After an unfortunate turn of events in 5W, Thomas “Thomas” Utting will be returning to tier one Counter-Strike with OG at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2024.
The question is now, who is he replacing? Former Endpoint graduate Nikita “HeavyGod” Martynenko has been linked with Cloud9 for a while on X. As BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2024 rosters have been locked UKCSGO can confirm he will be joining Cloud9 alongside Kaisar “ICY” Faiznurov and Timofey “interz” Yakushin for this tournament. Interestingly enough they also have Audric “JACKZ” Jug listed as a sub alongside Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy.
Thomas started his IGLing career on Into the Breach after primarily rifling on previous projects such as Endpoint, Envy, and Coalesce. Now, despite OG’s IGL Nils “k1to” Gruhne, still being present on the roster, Thomas will be taking over the IGLing duties at BLAST Premier Fall Groups. Thomas is currently still looking for a roster as an IGL permanently.
Earlier this year, Thomas started an international project under the Indian organisation 5W with one goal in mind, the Shanghai Major later this year. This seemed like a genuine possibility as in their first tournament Regional Clash Arena Europe 2024 5W took home first place beating teams such as GamerLegion, 3DMAX, Endpoint, and Gamin Gladiators. Not only did this show the quality of the team, but showed how much Thomas had developed as an IGL since he took the reigns at the beginning of ITB. However, after all of this promise, misfortune struck.
Thomas departed the team citing scamming and a communications breakdown from the owners of 5W. What does this actually mean? The Brit stated in a tweet: “Well from our understand they are millionaires so money wasn’t a problem, they legit just stopped replying, fired our GM (Media guy vanished) and they never responded again.”
It appears that the unknown Indian organisation did pay Thomas’Â salary in advance when asked, but then after 30 days they just disappeared firing the GM who was the team’s only point of contact with the owners.
These unfortunate proceedings have not jaded Thomas as he noted to HLTV in an interview he wants to continue improving himself and to push forward a roster into the top 30 ultimately making the Major again.
UKCSGO interviewing Thomas the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023
UKCSGO reached out to Mike Schwartz, the Head of Esports at OG, for a comment on why they picked Thomas as the stand-in for this event.
We’re grateful for Thomas stepping into the roster on such short notice. With success leading ITB to a quarterfinal campaign in the Paris Major and recently, 5W to a win in the Regional Clash, we believe that he’s hungry to prove his ability as an IGL. Coming into a new season with the changes we’ve undergone, we felt he would have the most impact within the team.
OG will use the following lineup for the BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2024:
Maciej “F1KU” Miklas
Nils “k1to” Gruhne
Bram “Nexius” Campana
Mădălin-Andrei “MoDo” Mirea
Thomas “Thomas” Utting
Lambert “Lambert” Prigent (coach)
Adrien “killazoo” Legarda (assistant coach)
Roster Update.
Read our statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/Nc3sA487gb
— OG Counter-Strike (@OGcsgo) July 11, 2024
