| | Sweden has been missing out the last edition of the NC and this year, you guys have decided to ally with Norway, which we had not seen since the Team Scandinavia days, back in 2014. Does it express a difficulty for the Nordic countries to find enough players at this stage of the game (with Finland also being absent from this 2019 edition)?
Hey, appreciate the question. I was inactive last year due to work. As far as I know, there's barely any active Swedish players that's currently playing, except of us that's in the NC team for this year. I was even struggling to find people for this year's edition, however I managed to find people for this year, even if the interest was not high. I am a good friend with most of the swedes and do speak to them on a regular basis. It came to our mind, ''Why don't we make a complete Swedish team''. We were trying in the beginning in order to find enough Swedes, but we couldn't manage. So I started asking Norway if they were making a team, which they were not, due to not enough players. So we managed to get some Norwegian players which is cool. At that time we also found some other Swedes, and our team currently consists of 10 Swedes and 3 Norwegian players. Our team is quite inactive and never plays matches due to barely anyone playing actively of us. I have personally not been in contact with Finland, but I assume there's not many of them who's active. It did not come to my mind to make a team with Finland as well, since I thought they'd make one of their own. The activity amongst Scandinavian countries, in Native is very low.
There has not been much information filtering from Norden this year so I am curious on what your preparation has been like and what were your objectives coming in this NC?
That's the most usual question people ask me. We barely do trainings due to our inactivity, we have tried but never managed to get 8 players. We have a very nice atmosphere amongst us. In the last 2 weeks we have not done a single training. I am not an active player myself. Before our officials we have gathered some time before, to go through the maps and what to possibly do on these maps. We have prepared basic stuff before each match, just in case if our enemies uses a setup that we would not expect. We discuss before the match what to do, for instance in the flag spawn in the Graveyard on FoH. We don't really have to repeat what to do then, because we have al ready prepared that. It makes our communication and atmosphere better if we gather and prepare the maps before the official. We have one goal, and that is to have fun. Our team is quite inactive at the moment, so we know we might not reach the highest place in the tournament. So we have one goal, a common goal, to have fun and laugh during our matches, no matter who our opponent is. To win a match is indeed very fun, most of us just plays for fun because we have missed playing with each other. We consist of an inactive team that just want to have fun.
Robin said:
"[...] We consist of an inactive team that just want to have fun"
Your victory over Russia & Ukraine was a huge surprise, certainly one of the biggest we had in the tournament so far. What were the keys factors which helped to pull off that upset and keep you guys in the race for the playoffs?
We expected Russia & Ukraine to beat us quite hard, but that was not the case that day. Sweden & Norway came prepared to that match, we had gone through the maps. To go through the maps before an official, is not a must for top teams. We prefer to do that because we simply do not have the best players like some other team do. We got a few people that's new to the native scene, and to go through the maps with them before the official makes it less chaos for some of us. We kept having fun during all our matches, even if we lost hard against BeNe for instance. I am aware when a team is losing, they start raging, less commanding and so on. If someone in a team starts raging and the commander gets angry, the winrate is getting lower. From my perspective we have managed to motivate each other in the matches, no matter the outcome. Everyone was prepared and had great communication which made us win that match. We kept being positive during the whole match, we kept fighting. It is hard to keep my team active, I work a lot and I assume that's currently why our activity is low.
Do you believe you can capitalize on this excellent performance to power you through this decisive match against Poland?
I know we can win that match. Poland 2 is a good team, just like the other Polish team. We'll keep playing no matter what the result is. We are looking forward for that match, because we enjoy playing with each other. I am going to do my best for the team in order to win that match. I believe in our team, we got the motivation to win. We will prepare for the match for tomorrow. We have not done any scrims in the past 2 weeks but it won't stop us from winning the match. | |
