Entering the world of paintballing...............

Gun in hand, body armour secured, the ultimate boys game is about to start. This is paintballing, complete with their war paint and injuries, Morecambe Bay Assassins are taking no prisoners in the war to become one of the countries most recognised paintballing teams.

Founded in 2008, team captain and one of the original instigators, Matt Newsham, 20, tells me,

“It was just an innocent way for some lads to have some fun”,

But within no time at all their 4 man team which included, Will Hawkins (Matt’s dad), Adam Horrobin and Gary Cowan managed to grow to an impressive 14, as well as being nominated for UK Scenario Paintball Break Though Team of the year 2009 and 2010.

Matt tells me,

“Morecambe Bay Assassins are a UK scenario paintballing team that travel all over the country to attend different games. Our name simply came about because the majority of our players are from Morecambe, but now we have managed to expand some of our players also come from Lancaster, Heysham, Barrow, Preston and even as far as Wolverhampton!”

With hundreds of paintballing teams from all over the country, at the moment, there is no official league table to measure the success of each team, Matt tells me,

“We have developed over the years by gaining more members and attending more games, the way we measure our success is by how well known we are becoming within the paintballing community and how other paintballing teams look at us.”

Despite all the battles and fun there is a serious point to be taken into consideration and this is how the teams are funded, Matt explains,

“We are a totally self funded group and we do this by all holding full time and part time jobs (some of us have careers and some of us just have jobs to fund paintballing.) We do have companies which support us out with the paintballs and equipment. All our playing jerseys and custom line come from Custompb and London International Paintball Supplies (LIPS) help us out with out playing gear as well as our paintballs.”

As great as it all sounds we can’t just simply avoid the fact that this isn’t a sport for the squeamish. As much as I’d love to take part in something like this, due to the fact that I like to interpret my bossiness as me being a natural born leader J I’m not one for pain. So when I asked Matt what his worst injury had been…I soon regretted it.

“My worst injury was definitely back in 2009 at the England V Scotland game. I was shot from about 6ft away right in the back of the neck; there was blood and a nice welt. The pain was unbelievable.”

There was no way to dispute the fact that the following for paintballing was growing at a rapid pace so when 4 guys came together to see how they could expand the world of paintballing, “Super6”, was born. Matt is also involved with this and explains,

“Super6 is a joint project between some of the UK’s most experienced event organisers, these guys are Nail Squaire, Andy Sables, Ged Green and Tim Barnet. They all recognised that it was time for UK scenario paintball to move on to the next level. They arrange for 6 big games over the year, each one bigger and better than the next.”

This also inspired Super6 TV, which is a 45 minute documentary showcasing the events from the game, at the moment it is only being shown on YouTube buts as it’s following grows there is definitely hope that it will soon be picked up by a TV station. Matt is the camera guy for the show and loves every minute,

“It’s great to be involved in the game but in a completely different way, with Super6 TV we travel out to the location and talk to all the traders and the players, we get to find out what new studd they have to offer and catch up on all the game action.”

So for all the people out there that are looking for something different and fun to get involved in this summer paintballing might just be the thing for you, so strap on your balls and get your war faces ready because this is definitely fighting time.