EZSkins have been a team on everybody’s radar ever since they were first announced towards the end of the spring months. Though at times quiet, each time they surface they manage to do exactly what many expect them to do – perform. Most notably, the team participated at the London DreamHack event against some international powerhouses, eventually taking a win over Australian golden boys, Renegades.
After likely solidifying their spot as the best team in the UK with a win over Team Infused at the offline finals of the Gfinity UK Champhionship, we had a few questions for their team awper Luke “fearLess” Morris.
The bulk of the Gfinity tournament was held back in the summer months, at a time when you had only been together for a few months had a different fifth player. Do you feel you’ve changed as a team since then, and if so, how?
It probably came as quite a shock considering our decent performance at DreamHack London. In the weeks that followed it felt like Josh had become demotivated, didn’t want to play as much CS and it definitely shown. We wanted to progress as a team which lead to replacing him with George. Josh is a solid player which we never doubted, he’s also a great guy outside of the game and I think he’d openly admit to losing motivation towards the end.
Is there anything noticeable that George has brought into the team that you think will help take you further as a roster?
Like I said before he pumps everyone up before, during and after games. He really knows how to bring the spirits up.
With regards to your opponents, team Infused, what were your thoughts about them in week running up to the finals? Did you prepare for them specifically?
We tried to focus on improving our own game rather than trying to specifically counter Infused. We knew they would pick train as they were practicing it beforehand but we only practiced on it once before to get a feel for it, we felt like we’d just give Train a go and see what happens and go from there. We felt quite confident in the run up to the event so making sure our own game was on point was our main goal.
In the end the result was a close one, with you taking the win 3-2. How did it feel at the point where you were at 2-2, knowing the final could potentially go either way?
At 2-2 we felt incredibly confident going in to Overpass, we’d practiced it a lot trying to broaden our map pool and felt like whatever we did they wouldn’t be able to counter it. We had a lot of momentum going in to the final map as well so spirits were a lot higher than they were a 2-0.
Luke with a big cheque at Multiplay’s i55.
What does the win at Gfinity mean for yourself, and EZSkins as a team?
For me it’s great as it’s another UK win which I don’t have a lot of haha. It gives me great confidence in knowing that even though it wasn’t my best day of CS, that my team were still strong enough to pull through and get the result in the end. As a team we felt as if we had more to lose than we had to gain. At this point we felt like we had already asserted ourselves as the UK’s best team and losing would have damaged that. Obviously the prize money is great but we try not to look at the money aspect too much.
Where can we expect to see you next, seeing as the team will not be headed to the next iSeries?
Well we’re still currently in the Acer Predator Masters so expect to see us online against some of the greater teams in Europe. We expected to go to iSeries but we didn’t expect the dates to change into December so we had to pull out of it. We’re not sure what our next LAN event is, we’ll just go with it!
Are there any European events on the cards?
We’re aspiring to qualify for a major eventually, which would be beyond amazing. So possibly a LAN qualifier for that? Who knows what the future will bring, we dream big!
The final words are yours.
I’d like to personally thank Connor and Henry at EZskins for giving us the support to do what we do. It’s great of them to support a team in the UK scene which they’ve been a part of themselves for so long. Another shout out to Gfinity who had a great event this weekend, again showing great support to the UK scene which I hope can thrive off of events like this, it’s a shame the turnout wasn’t great but I think with time it can be built up. Thanks again to everyone who sends us support on the forums and Twitter, we really appreciate it and hope that we can turn it into something really worth rooting for.
