Meowz, a team that had a tremendous ESEA Intermediate season, going 12-2 in the regular season and then finishing the 9-16th which secures them a place in ESEA Main, has had a disappointing end to the season. On July 5th, the team announced they will be departing from Aura after being a part of the organisation for 94 days. In that time the team competed in SCL Masters, and ESEA Intermediate, but did not attend any LAN events as a full roster under Aura.
For the roster, that will now be playing under the banner of Meowz, following the prescedent set by FAMBIT, 1PIN and SPADE, they will be looking for org support as they ready themselves for the upcoming Main season in ESEA and their future endeavours on LAN and other online events such as SCL Masters. This roster fields players like Harry “moshi” Raines who is fresh off his win at EPIC.LAN 36 playing with emps kids. We have seen how powerful he is in a mix team, and it will interesting to see what level he can reach on a dedicated non-mix roster.
UKCSGO was able to talk with moshi about the reasons behind leaving Aura:
So there were a few reasons why we decided to leave Aura as a team:
- We felt like we were side-lined a little bit by the org, even when we were doing really well in intermediate. We had only 2 of our games streamed the entire season and even the majority of our games didn’t get tweeted. For a team at our level, exposure is very important even if it’s just a tweet or a stream and in my opinion, it should be the bare minimum.
- LAN Funding. For iSeries, we got £200 from Aura to help us attend the event, everything else was paid out of our own pocket. The LAN was a month after we joined and was told that it was too short notice to get more funding which we accepted. We believe that Jordane “ThatOneGirl” Keddie gave us that money out of her own pocket (we could be wrong but that’s just what I’ve assumed here), so we were grateful for that money. However, we were looking to attend epic36 as a full 5 so we requested that our tickets could get funded. Unfortunately, we were told that it was not possible for us to get tickets and that we would have to pay all of it out of our pockets, or not go as a team. We chose not to attend. This was a huge problem for us because our team LANs are very costly, we have pr0xje who is from Scotland, and Wiiam who is from Ireland. Travel and rentals for them are very expensive and it’s the reason why we had to use Morgan “m0g” Butler at Insomnia. Not going to LAN as a team is damaging for us as it is one of the biggest reasons in which we compete in the first place.
- The team and I are quite involved in the scene so we have a very good understanding of what other teams at our level are getting from their orgs. So we agreed near the end of the season that we would play out all our remaining officials under Aura and then part ways with them and search for a new org.
After about two weeks of being Looking For Org, we have actually got a solid offer. I’m not allowed to say yet but these guys seem very passionate and I’m excited to play under them, so look out for that announcement soon I guess. Overall, I want to make it clear that I do think Aura is a solid org, but I think we just joined at the wrong time as it seems like they’re very busy with their other projects. I know they have a good R6 team and they do A LOT of content so there’s no bad blood. We’re very grateful for the support we got from them and I wish them all the best. As for the future of the team, it remains the same for us. We want to improve as a unit so we will keep on grinding in ESEA Main, and SCL Masters, and you’ll also see us attending epic37 as our full 5 (fingers crossed). I have a lot of faith in this roster as it has a good balance of individuals. As long as we stick together I think you’ll find we will surprise a lot of people.
For Aura, they have had rosters across the whole of last year, originally starting in February with Alex “znx” Webster and Jack “DeXter” Hepple. They had disappointing results in seasons 36 and 37 of ESEA where they went 7-9 twice in a row but continued to come back and compete. Regionally they were also unable to find much success, placing last in ESL Premiership: Spring 2021 and then in then in Autumn they just survived relegation by placing top six. With the organisation now parting ways with this roster, we were able to talk to Aura owner, Jordane “ThatOneGirl” Keddie who stated:
We originally picked up the team on short notice as we’d come out of CS:GO. After working with some of the members previously and having a soft spot for CS, we picked them up. It was never something we were looking to go back into long term however the whole team enjoyed watching them grow and we all wished them the best of luck with their next moves.
Established in 2019, PowerYourAura is a UK organisation, which has fielded some of the top UK teams. Since then they have drifted away picking up EU teams in games such as Rainbow Six Siege.
Now orgless, the former Aura squad will be playing under Mowez and are currently:
Ethan “Carter” Carter
Ryan “pr0x” Skene
Shea “pieface” Reilly
William “Wiiam” O’Shea
Harry “moshi” Raines
