UKAPU Committee Biographies

Tim Haines began playing airsoft when he was 15, and still play pretty much every weekend where possible, everything from Sunday skirmishes to historically themed games (particularly Vietnam airsoft)

He joined UKAPU in 2016, originally as the player representative for the South West of the UK. He was voted in as chairman after David Weston retired from the role.

His mission is to continue to look out for the interests of UK airsoft and help to improve the sport for the benefit of both current and future players. Himself and the rest of the UKAPU committee are committed to helping UK airsoft get bigger, better and hopefully have a great deal of fun along the way.

Tom Pritchard is our Vice-Chairman, along with our representative for Wales. An avid airsofter for just over 7 years, Tom has joined the team to develop and protect airsoft.

He would like to push for an NGB for airsoft for the benefits associated with airsoft being recognised as a sport.

Tom has helped develop policies and procedures during his normal 9-5 and hopes to use his ideas to help UKAPU in any way he can.

“I’m currently running a Wolverine MTW and really enjoying it. A new stealthier style of gameplay has presented itself and I’m enjoying it much more than my old method of pushing objectives and making much use of respawns”.

This position is currently vacant.

Matt Furey-King, widely known as Furey, is an airsoft player hailing from Bristol, England.

Furey started playing regularly around 1997 and soon joined Spectre, a local team that went on to run a couple of playing sites. He has served in the British Army for 7 years, doing op tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is now a civilian aircraft engineer. Matt has had technical and review articles published in several airsoft magazines, is hooked on Kalashnikovs and Russian kit and was active in the Hong Kong airsoft scene for a time.

Being an airsoft activist has led him to found, and often lead, UK Airsoft Players Union and also has been President of the European Airsoft Association for least 4 years, excluding a gap in his leadership.

Along with his long suffering team, Furey is a milsim fanatic and often participates in large games overseas, which are documented on his YouTube channel, Claymore Airsoft TV.

Daniel Shears has been playing airsoft on and off since the mid 90s, first starting off as backyard skirmishing and then progressing onto regular skirmishes and more recently, MILSIM games.

His other hobbies include photography, gaming and amateur 3D printing.

He also runs the Airsoft blog ATRG which is a weekly publication focussing on reviews, interviews and news within the MILSIM community.

This post is held by Bill Whitmore-Ryan.

This post is currently vacant.

Jacob Wright

Jacob was introduced to airsofting by a friend in 2010 and hasn’t looked back since! Most of that time has been spent skirmishing at sites across the country, with some Milsim and Filmsim events thrown in as well!

As the regional representative for the East of England, as well as our press officer, he looks forward to meeting players and representing them as required.

This post is held by Tom Pritchard, our vice-chairman.

This position is currently held by Brendon Stewart.

The North of England position is held by Steven Morley. Due to his position in owning and operating sites, he has been specially co-opted into this position but his experience as a current member of the airsoft trade is absolutely invaluable to the committee.

This post is vacant.

In the words of our Scottish representative, Robbie Hutchison:

Well when not working in the jewellery business looking at beautiful watches and diamonds, I like to spend my time at my local airsoft sites in and around Glasgow. Since starting to play “oh it seems like year” but is actually about year and a half and have become totally addicted to the sport

I started to get to know the sport and want to progress further with it, so I took up the role of marshalling as I want to get the experience both sides of this fantastic sport and help to get an better understanding of it.

Now that I have I want to bring my experience in customer service and care and help share my passion for airsoft to help players and to make sure they have a voice for someone to stand up for their rights and also help make airsoft more accessible and to help promote the “family” factor of the sport.

Andy Peet has been playing airsoft since 2014. He plays at a variety of sites mostly around the South West region. He has been a member of UKAPU since 2017 joining as soon as he heard about UKAPU and what it stood for. During the week he is normally found making things from wood but at weekends he enjoys a variety of airsoft games from skirmishes to MILSIM.

This position is held by David Weston.

When David Weston isn’t spending his work week inside an office developing websites, he’s either playing Airsoft, thinking of new and inventive ways of breaking (and then repairing) his various Airsoft replicas, finding totally hilarious ways to cause harm to himself – and being relatively good at badminton.

He is the secretary and registrar of UKAPU, whilst previously was the Chairman until retiring from the role in 2023.

He is also responsible for maintaining this website, and can be found thinking of creative ways to make this site less confusing for our members to use.

This position is represented by Jacob Wright, who is additionally our East of England rep.

James Williams has been involved with airsoft properly since 1998, cutting his teeth at one of the longest operating urban sites at Sopley, then run by Airsoft Adventures. After several years of playing at the limited amount of sites that then existed across the country James set up his own site and in 2000 Spectre Wargames opened up and continued with woodland and urban sites for the next ten years.

As well as a long period of running and playing airsoft of all styles James was one of the founder members of the United Kingdom Airsoft Sites Governing Body and, whilst he is without an airsoft site to run, brings this experience to UKAPU. In his role as treasurer James tracks and manages UKAPU’s finances.