irelands first
game in euro ctf was last night as most of you already know. we knew heading
into this game that it would be tough from the very outset.

cp5 - the
ugly

the first
map to be played was cp5, on which we are quite badly practiced. wales really
took advantage of this and at one stage swept the board with 3 caps in a very
short period of time. our teams lack of experience on this map was our downfall
and with wales capitalising on this we saw no way out of a loss. 6-0. our best
chance was when i managed to get the haste, the red armour and get the flag
back to our base - but by the time i arrived back with the flag wales already
had our flag in their base.

w3 - the
bad

the next map
was also a fairly close affair which unfortunately the score line doesn't suggest.
for 14 minutes we held wales at arms length in a very defensive manner. to say
the server was crap was an understatement. with both teams at times pinging
200. we agreed to finish the game though and then play on another server for
the next map. wales finally broke through our defense, and in our attempts to
recover the flag we seemed to be depersed and lost, once again this was used
to the opposite teams advantage bringing them captures consecutively.

w2 - the
good(ish)

the final
map of this match was q3w2 - which thankfully we were well practiced on. and
it was a very close affair, at times painfully close. with wales snatching the
lead and simo quickly equalising for us the last 10 minutes were tense. wales
broke through once again with some great syncronised attacking getting the flag
back to their base with just sheer numbers ... gibs everywhere - it felt like
playing rugby with wave upon wave of attackers and forwards picking up the flag
as their team mates died. they got the cap making it 2-1. but there was some
life left in us still. on the 18th minute we decided to go all out. i pushed
up slightly and noticed 2 welsh men gaurding the flag on the top level in an
attempt to trick us ... i managed to kill both of them, get the flag and make
a run through powerup only to greet a welsh mans rocket on my way down and a
laggy roger wilco tell me not to take the flag because a tooled up haste man
was behind me, alas roger wilco was about 1 second too late in delivering me
this message. however it was a great game, fairly fast paced and evenly matched.

i'm pleased
overall that a team made up of many people with no experience of ctf have advanced
so far so quickly. it stands to us that people like mindphuck and the lads at
fh and nd are willing to put in a trojan effort to get us on par with nations
like wales, england and scotland who've been playing ctf day in and day out
for a few years now. i've no doubt we've learned from this and will be the stronger
the next time we face an opponent. it's tough missing top players with ctf experience
from the lineup like jedi and others with huge raw talent and aim and tactical
awareness that can't be with us for various reasons but we've sure made up for
it. and england, scotland and northern ireland won't have as easy a time as
wales that's for sure

other good
coverage :

www.challenge-uk.com
(decent first hand coverage from sky on the front page)

www.quakenation.com (some coverage of the
various groups on the front page)

barrysworld demos of the action (here)

ftp.quake.ie demos (m1ke
pov , sky
pov)

the welsh teams homepage (have screenshots
of the games and demos from welsh pov)

bunnys - ireland
v rest of world column (good for anyone who doesn't know the irish quake3
scene in any dept ... it does a good job at showing the kind of gaming backgrounds
our players have)