love, hehe, CK *cough cough*, Red West, *cough*. Just kidding ;)

Q: How do you think you can improve yourself better as a ref?

A: To improve as a ref I need to know what powers I have. And to know what powers I have I need to know the rulebook- what I can and can’t do, what the players can and can’t do. It’s pretty similar to being a Police officer. You are empowered with ‘special powers’ and you can enforce these powers when the elements that would constitute to an infraction have occurred.

To further improve, I also need to get back onto the field and ref more games because experience is key. You can only get better at doing something over and over again (think PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE). Something which I will be doing next time I ref is talk to the more experienced refs, regarding issues such as “hit or non-hit?” For me this is a must because I think I made a few ‘not so good’ calls during WCA.

Q: How do you think you can improve yourself better as a player?

A: Well again the most important thing is to play, get on the field and start working on what you’re not so good at. For me I’m still not very good at snap shooting, so usually when I go down to play I work on that a lot with Gerald or Paul. I’m starting to get back confidence in superman dives so I also practice that more often than I used to.
In games, I usually play the Snake and I’ve become too accustomed to the play style. When it comes to other bunkers, I’m not completely sure where I’m supposed to shoot as the play-style is very different. This is because when you’re in the snake, your goal is to move up into their side as quickly as possible and shoot everyone. Most of the time, no one knows what hit them so it’s pretty easy whereas on the Dorito side, people are constantly bombarding your bunker with paint as they know where you are and you’ve got to be a good gunfighter to work your way up.

Q: How were you first introduced to paintball?

A: I was first introduced to paintball back in Nov’ 2007 when I messaged the Red Sevens about attending their clinic. I was on the way back from Port Dickson and arrived at Octville Country Club where the clinic was to be held. There I met Arthur, Big Ben, Jane, Azlan, Small Ben Desmond, Kevin, Sean, Daryl and Jin Han. We played a few 3 on 3s and by the next week I had already bought my Empire Vents. This would be the start of my paintball career.

Q: Having seen the malaysia scene what do you think needs to be improved in singapore paintball?

A: In the Malaysian scene there are a lot more teams, and there is a lot more space. Players are able to train with many different individuals, allowing them to be more prepared for different styles of play. Teams there are also able to train more frequently, due to lower cost of paint and easier access to proper tournament-sized fields.

Now in Singapore, the SPF regulates the movement of paintball markers and lists them under ‘Firearms’. Land and paint is expensive, so it is hard to get tournament teams to train regularly locally. More experienced Singaporean paintballers are travelling to JB to play on cheaper fields. This hurts Singaporean paintball because a) by spending money overseas, money is not being spent on supporting the local field(s), which does not allow them to expand their services and b) the experience and mentoring from these players is not shared with the newer players who might benefit greatly from given advice.

Now in terms of improving Singaporean paintball, two things come into my mind. Price of paint, and a tournament sized speedball field. The price of paint is an obvious one, the cheaper it is, the more we can train, and inevitably the better we will get. Getting a tournament sized speedball field is also another obvious one. Teams in Malaysia are training on fields that have the tournament layout a week or so before the actual tournament allowing them to have a good idea of how the field will play. In Singapore, although we try our best to adapt the field to the layout, the dimensions (length and width) that we play in Malaysia and here are completely different, meaning that when we get to Malaysia all the angles are completely different. We need a tournament sized field train on, with a good flat patch of grass so that we don’t injure ourselves doing various slides or dives.

Q: Plans for 2010?

A: I’ll keep you posted.