In the first of our brand new “hype machine” interviews going into the biggest LAN of the year, the height of the Summer LAN season, insomnia58. This new series will explore the usual suspects who are gunning for glory in both the UK Masters Finals & at the main event insomnia58. We shall also be exploring some of the more “unknowns” in the scene with a few teams pinned for “interesting storylines” that are currently developing within the scene and online portion of league play for example. It won’t strictly be a “top player” affair, but we will try to shed the limelight on those outside the British Elite group to give our readers an insight into the growing depth of talent within our scene.
With that said we managed to catch CAZ eSports Captain, Jake “jakem” McCausland, a player who is incredibly gifted in the scene. Jake has been around at the top of the UK Scene for over 8 years now. He has won multiple iSeries events, multiple epic.LAN events and even recently won the UK Premiership with the mix team of The Working Men which has later gone on to being a fully fledged team bar one member. He is one of the more interesting characters in the UK scene, and someone who continues to strive to make it better. He’s been there and done that, and even signed a few T-Shirts in his time, as he’s been over to Europe for LANs such as Copenhagen Games, and back in Counter-Strike:Source he had attended 30P LAN with Rasta.Xd, one of four different British Teams that were sent to the Swedish LAN.
In this interview we look at the various teams that Jake and his team are aware of, the pricing strategy of Multiplay and also his thoughts on the UK CS:GO Scene.
Jake competing at insomnia56 under the CAZ eSports brand.
How confident are you about your team’s chances at insomnia58?
The team is full of talent and everyone can step up especially when it comes to LAN, I am very confident in our chances of winning the LAN.
Is there any opponent you’re not prepared for, a dark horse you think can reach top 8?
I’m not sure who will be turning up to LAN but we will not specifically be preparing for any teams as we generally just play on the fly CS and stick to our own game plan. Not so much a dark horse but I believe pickles is creating a mix team with frankstah, zeo, nipxe and a 5th… I think if the right players step up they could cause some upsets.
You’ll be facing FM in the UK Masters finals, how prepared are you going into that?
Well we will be much more prepared than we were in online in UK Masters against FM so I’m hoping our form online can be replicated at LAN which I’m sure it will.
What are your thoughts on mix teams entering and winning LANs like we saw Rasta.Infused do at insomnia57?
The sad truth its been proven that a strong UK mix is better than a team which has been seen time and time again. The problem in the UK is no UK teams actually know how to practise properly and how to get better, so in reality practising actually makes teams worse. This has been seen time and time again at LAN and online with the UKMASTERS being a perfect example.
In your opinion, who’s the star player on your team, what do they bring to the table?
Its hard to pick a star player on our team as everyone in my eyes can be the star of the team if you had to pick the most experienced it would have to be robin.
What’s the team chemistry like outside of the game, do you get along well?
The foundation of our team came from friendship which is the best way to create a team in my eyes and something that rarely happens in top UK CS. We are currently in the process of looking to book a holiday after LAN!
We see a lot of roster moves and arguments in the UK scene. Do you think this is the main factor stopping us from having a top contending team in Europe? if not what is?
There are too many problems with the UK scene to list out but in short there are a lot of strong personalities in the UK who will hate each other one week then be best friends the next but in reality that’s never going to work. CSGO is so competitive now you have to play in a team with 4 people you enjoy and 4 people you can work on your mistakes and grow as a team. On top of that the attitudes and dedication of players all needs to be aligned as there is nothing worse than playing in a team. A lot of people in the UK like the idea of being a PRO cs player but don’t actually want to commit to playing in a team. I could go on for hours…
Will we be seeing The Rock go on to win insomnia58?
What is your perspective on LAN prices, with Multiplay jacking up the BYOC price to £99 this time around, can this potentially cause teams to skip insomnia and focus on other stuff?
Multiplay have held the monopoly for LAN for a long time and they don’t care about the competitive side anymore as it isn’t as profitable as the community side. So for us the prices seem outrageous but the demand is there from the community so seems only logical from Multiplay to charge as much as they can from a business point of view. Realistically the only teams missing out will be the lower tier teams as most organisations will fund teams to LAN so it doesn’t really effect the best teams.
Have you ever thought about joining a European team? Do you think it’d lead to more success than you would get in a UK team?
The last CAZ lineup with dephh and surreal in my mind was going to be the last UK team I created as I was tired of putting lots of effort into another UK team where players would lose interest, argue and eventually fold again. I decided to take a step back and the only team I would of considered would be a Euro team. I decided I still enjoyed CS so just decided to make a mix for EPS and we won so we decided to take things more seriously for the up coming events and see where it takes us.
For reference, here is CAZ eSports team lineup for Multiplay’s UK Masters & insomnia58 in a couple of weeks time.
Jake “JAKEM” McCausland
Robin “robiin” Sjögren
Kostas “tsack” Theodoropoulos
James “Kryptix” Affleck
Jake “Boaster” Howlett
We will be having plenty of interviews over the coming days with a variety of teams, so make sure you keep in touch with UKCSGO.com in the run up and during insomnia58 through our Facebook & Twitter pages.
