Asylum Cup – Auckland Trip 2015
by: Maca | Photos by GG Photography
On Friday, 6 March I travelled with my newly appointed H2O teammate Luke McFadden to Auckland NZ to compete in the Asylum Cup. Our flight leaving Brisbane was delayed by an hour so we didn't arrive in there until 1am (NZ time), then by the time we made it to our motel it was 2.30am. With a couple of hours sleep we got up blurry eyed and headed to the field. With the rest of the team, we did the field walk and discussed their game plans as they were fortunate enough to have arrived early on Friday afternoon.
Our first game on Saturday was against Clown Monkeys and we took the win 4-2. It was a great start for us. The next team we faced was Auckland Fraction. This game didn't go as we planned - we took a loss 3-2. We were annoyed at ourselves as some points we played really well, and then others really bad. Our next match was against Expendables. These guys played really well and we weren't on our game. We showed points where we would dominate, but then we would show points that were rubbish. With us throwing bodies away at the end of time we came away with a 2-2 draw. A draw is better than a loss though, right?
Soon after our game the weather turned bad and games for the day were cancelled. This was a blessing in disguise really. We were able to head home, debrief, clean our gear and talk about what worked and what didn't. After some lengthy chats we came up with new game plans to try on Sunday.
Sunday rolled around and games kicked off at 8am. We were the third game of the day and we faced off against ADHD. This was great as a couple of our Aussie mates were guesting for them and we were keen to try out our new game plan. On them. The game kicked off and our plan worked! We took a 4-0 win. The next team we faced was Hijinx and we would face them twice this day. We beat them both times and in doing so secured us the No 1 spot going into the final.
During the lunch break we went back out and re-scouted the field. We wanted to make sure that everyone knew their shots. We would be facing fellow Dye sponsored team Clown Monkeys in the final and they had been playing some very impressive ball over the weekend.
The final started off strong for us. We double stacked back centre and got early kills off the break from the snake side. Once we had control of that we took the first point. The second point played out exactly the same as the first point and we were now up 2-0. On the third point Clown Monkeys changed their game plan so we didn't get kills off the break like we had done previously. They put up a solid fight but we still took the third point. The team’s confidence was super strong going into the fourth point and it showed as we took some early kills but Clown Monkeys weren't giving up without a fight either! With gun fights erupting across the field they took a few of our players but we held out and secured the game with a 4-0 win.
We would like to thank our sponsors Paintball Addiction, Devon Stutz and Dye Precision for supplying us with the best equipment - our DMs and Rotors didn't miss a beat all weekend. We look forward too seeing everyone at this event again in September.