Charlie Watson enjoyed a welcome catch-up with some old paintball warrior mates when a bunch of them made the trip from Wellington and Rotorua to put together a scratch team for the weekend's Northland Open.
Watson was a member of the national championship side, the Saints, that travelled to international events
in Australia, Asia and the United States.
"We did it for the fun though, we had to pay our own way to events and it was quite a costly sport back in the day, fortunately now it's a lot cheaper," he said.
Some of his old teammates contacted him and suggested throwing together a team to support the Northland event and Watson was stoked to play his first competitive tournament in a long time.
"It's an adrenaline sport, as you can see everyone gets fired up and it takes a while for everyone to cool down afterward. Fortunately everyone's mates and it's all good fun," he said.
Not surprising then that his team's name for the open was Team Adrenaline.
"It's not really a spectator sport, it's a sport you need to play to enjoy. Although I'm getting old now, we can't keep up with all those young players now," he says with a laugh.
He said technology was far superior to what they were able to use in the Saints' heyday. Now players could shoot at more than 25 paintballs per second.
But Watson said experience, tactics and team work certainly helped.
"We're just a throw-together team but we'll get there by the end of the day," he said.
"You don't have to be an ironman to play, you can be overweight and old and and still be really good in the field, there are no boundaries on sex or age or athleticism, anyone can play and still do really well. It's a mental game a lot like chess but chess played at 100 miles an hour."
