I’m just sitting around, wasting away an afternoon, catching up on the latest news and gossip on the Internet.

I stumbled across this picture, and it put a smile on my face.  I have a real soft spot for Nexus.  About 5-6 years ago when Nexus was comming on the scene, i was fortunate enough to know some of their founding members.  In fact some former team mates joined up to create Nexus, and the feeder team Nexus Eclipse.  Jamie Abbot was a regular down at the Campaign Paintball park, and Pete Robinson was coaching Nexus and doing a lot of clinics.

What i truly loved about Nexus, was that they were a group of amateur players who were collected up and specifically trained to compete internationally.  They didn’t care about the English rankings, they didn’t even really care about Europe, they had one goal and that was the NPPL in the United States.   No one had an over inflated ego, everyone worked hard, and they put a strong emphasis on skills, including Snap Shooting.  In addition to training hard every weekend, we would often find the guys down at the Campaign site with us during the week snap shooting and training gun skills.  Sometimes alone.  These guys were committed.

Now skills alone can’t win games.  You have to play as a team.  But when two teams are relativly equal in team work, then skills will make the difference between winning and losing.  Nexus, a group of Amateurs, worked hard and became Pros.

Along the way over the years they picked up some other players that i trained.  In fact i modeled our team Campaign 2K4 after the Nexus philosophy:  develop skills, play as a team.  Some players who came through my camp and went on to Nexus were:  Robin Warman, Ash Chaplin, and Kyle Milton.

So this picture is Legendary.  Bowen Pratt destroying one of the Tontons with his magnificent Nexus Autococker (DC1 I think).  Nexus and Tontons were bitter rivals, both European teams in the NPPL, and they always seemed to draw each other.

I think this photo symbolises that rivalry, and embodies the bitter fighting spirit that drove both Nexus and Tontons in their fierce battles.

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