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Official: mezii joins Vitality

by Tom Coles 8 November 2023

written by Tom Coles

William “mezii” Merriman has been a key part of Fnatic’s Counter-Strike roster since joining from Endpoint in Summer 2021. But now he has made the hop across from the black and orange to the black and yellow colours of Vitality ahead of the BLAST Fall Finals.

We just signed Messi too pic.twitter.com/uFdAVT7tbf

— Team Vitality 🐝 (@TeamVitality) November 8, 2023

The BLAST Paris Major champions are rumoured to be losing Emil “Magisk” Reif, anchor for the team over the last two years. According to HLTV it is a “done deal” that Magisk will reunite with coach Danny “zonic” Sorensen, with whom he has won four Major titles, at the Saudi Arabian organisation Falcons. This leaves Vitality needing another player to fill Magisk’s shoes at short notice, and it seems they have chosen mezii. Magisk is also listed on Vitality’s roster for the event, but it is expected the Dane will not play with his move to Falcons pending.

This is not the first move Vitality has made since the Major. In the summer, they replaced Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen with free agent Shahar “flameZ” Shushan, a move that commentators noted seemed designed to “future-proof” their roster by replacing the 29-year-old dupreeh with the Israeli, some 9 years younger. The exit of Magisk means Vitality no longer have any Danes on staff, with performance coach Lars “ROBL” Robl also joining Falcons alongside Zonic, and dupreeh having left the team, currently standing in for Heroic.

mezii has been highlighted as a future UK star ever since he was hand-picked by Henry “HenryG” Greer for Cloud9’s ill-fated “Colossus” project in 2020. A short stint on Endpoint where he was usually at the top of the scoreboard followed before Fnatic snapped him up. As part of the famous organisation’s first international lineup, mezii and co were victorious in REPUBLEAGUE Season 2 and Elisa Masters Espoo 2022, but their best finish at a Major was a quarter-final finish at IEM Rio where they lost to eventual champions Outsiders.

mezii playing for fnatic at the Blast.TV Paris Major earlier this year

A stint on Vitality alongside fellow Endpoint alum flameZ could give mezii the chance to fight for tier 1 titles, an opportunity the Birmingham native will no doubt relish.

Vitality’s roster is as follows:

Daniel “apEX” Madesclaire
Mathieu “ZyWoo” Herbert
Lotan “Spinx” Giadi
Shahar “flameZ” Shushan
William “mezii” Merriman

Remy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam (coach)

8 November 2023 0 comment

All News Must Read Report

Esports Scotland yet to pay staff and players from the last SEL season over 11 months ago*

by Dafydd 3 November 2023

written by Dafydd

The Scottish Esports League Season 6 has been postponed as many of the employees and participants of the previous season have yet to be paid. Season 5, which took place in Dundee and Angus College’s Gardyne Theatre, featured finals in League of Legends, CS:GO, Rocket League, VALORANT, and Guilty Gear Drive yet the £15,000 pound prize pool remains unpaid.

Teams, talent, staff, and contractors have not been paid as Esports Scotland’s Founder, James Hood, has urged them to be patient as the esports body explores new streams of revenue to cover the costs.

For many their patience has run thin. Players and contractors reached out to UKCSGO and Esports News UK, through the organisation BCSA (British Counter-Strike Association) about the lack of payments. Since then myself [Dafydd Gwynn] and Dom Sacco have been involved in a month-long investigation into the situation surrounding Esports Scotland, SEL, and why payments have not been made. During this time a lot of information was uncovered which will all be laid bare in this article and a joint-article written by Esports News UK.

*Update: After the publication of this article several other people have come forward to Esports News UK and UKCSGO claiming that they are owed money from before SEL 5.

Who are Esports Scotland?

Esports Scotland Limited was founded by James Hood in February 2017. It first dipped it’s toes into tournament organising when it announced the very first season of SEL in 2018 and from there they only grew their operations. They began creating a name for themselves in their local esports scene, hosting five seasons of SEL and amassing over 5,000 followers on their X (formerly Twitter) account.

Esports Scotland continued to grow and recently announced a partnership with Dundee and Angus college, only strengthening their connection to their local scene. Their aim is to encourage the tie between education and esports, as the press release states:

The collaboration promises to generate countless opportunities for students and school pupils from tournaments, industry talks, summer boot camps to a suite of new courses, work placements and job opportunities. Esports Scotland will also have its own Esports Training facility within the Gardyne Campus.

Alongside their grassroots connections, Esports Scotland also established partnerships with mainstream companies such as Lenovo, Currys, BBC Sports Scotland, and more.

Outside of their events and business acumen, Esports Scotland have also selected players to compete in the Commonwealth Esports Championships where they won two silver medals.

Photo Credit: British Esports / Esports Scotland

The Lack of Payments

To start off it’s important to establish a timeline of when the delay of payment began. One of the CS:GO players who competed in SEL Season 5 sent his invoice off on Wednesday the 23rd of November 2022 at 16:22, so almost a year later why hasn’t he or any of the other players been paid?

The previous season, SEL Season 4, had payment delays of four months due to grant funding coming slower than expected. This made Esports Scotland decide to pivot towards a sponsorship income model in an attempt to pay both players and talent faster.

We understand that the initial plan was to focus on community cups and battlegrounds instead of a physical event for SEL 5 in 2022, however, there were apparently sponsors that fell through for the Commonwealth Esports Championship which led to pressure coming from stakeholders for SEL 5 to run. This ultimately led to Esports Scotland to go ahead with SEL Season 5 which ended up happening in November 2022.

For the LAN event Esports Scotland also decided to pay staff instead of it being run by primarily volunteers and they upped the prize pool from the previous £11,000 to £15,000.

Esports News UK were informed that the money from the headline sponsor for Season 5, Irn-Bru, was used to cover previous community cups and battlegrounds that still had existing debts to pay.

Photo credit: Esports Scotland Twitter

Unfortunately players, staff, talent, and contractors have still not been paid for this event as Esports Scotland claimed they had sponsors fall through once again and they did not have the funds available. Over the last year the company’s Founder has been assuring the players that he is exploring all options for new revenue, but there has been no guarantees or promises of when these payments will be made.

If you have been following Esports Scotland closely you would have noticed that they have secured partnerships over the last 11 months, however they have informed us that these partnerships are affiliate deals or non-monetary deals and will not generate cash in the short term. UKCSGO also understands that some partnerships have been verbal, not contractual.

One disgruntled source also informed us of a former business owned by Esports Scotland Founder, James Hood called Strawberry Wedding Films, and sent us links to multiple reviews complaining that their wedding videos were received late months after payment was sent. It seems that this business may have been hit by covid, however James Hood didn’t comment on this and after we reached out to him regarding this, the company has been taken off google so that the reviews can be found nowhere online.
*Since publication the company is back on Google and the reviews can be seen once again online.

It is currently unknown when payments will be made for SEL 5 or if they will be paid at all, but Esports Scotland have ensured us that they are exploring new forms of revenue including investment, education, and B2B collaborations. As a result the next season of SEL, Season 6, will be postponed until the funds are found to make the appropriate payments.

CS:GO players speak out about the lack of payment

Ben “ghil” Nicholson, who played the tournament with runners up Temperate Scotland spoke to UKCSGO about how delayed the payment was and the overall quality of the event itself. “So, Shoobie and I’s team is owed £600 in total, with our split giving £100 to each LAN player, and £50 to MMS and moshi, who played up until the LAN final.”

“I’ve had multiple communications with SEL admins. I have to say that most of these interactions were carried out completely unprofessionally, and have even risen to the extent of people being mocked for needing the prize pool in the public general chat. James has been professional, frankly cause he has to be, but all other communications with admins were totally out of line, and had no real respect for the players. It’s overdue that something comes out about this, because nobody had any idea besides people that are involved in Scottish esports, or friends of them.”

People [were] being mocked for needing the prize pool in the public general chat [by admins].

“Besides the unprofessional actions of the admins, James himself was very much on damage control and set up calls with many of whom were asking about funds, myself being included. James is adamant that all players will be paid with his constant reminders in chat that ‘It’s just taking time. As soon as I have concrete news I will let you know.’ However, it seems like there hasn’t been much movement, and the “private” talk about sponsors seems to be a method to decompress the upheaval from players waiting on their money.”

“I mean it’s gotten to the point that I’ve completely forgotten about the money. Unless someone brings it up, it never crosses my mind as it has been so long. The first thought that comes to me from SEL is their unprofessionalism and how badly they handled SEL, not the money we’re owed.”

The winners at SEL 5. Photo Credit: Esports Scotland Twitter

Another player at the event, John “Dutchy” Holland, was the captain of the winning team Skelp and he also spoke about his opinions on the tournament. “SEL scaled too fast and the business model wasn’t correct. The main thing for us is it’s not about money, it’s about us being promised the money [and not receiving it].”

Honestly for me personally, I just want to ensure that our scene is in safe hands before any more damage is done to Scottish/UK esports.

“I’m past the point of caring about the money, I don’t think I will ever get it, that’s just gone. Honestly for me personally, I just want to ensure that our scene is in safe hands before any more damage is done to Scottish/UK esports. There is for sure demand for Scottish CS, the main problem is lack of structure. No real hubs for Scottish players etc have ever lasted longer than a week.”

One final player, Kevin “w00dy” Duffy spoke to us regarding his disappointment with how the tournament was run. “Competitive integrity was out the window the moment we were setting up in favour of flashy lights. The desks weren’t flat to the point we had to stack duct tape a handful of times to even the surface. The projector streaming the gotv was in plain sight and we could hear the casters crystal clear during rounds.”

“There were serious server issues, which the players had to fix for the admins who were getting paid to do their job. The same server crashed three times in a three-game series, costing both teams crucial rounds, which arguably changed the outcomes of some games.”

I have no expectations to get paid at this point, sadly.

“SEL had the facilities to run a great event but fell short on the competitive side. The venue and setup itself looked great, but from the playing side it was sub par. The payment was always going to be delayed in my eyes due to there being delays the year prior as well, but 11 months later I never expected it to be this late. I have no expectations to get paid at this point, sadly.”

There was one particular point of contention, where an admin allegedly grabbed one of the players, Isaac “isaac” Pattison, by the shoulders and wheeled him away from the desk after seeing him using an in-game rented knife called ‘LGBT slayer’.

This upset the admin, who didn’t want the name shown on stream.

Ghil said: “Saying we deserved the server crash because of a poorly named skin, although it was bad from him to use it, to rest a possible result of the tournament on the name of a RENTED skin, is madness. I’d understand if it was Isaac’s knife, but it’s rented from a friend of his, only thing he could have done is remove the name tag, but I doubt he thought about that.”

Dutchy added: “This same admin also literally ripped the headset off my head at one point, because there was a tech issue that we were trying to solve.”

We understand Esports Scotland has had conversations about this internally to ensure incidents like this don’t happen again.

Esports Scotland claim to remain committed

Photo Credit: Esports Scotland

UKCSGO and ENUK have reached out to James Hood for his right to reply.

The Founder of Esports Scotland invited Dom Sacco and myself onto a call with players and the BSCA (Allan Hender) to explain the situation and what his plan of action is for the future. However he asked that the contents of the call be left off the record.

We then followed up by asking for his official comment by sending these questions:

Why haven’t people been paid yet?
When can they expect to get paid?
Did the SEL5 have a prize pool of £3,000 per game, split across the five games? I know you said it was £15,000 overall
Is there an SEL6 taking place this year?
Is there anything else you’d like to add?

In response James Hood stated:

Like most businesses, Esports Scotland has faced challenges emerging from the economic pressures of the last few years. We are actively engaged with those affected and remain committed to growing esports in Scotland with our commercial partners.

A final quote from Allan Hender and the BSCA

Allan Hender, head of The British Counter-Strike Association (BCSA), said: “The SEL situation is unfortunate for all involved, the goal of growing Scottish esports is commendable and we would love to see more of it.

However, things have to be done professionally and at the right pace for the Scottish scene.

One aspect that’s become clear to me since setting up the BCSA is money solves very few problems. Prize money, salaries and so on will not have a dramatic influence on producing more top-flight British players.

Consistent competition, LAN events, reliable organisations, competitive integrity and professional standards are the answer. SEL will need to align themselves with this philosophy if they wish to operate more successfully in the future.”

Final words

This is the information currently known about the situation. If there are any follow ups we will be sure to update the article and keep the public informed.

3 November 2023 0 comment

All News Interview Must Read

ITB founder on the Pipeline Academy: “We’ll be targeting talented VALORANT players to entice them back to Counter-Strike”

by Lewis Head 1 October 2023

written by Lewis Head

On the 7th July 2023, ITB announced their talent pipeline on Twitter. This was followed up two months later on the 7th of September, with the announcement of their first Pipeline player, James “bevve” Slinn. UKCSGO sat down with Co-Founder Sam Macedonio to find out more about the project and where he is aiming to take it.

Into The Breach’s CS team at the recent Blast.TV Paris Major.

To start, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the scheme and what you’re hoping to achieve with it?

The primary purpose is to enable UK CS:GO players opportunities to develop their talent, thus widening the pool of ‘available’ UK CS:GO professionals that can viably compete at a high level. After the Major and with CYPHER and volt being poached, we were forced to decide between continuing to push for top 10-15 but go EU, or lower our ambitions and retain a U.K. majority. If this pipeline is a success, that sort of decision making wouldn’t be necessary in the future.

It is not an issue in France or Germany, for example, and we have comparable population sizes and player-bases. As I said in our announcement article, I don’t think this is the result of a lack of skill, but support, motivation, financing and infrastructure. Teams like Endpoint have done a lot in this regard, but we’d like to share the burden – especially following our success at the Paris Major. Despite the fact we now have a EU majority roster, we will never forget the support we received or our roots.

Have you got a timeframe for when you’re hoping to meet these goals?

It won’t happen overnight, but I’d hope within a year we’ll have made some form of impact. We’ll also be targeting talented VALORANT players to entice them back to Counter-Strike as CS2 comes out. There is no shortage of UK talent in VALORANT, and if you can click heads you can click heads.

We’ll be targeting talented VALORANT players to entice them back to Counter-Strike as CS2 comes out

How did you come up with and settle for this model?

We brainstormed internally and I spoke with several people in the scene on how to make the best impact – this is ultimately what we concluded on.

This is the first time something like this has been done in the CS scene. Why did you choose this over a more traditional academy roster?

Endpoint and several other teams across the ecosystem have tried the Academy model with varying degrees of success, but not all have lasted. I’d say it would be short-sighted and redundant of us to follow suit and think we can do differently, so we’re trying something else. I hope it’ll translate into something longer lasting and with a ‘deeper’ impact.

Would there not be a potential conflict of interest if the pipeline players were playing against the main roster?

Arguably, yes. But players always want to win, and even if a Pipeline player is against us I can’t imagine them not playing to their fullest extent. Regardless, our main roster is focused on competing at a Tier 1 / high Tier 2 position. We won’t be competing in ESEA Advanced and tournaments of a comparable level, where our Pipeline players are more likely to be active.

For prospective applicants, what’s the selection / vetting process like?

There is no formal selection or vetting process. I’d encourage people to reach out, share their plays, motivation for joining, and/or suggest players with real potential to compete at a high level. We’ll then discuss internally and see if we can align. We’re also actively scouting across VALORANT too.

And with both Punico and Neil_M on the management team, who is responsible for the pipeline?

It’s a joint effort – Neil obviously has his finger in many pies across the UK ecosystem and Punico is an excellent scout. I also watch as many games as possible. That said and as mentioned above, we can use all the help we can get identifying players, and we welcome any message.

Is there potential for players to be called up to the main roster if they’re performing well?

Absolutely.

When can we expect to see this project take shape and be publicly announced?

It’s already live – we’ve got our first recruit in bevve, and have several more lined up. It’s not something we’ll rush and will be progressively adding players throughout the following year.

——–

As mentioned, bevve has already been announced as the Pipeline’s first player. We sat down with him recently to hear his thoughts on the project, and for him to clear up some common misconceptions people have had:

bevve: “people saying ‘Why have you signed, you are just locked, you cannot even play.’ That is just false”

1 October 2023 0 comment

All News Interview Must Read

An Englishman Abroad: Whitey on coaching ENCE Academy

by Tom Coles 27 September 2023

written by Tom Coles

George “Whitey” White is an amateur football coach for the Sunday League team Average Joe’s FC. His Twitter features references to Big John, Neil Warnock, and Domino’s pizza so he’d probably be the last person you would expect to leave the UK CS:GO scene to join a Finnish team – but, last May, that is exactly what happened. He became coach of the newly-formed ENCE Academy.

ENCE are synonymous with Finnish Counter-Strike. They are most famous for their Cinderella run at IEM Katowice 2019, where they knocked out Liquid and NAVI to make the Grand Final, the team were set to be Finland’s great Counter-Strike hope. But a succession of unsuccessful roster moves – most infamously, dropping in-game leader Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen in the pursuit of more firepower – eventually led to the team disintegrating and rebuilding as an international lineup. Initially, Aleksi “allu” Jalli and Joonas “doto” Fors were still there to give Finnish fans something to cheer for, but both players would leave the team by the end of the 2021 season, meaning that what was once a Finnish super team was now merely another international roster in a sea of similar teams.

ENCE knew that it wasn’t enough to simply wait for the rest of the Finnish scene to catch up, enter ENCE Academy, which combined the best Finnish youngsters into one team. According to Whitey, it was not always set in stone to be an all-Finnish roster, with international and mixed teams both considered, but once they did end up with an all-Finnish team, there were multiple facets to the “language barrier” to consider.

“Finnish culture and personalities, how they like to communicate in English, how we could communicate in both Finnish and English… These changed so much and after many trial and error situations and adapting I feel like we are slowly but surely finding the perfect balance and finding the perfect foundation for many years to come when new rosters come and go.” Said Whitey. Of the players, only Ville “myltsi” Vilkman and Youssef “Juissi” Adam had brief stints on English-speaking teams – the others were known for their exploits in the domestic scene.

Whitey has plenty of experience coaching in the UK, having taken the reins of Fierce, Cex, and Endpoint Academy among others. After the latter was discontinued, Whitey took up a content-focussed role at Endpoint, contemplating his place in the scene and potentially leaving altogether. “I was fortunate enough to be brought in by Adz & Pete to keep working behind the scenes in the content management for Endpoint… I found great comfortability and rewards whilst doing that and at one point I thought my coaching days in esports could be over despite still wanting to one day do more if the right opportunity arose.”

That opportunity came when ENCE sought open applications for an academy programme coach – but Whitey revealed that it almost didn’t happen due to circumstances out of his control. “I made it all the way to the final interview stage and I didn’t show up for my interview as I was rushed into emergency surgery and had no access to reply to [Academy program lead] Eemeli. Thankfully he re-reached out to me because of my high scoring in previous stages and gave me another chance to reschedule after I was able to explain the situation; some things are just meant to be!” Whitey describes his proudest moment with ENCE as when he was initially offered the job, running down the stairs to his mum and dad screaming.

ENCE sign Whitey as Academy Coach

The Englishman has taken to Finland, calling it a “second home”. (He does the majority of his coaching online from England, but frequently flies out to Finland for events and bootcamps). He also has nothing but positive things to say about the organisation: “[Their] English is also excellent and we have never had troubles there, I feel more sorry for them having to listen to my grotty accent!” The Finnish supporters that make up ENCE’s fanbase have embraced Whitey in turn, and you can frequently find them cheering on the academy team’s successes in his Twitter replies.

There has been at times a language barrier in many small situations where we may have to reword certain things to make sense

That is despite the language barrier of communicating in English and Finnish, which the coach admits has not always been easy. “There has been at times a language barrier in many small situations where we may have to reword certain things to make sense, or maybe I have to slow down how fast I speak and sometimes they may need more time to think about how they want to word the sentence they are verbally speaking.” One year in, and the results are starting to pay off, with Whitey describing his players’ English as “seriously excellent”.

It certainly hasn’t stopped ENCE Academy on the server, with a win in MistGames Heroes of Tomorrow Fall 2022 sticking in Whitey’s mind. “That was the moment sparks lit, we truly started to believe in ourselves and a roster that if we work hard and do things correct we can achieve great things.” Though they haven’t yet managed to achieve Whitey’s goal of making top 50 on HLTV, the coach is happy that the programme is on track – with more to come this year: “the first goal for 2023 was to gain as much official experience as possible and try to win something… we did both [ENCE Academy won Elisa Open Suomi Season 5]. Onward from that point of course we challenge ourselves to different goals, lifting a LAN trophy, more content pushed out, striving to compete more with officials in English, the list goes on.”

One key moment for the academy program was when ENCE utilised Henri “HENU” Ylilehto as a stand-in for CCT Central Europe Finals in Malta, and Whitey was delighted: “Ah man, what a feeling. To many this may come across dramatic, but for a coach watching this kid play with the main team and just trying his heart out – it was super emotional for me because that’s just a small factor of what we are trying to do here.” He would love to see a player promoted again, potentially even full-time as MOUZ have done successfully with their academy roster, but concedes the timing has to be right. “It’s the new thing for esports teams to have the big factor of internal recruitment rather than external recruitment.”

Even though he’s not as involved any more, the UK scene is never far from Whitey’s mind. “I still try my best to stay up to date as much as possible, I do miss being a part of it fully (day-to-day).” He feels the scene is in a strong place, though it could be better, pointing to the mixed opinions surrounding the recent ESL Premiership season as a good example. “The bottom line is the talent is 100% there – It was an amazing situation to shine light onto the scene with what ITB core did – was amazing to watch. I hope that also motivated the rest of the scene to continue to work hard… so we can one day in the near future of CS2 repeat that again.”

My dream is to one day build a team with 5 UK/IRE players with full backing and me coaching it to see where I could get with it.

You might see Whitey back in the UK scene in the future, even though he’s happy with ENCE Academy right now. “My dream is to one day build a team with 5 UK/IRE players with full backing and me coaching it to see where I could get with it. I had a similar vision with Endpoint Academy which sadly didn’t pan out the way I wanted or Endpoint wanted, but I am happy I tried.” And the coach, who has racked up plenty of frequent flyer miles despite only being 26, had some advice for the UK scene:

“If we get behind one another more and stay focused on our own teams and ourselves as individuals we will continue to grow – I feel like that is and always the best advice I could give. Even when I played / coached in the UK scene this was always a thing and maybe at times I played a part of that negative image, we grow as humans and we realise our faults as we get older and more wise. The quicker we can unite together and work hard it only shows better light to our scene overall.”

27 September 2023 0 comment

All News ESL UK Must Read

ESL Premiership Trivia Quiz

by Tom Coles 17 September 2023

written by Tom Coles

With the news that ESL FACEIT Group are discontinuing their National Championships, including ESL Premiership, fans will have to look back over the memory of the tournaments that have been held since 2015.

How many of our trivia questions can you answer correctly?

Q1. Who won the first ever ESL Premiership title?

Team XENEX
EZSkins.com
Team Infused
FM eSports

Q2. Of all the players who competed in the first ESL Premiership season (Spring 2015), only two are still competing professionally in Counter-Strike. One is MiGHTYMAX, who is the other?

Swaggy
smooya
Boaster
fejtZ

Q3. What was significant about the Summer 2016 grand final?

It was the first Premiership final on LAN
It was a best-of-seven series
It was RattleSNK’s final professional game
A team made a mid-game roster swap

Q4. smooya and Surreal won ESL Premiership Spring 2019 with which mix team?

The Working Men
fish123
Benched Heroes
The Pensioners

The ESL Premiership trophy from 2017.

Q5. Which commentator worked both the second-ever ESL Premiership and the most recent event at Insomnia?

Machine
Ne0kai
Skriv
Jacky

Q6. Endpoint are the only organisation to win ESL Premiership more than once, winning 10 titles across the event’s lifespan. How many titles did they win in a row between 2019 and 2022?

Q7. Who is the only Irish player to win an ESL Premiership title?

vertiGo
arTisT
Whindanski
conoR

Q8. Your final ESL Premiership champions are Raptors EC. Who was their highest-rated player in the Grand Final against Endpoint (according to HLTV)?

AwaykeN
ifan
MMS
ReegaN

ANSWERS:

Q1. Team XENEX won the first-ever ESL Premiership, with a roster consisting of Jonathon “sheekey” Sheekey, Sam “RattleSNK” Gawn, Reece “Puls3” Marrs, Joe “JT” Talbot and Josh “mole” Rowley. This run included the longest professional CS:GO map ever, when they defeated Excel 46-42 in the group stage. Puls3 would go on to win 4 more titles with fm-esports and Endpoint, while Sheekey was last seen competing in the 2021 edition with mix team Max & Big Garlic Dips.

Jonathon “Sheekey” Sheekey, a key part of XENEX’s title-winning side in 2015.

Q2: Estonia’s fejtZ has had what Football Manager would call a “journeyman” career. Now plying his trade with long-standing Estonian organisation syncK Esports, he competed in the first two seasons of ESL Premiership with United Estonia, winning the Summer 2015 event. That would not be his last dalliance in the UK scene, either, as he attended EPIC.LAN 35 with ROYALS.

Q3: Summer 2016 was a best-of-seven series, one of only a handful recorded in the history of CS:GO esports. It was also a “pure” best-of-seven, with no maps banned; in the event, MnM Gaming won 4-2 over Reason Gaming’s UK lineup, helped by French CS legend and two-time Major champion KioShiMa.

Q4: The Pensioners was the name of the mix team that teamed up former Epsilon team-mates Kia “Surreal” Man and Owen “smooya” Butterfield with Joseph “Luzuh” Loose, Shane “shaney” Smith and Jake “jakem” McCausland plus coach Ross “RossR” Rooney. They defeated Fierce Esports in the final. The mix would return for the next few ESL Premierships without Surreal and smooya, and they disbanded after relegation in the Spring 2020 season.

Q5: Jack “Jacky” Peters was a commentator alongside Karam “Kyan1te” Kabbara in ESL Premiership’s second season, and returned for what was the final event at Insomnia casting with Zander “Blank” Padwick. Many famous talent have taken part in Premiership over the years, including the likes of Alex “Machine” Richardson, Henry “HenryG” Greer and Harry “JustHarry” Russell.

Q6: 8 titles from Summer 2019 through to Autumn 2022. Endpoint were only stopped earlier this year by the Into the Breach lineup who made the quarter-finals of the BLAST Paris Major. Only one player was part of all of those consecutive titles, and indeed every Endpoint title – in-game leader Max “MiGHTYMAX” Heath.

Q7: Conor “conoR” McCool played ESL Premiership seasons with The Pensioners, Reason, and WE HAWT among others. But it was the Autumn 2020 season, where he played with Endpoint as a stand-in for the ineligible Shahar “FlameZ” Shushan, that saw him take the title. He has since transitioned to VALORANT full-time, having most recently played with Human Tripwires and now coaching DIVIZON.

Q8: AwaykeN topped Raptors EC’s scoreboard with key contributions on the two maps that they won, Vertigo and Inferno. The Bulgarian AWPer, who lives in the UK, left the squad earlier this year but has returned to help them find success and etch their name into that Premiership trophy forever.

17 September 2023 0 comment