It's with a heavy heart we issue this press release.
Joy Stockholm will withdraw from the NPPL series after the last event in San Diego 2007. It has been a great experience but unfortunately the deteriorating quality of the reffing has made it impossible
for us to commit the time and effort it takes to attend.
We feel that it's now impossible for us to be able to compete on equal basis in the NPPL with the present reffing staff. We originally had hopes that the situation would get better after the OC fiasco but it has not.
Event after event we have suffered horrendous, unjust calls against us with the last incident in KC where we were denied hang points because the flag wasn't in place (the judge's responsibility) was just the last straw.
It was bad enough the refs had forgotten to place the flag in our opponent's base before the game but after the game had finished and the head judge was made aware of the ref's oversight, they obvoiusly had an opportunity to put things right and elected not to thus precluding our advancement into the semi-finals, that was an outrageous decision and the straw that finally broke the back and heart of Joy Stockholm. We have tried to contact NPPL after the event but they have not bothered to answer or email.
Our apologies to our fans in the US who have been fantastic, the degree of support we have got is what kept us going after OC but I'm sure they will all understand our decision and hopefully we will see each other soon.
Also, apologies to our sponsors who have made it possible for us to attend these events in the US: WDP-Draxxus-NXE-REBALL-STIFFI-BK-SNAPBOX
We have had 2 great seasons where we have made the final 4 no less then 5 times the last 7 events !!
We hope that NPPL will wake up and solve this problem so other teams can compete on an equal basis.
and stop denying the bias and incompetent reffing.
As for now, the NPPL makes it impossible for a European team to compete on an equal footing due to biased and incompetent reffing.
And that is truly sad because Joy helped NPPL in the first years after the split with the reffing program. We reffed many events before taking a pro spot in 2005.
We are truly sorry that it had to come to this, hopefully changes will be made in the future that can make us feel welcome in the US again.
Joy have always been about playing the game for the love and fun of it, and when that is taken away we can't find any reason to continue. Joy have been NPPL's biggest supporters and have attended every event since 2005. We still love everything the NPPL have done for the sport and wish the legue all the best in the future.
Team Joy Stockholm
Magued Idris
Maximus Lundqvist
Sebban Samuelsson
Karl Brian
Karls Samuelsson
Jake Eriksson
Magnus Storckenfeldt
Robin Larsson
Rasmus Larsson
Knut Andre Olstad
Bj�rn Sj�dahl
Erik Mellgren
UPDATE:
68Caliber.Com emailed Camille Lemanski and Shawn Walker for comment on this development, and Mrs. Lemanski sent along Walker's email response to Magued Idris of Joy Division:
From: Shawn Walker [mailto:shawn@nppl.tv]
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 10:21 AM
To: sales@reball.se
Cc: 'Camille Lemanski'
Subject: RE: Joy Stockholm issue
Magued-
Thanks for the email and comments. When we took over the NPPL in January there was a lot of work to do. Many things we have done well while others we have not been able to address yet.
One area we have not been able to improve yet is the refereeing. Although I don't believe it is any worse than it was in 2006 I do know it has not gotten better.
Paintball Refereeing is a very difficult job. It is hard to recruit refs and
even more difficult to properly train refs. This year alone we have done
over a dozen on site trainings that have produced only a handful of refs.
Over the years rules have been made to try and take the decisions out of the refs hands. We've implemented 2 out 3's and more round robin play so one call shouldn't determine the outcome of the match. The Pro teams now play 7 games Sunday morning and the 4th place team in KC made the cut with only 3 wins. That means they lost 4 games and still made the cut. It also means that if a ref call determined the outcome of one or even two of the games they still were able to move on.
This is not meant to be an excuse but rather an understanding of where we are at.
It's now time to rethink where we are at and try to come up with a plan for the future. I am open to suggestions and have been taking calls and meetings from different people with different ideas.
I hope to get through all the different ideas and have a plan in place by
San Diego and work diligently towards an improved effort for 2008.
I would be happy to sit down with you in SD to discuss further or if you
have any immediate suggestions we could do a call or please email me sooner. The more information I can collect now, the better decision I can make for the league.
If after SD you still feel like you would like to take Joy out of the NPPL I
will help you through the process.
Thanks again for your continued support and I hope we can work together to find a solution that helps the sport of paintball.
Regards,
Shawn Walker
President
National Professional Paintball League
Xtreme Paintball Sports League
www.nppl.tv
www.xpsl.com
yeah, for once i agree with jon