SYDNEY -- Counter-Strike's Grayhound Gaming made the deepest run of all the Australian teams at IEM Sydney, but will not be appearing at the Qudos Bank Arena after falling to Fnatic in a tightly contested 2-1 series. Despite not being able to play in front of a home crowd, the locals still managed to catch some attention by beating both Heroic and FaZe in two competitive best-of-threes.
After their win against FaZe, but before their loss against Fnatic, ESPN Esports talked to in-game leader Chris "dexter"' Nong about their IEM Sydney run.
ESPN: You had a big win over FaZe [at IEM Sydney], backing up another big victory over Heroic. With two series wins over European competition, how does it feel to take down some big names here in Sydney?
Dexter: I'm feeling good... It's still the fact they have jet lag, are missing their star player essentially. I don't really think about it as a massive, massive win. I still feel really happy with everyone. Everyone was really composed the entire time. But it's not like I've just won a major. I don't know, [laughs] just have to re-focus and look at Fnatic -- they're the real big competition.
ESPN: One of the things which surprised us the most standing in front of you guys and hearing the comms was how much [Simon "sico' Williams] was contributing to the calls. Is he a dedicated secondary caller in the lineup?
Dexter: It feels really good, it was the thing that we were missing in all iterations of this lineup. We never had someone who was consistently vocal as a secondary caller. It's kind of meant to be [Erdenetsogt "erkaSt" Gantulga's] role as well, but we let him do his own thing now because he's in a different role. I tell Simon, yeah 'you have the AWP, you lead them' if I'm doing something over here, I want to fake or whatever, I'll tell Simon to lead the other guys.
ESPN: With [Neil "NeiL_M" Murphy] coming in as well, how has his presence helped you out as the IGL?
Dexter: He makes us laugh a lot [laughs]. He's got a crazy attidude. As in just like yelling and all that. And we've never had that in the past. We're normally just like 'yeah good job everyone.' Then he's just next level going hard. It's funny. He hasn't had that much time with us, it's been like a week, legit.
He doesn't know any of our strats, basically. But I tell him 'what I need from you is that we're doing the basics right all the time, and concentrate on that.'
ESPN: Given we've seen Sico stepping into calling more, and one can imagine NeiL _M will have more of an impact over time, can we expect a change in the style of Grayhound's game?
Dexter: Well, the biggest change for me is we've been slowly implementing myself into the main fragging pack more. So basically I'll do whatever I want and I'll call around that. It's going quite well for us. In our mid-round situations, adding in sico, it makes it so much easier. Because I can see everything that's going on, and Simon can see everything that's going on, and we work together really well.
We've just got to keep going, tighten up our utility usage, map control, all that stuff. Obviously with the new map coming in we'll change up our map pool as well.
ESPN: Have you had a chance to look at Fnatic's game at all, is that something you'll look at in between matches?
Dexter: It's something we'll do right after this interview [laughs]. We'll have a look at how they play, what maps they pick, and other than that, just play our own game.