Actually I sit here back home and write the journal entry for day 3 of the CPL World Tour stop in Sheffield, England. Why? many reasons, probably safer to say nothing on some of them, but others are explained below. Suffice to say overall, I was pretty dissapointed with the event, although some of the matches were excellent.

Sunday started off like the previous two days, on the floor of a 4kings hotel room. I am obviously getting old, the aches in my back from the floor seem to get worse with every "floor sleeping" event. Shouldnt complain though, it was nice of the guys to help me out and save me a few pounds.

We got to the event at about 10am and Zaccubus left us straight away to warm up for his match with Ztrider which would decide his fate in this stop. When we had got our coffee (to wake up) and a traditional bacon roll, we joined the spectator area behind Zacc and watched him play an excellent game to defeat ztrider. Finally he'd broken the top 8 spot he'd gained in previous events. The night before, both players had been super confident of beating one another, but the UK gods shone down on the home favourite this time.

Once through to unchartered territory, Zacc seemed to thrive on the attention and played even better to beat Booms. His last game of the day came against zyz and it would decide who "won" the losers bracket and therefore a place in the top 3 would be assured. Zacc won the first map reptty comfortably, only to lose by a couple in map 2. Map 3 was mail bighting for the spectators, with every frag cheared and every death met with a groan. 2 minutes remained and Zacc held a slender 8-5 lead in a very low scoring tactical game. zyz pulled off some great shots and spawn kills to grab the lead with a minute remaining at 12-10. Zaccubus went on the hunt, but could not get his prey until 6 seconds remained to make it a 1 frag game. zyz sat out the 5 second spawn in though and spawned away from the only spawn Zacc could spam rockets at.

1 frag left Zaccubus in 4th place and denied him his chance at revenge over fatal1ty. He was understandably pleased at his 4th place finish and the 4kings guys were very happy with him.

The CS tourney came to an end with Team 9 proving far too good for everyone at the event. Catch gamer feeling the full force of the Team 9 steam train with a 15-0 thrashing on de_train as CT's! and that was in the upper bracket final!!

4kings seemed happy enough with 5th place overall and especially happy after their win over old enemy sk.

I had a pretty strange day on the final day of the CPL UK stop with lots of things happening that a day later I cant exactly recall. Sizah from fnatic got into a bit of trouble trying to get to the airport to catch his flight home. Due out of east midlands at 7pm, he was still stranded in Sheffield at 5pm, trying to get a bus or a train to the airport. I drove over to pick him up and take him onto the airport, otherwise he would have missed it totally. The 2 hour round trip did mean however that I missed the game of the weekend between vo0 and fatal1ty.

Coming from the lower bracket, vo0 had to beat fatal1ty twice and therefore win 4 maps to win the CPL UK crown. The fact he did this, speeks volumes about his mental toughness and professional approach to his gaming. It was a truelly remarkable achievement by a player who has little left to prove, in terms of PK.

I arrived back at the event, to see the BYOC being taken down and quickly rescued my laptop and camera, just one of the reasons this very journal was not posted yesterday. Grabbed a quick chat with pbx and lethal about our travel arrangements home and then setup camera for the presentations. (Pics will follow).

Finally, the event played out as it had begun, with frankie goes to hollywood playing and the big bangs from 3 days earleir replayed. We had to head off back to the hotel first to eat before going home and it seemed my ability to count was called into question as SIX of us tried to cram into the car, vo0, zacc, lethal and rogue all squashed into the back and pbx happily grabbing the remaining front seat. I almost forgot, vo0's cheque took up much of the space in the back as well!!

We got our food and said our goodbyes, particularly to Ben from 4k and Tempus from x6 and headed back to Wales. I also had a chance to speak to the guys from TsN and thanked them for a good job, under what was obviously difficult circumstances with the DDOS attack. Even though we are on different casting teams, I truelly appreciate just how much we both are left at the mercy of mindless idiots sometimes.

I didnt actually realise how late it was when we departed and it was nearly 4am before we finally arrived back home after dropping lethal and pbx back first. Is it any wonder I wasn't fit enough to post this before now? :)

My current thoughts on the event, without trying to blame anyone in particular, are not great, but i'd rather reflect on things before making any further remarks about it. It was after all a big job to get this organised and GameFrontier obviously tried as hard as possible to make it a success. The fact that it wasn't though for many people means that perhaps the UK gaming scene needs to take a long hard look at itself before attempting a further world class event. There are many, many things I could say about the event that would be mis-construed as some sort of anti-pl message (I am NOT anti CPL in the slightest) or anti-TsN (I am not ant-any gaming broadcaster) or even anti-gamefrontier. The fact is I went to the event with an open mind, despite some worries over things. Those worries were realised early on and it never got any better through the 3 days. Simple things, such as the way people were able to walk in and out with laptops and never be security checked (not that there was any way of proving or disproving it was yours anyway).

Constructive critisism of the event is a must, especially if the UK is to move forward in gaming. Do we even have a chance of a CPL event next year? On this showing, I doubt it very much.