They were a last minute invite but Legacy’s Kiwi boy LONS took some time to talk to us. We chatted about being from New Zealand, getting to scrim against the international teams after the tournament and the best teams in the Australian scene right now.
Grady: I’d normally ask you if this is your first time in Australia, but I got a feeling it isn’t?
LONS: No, it is definitely not.
When I look at all the Australian teams and I see a small little New Zealand flag next to one of the team members, it gives me a good feeling inside. Could you elaborate on where you have come from?
I came to New Zealand around 10 years ago from Russia and I’ve been playing CS since about 2015…2014 or something like that and now I’m here.
In New Zealand is there much of a local scene? A lot of the time you’ve got to jump over to an Australian team if you want to go to that next level.
Nah not really, not really many LANs going on, not many players making fully New Zealand teams, yeah there is pretty much nothing really.
Given the opportunity, is it something you’d like to try? a fully New Zealand team?
Yeah I wouldn’t mind, it depends on the players.
You guys for IEM Sydney were a bit of a last minute invite, did you guys get much warning?
Two days warning, that is pretty much it. It’s a great event to be at, it doesn’t matter if we were a last minute thing.
Were you able to prep specifically for this tournament or just go with what you already had?
We just go with what we already had basically. We didn’t prepare for Renegades or whatever, we just went in.
Usually for the smaller local teams people would bring up “it’s great to get the experience against the international teams.” Was it a bit of a bummer to go up against two Australian teams?
It definitely was. We were looking forward to playing literally any anybody but the Australian teams, because we play them 14/7 anyway, but Renegades was good. It’s a good thing we have this thing where they stay here after the tournament and we can just scrim all the European teams now for the last four days. It’s been good.
So are you guys getting a lot out of having the European teams over here and not playing against the same guys every single day?
Yeah definitely, I think we are about to play SK today and we played some Asian teams, played some European teams as well. Yeah it is pretty good to experience.
You guys are usually at local Australian tournaments, is it hard to break out and get into the international events?
Yeah it definitely is, because there is about 6 or 7 teams that are above us and to break into that you have to win a qualifier that all these 7 teams are attending and it is pretty rough.
Other than yourselves and Renegades, who defacto get the top Australian spot, who do you see as the top Australian team?
Grayhound. They are probably the best by far, well not by far, but at the moment their peak is really good even in an Australian scene and even before they attended this event I thought they were really strong and would easily be top one in Australia, apart from Renegades, well probably even better than Renegades…yeah actually I think they are better than Renegades to be honest.
Pro League now, it is expanding into Asia-Pacific. Do you see this as a good opportunity as another channel to get your team name out there?
The more tournaments, the more international tournaments that come into the scene it is better either way. So yeah it more more opportunity for us.
You played this tournament with a stand-in. Do you think that affected you at all?
Yeah it definitely did. It was a bit rough against Renegades because Mirage is such a heavy executing map and Lacore is a good player, but he is not yellow, so it was a bit hard. But it is alright and we are still happy that we here, we are still happy we got to play in this tournament.
Would you be happy to see an IEM Auckland?
Yeah, definitely, yeah. That would be sick.
Alright man, thanks a lot.
Have a good day bro.
