Friday, June 8, 2012
The Ancient & Honourable Art of Bird-Dogging
Bird-dogging, just in case you aren't familiar with the term (in a competitive paintball context) is when a non-player actively or intentionally identifies the position of a live player (who may have otherwise successfully moved with none the wiser.) Most often it is seen in efforts from outside the netting to giveaway the position of players with movement, hand gestures and the like. It is, in most cases, a rules violation and plainly unsportsmanlike behavior. While there have been some excellent instances captured on video in recent years the most consistent and egregious displays of bird-dogging on display anywhere in the world occur routinely on the CPL field in the Millennium Series. Despite the fact it's against the rules [7.06] it also appears to part & parcel of the techniques the officials are trained to use and it's mighty entertaining to watch them chase the players around like heat-seeking missiles homing in on their target.
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7 comments:
You mean the refs chase the players who move down the field and give away their positions when they get into a spot unseen?
Yes. It's even better when the end game is a 3 on 2 or 2 on 1. They gather like vultures over the soon to dead carcass. :)
I accept that refs need to check players, however; I can't see it being necessary to do so in such an elaborate way every time the player makes a bump!
I don't see it as being much more annoying than having people walk up and down the sidelines in Race2 waving bright shirts to indicate exactly where the opposing players are, or simply shouting their positions onto the field.
Is there even supposed to be spectator-side coaching anymore in Race2?
A more cynical person would try and make a link between Damages poor performance in the CPL and the recent themes of your posts.
To be honest I haven’t really noticed it and it could have only really come into effect this year as the pit side coaching from 2011 made most moves obvious.
There is a bit of “swarming” in one on ones but I’m yet to see a Benny Hill esk chase sequence and I have never felt it has affected the outcome of a point I have been involved in.
I once had a ref try to pull me out of the game for using other refs to mark players in my communication ("Shoot just to the left corner of the ref")
So just because the previous anon is oblivious to the fact that refs can be signaled on the field doesn't make it so.
12:09 Anon
And a more honest one might see that where there's smoke there's frequently fire. :) Neither of which has anything to do with this particular post--which, it seems to me you have inadvertently endorsed with your last comment. Nowhere did I suggest it altered outcomes, I simply stated that it existed.
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