Ben's Review

Posted by: BenGM

We’ve had a crazy last week, i don’t really know where to begin. This is more of letter to the community as opposed to a hands on article, let’s see where to begin..

We prepared for the SALVO game the best we could but the moment we got on stage something didn’t feel right, it felt almost as if we didn’t expect to win, moral was low after the first two games lost for us and going into CS we had to win big to bring back the 6 points we were down, and they crumbled under that pressure. I’m going to put that down to nerves and the fact that SALVO CSS are immense at the game, I know im European and any American that reads this will disagree immensely, but i firmly believe SALVO have the best CSS team in the world right now, hopefully they prove me correct by winning the individual finals and helping their franchise to a respectable position at the worlds.

I try not to think about that game too much, we just didn’t have time to worry about it too much as we’d be playing Stockholm in less than 24 hours, so we got back to the oakwoods and put in some quality practice and knew we’d be able to pull off the win off Stockholm as we knew how they played pretty much every game. It showed as we whitewashed them, 27-17 and won all 5 games!

By winning that we knew we’d stay in LA for one more week and have lots of time to prepare for the game vs the 3rd place American team. If we play ANYTHING like how we did vs Stockholm after got over the initial stage fright vs SALVO we have a pretty damn good chance of qualifying to the world finals.

After several trips to the Jacuzzi over the last few days the entire team is really confident now, something i didn’t see prior to the SALVO game, but did for the Stockholm game.

So now im back, and updating this article as 24 hours ago we had just lost to OPTX in the Wildcard final for a spot in the world finals. We’re obviously bitterly disappointed, i’m really glad we proved some harsh critics wrong(some of whom who were spectating the game in the CGS offices) with our performance, we had match point and could, and should of won. Alas we didn’t win, i’m really proud of how our guys did, on another day we’d of beaten them, on another day we wouldn’t lost Forza 5-2 at pretty much the last corner, it would of been 4-3, another day several of Chris’s 7 shots on target would of gone in, on another day we’d of gotten more rounds off Optx when we were 10-5 up, on another day Strobe might of got more rounds off Vanessa.

I don’t want to dwell on it too much as i know my guys on the whole played great, we feel we should be in the world finals but OPTX kept their cool under pressure in DOA Male and won the game, fair play to them.

So our dream trip is over, some of us fly back into the UK on Monday, the rest of us Wednesday, we cannot let this defeat effect us too much as we’ll be playing at i34 in a months time which we’d like to win, then the PC Gamer showdown a month after that, so a busy few months await.

We’ll be back next year and will give it our best shot, based on the Stockholm and OPTX performances we showed the world what we are capable of, next year we’ll just have to make sure we beat Birmingham instead of doing the wildcard qualifier, i don’t know if my heart can take it.

I'm immensly proud of my guys, the attitude and enthusism shown after the defeat to Salvo was very heart warming, words cannot describe how, even now, im very happy to have these players in my team, makes me feel very proud.

Until next time.. Thanks for all the support from everyone, even despite the lose to Salvo, it really is appreciated.

Ben