GooseBreeder: "I'm actually really happy with where I am right now"
Shortly after CLG Red were eliminated from Fragadelphia by Mythic, Dust2.us' very own Joe "tolkienfanatic" Cardali had the chance to catch up with Mounira "GooseBreeder" Dobie to discuss the team's performance, CLG Red's six-woman roster, and what the transition from Dignitas fe to CLG Red has been like.
This is your first event with CLG Red, and unfortunately you didn't make it through groups. Take me through all of that.
Yeah, so we knew our mistakes really quickly, we knew immediately after the game was over what we needed to work on. Sometimes it's just hard to fix mistakes immediately versus right after the game.
The next game we went into was much better than the first, unfortunately we didn't have room to lose the first because Mythic is in our group. I'm confident, but you know it's gonna be a hard game against Mythic. So we really had the beat that first team.
Unfortunately we didn't, we woke up a little bit slow. We were taking a lot of sites but we couldn't close out the rounds. Just a few teamwork issues and stuff like that, the next game we fixed our mistakes immediately, the game went much more successfully if you saw the score.
You guys are rocking the Space Soldiers-esque six-woman roster, so what are the mechanics behind that?
It's kind of interesting right now, I'm not entirely sure how to answer the question to be honest with you. For the time being we are using the five that you saw playing at Frag.
With missharvey, she's in on our practices and if for some reason someone can't play, she's ready to play, so it's been convenient. It's kinda just like a trial in progress, so even us, we're still not sure, we're just experimenting. So maybe in the future we can comment more on that.
You guys also recently brought in vEz as a coach, and he's not here with you now, but how was it decided to bring him in and can you talk about any other people you may have looked at for the spot?
So he was kind of in before I even joined, so I can talk about... I mean I like him as a coach, he really cares you can tell, I respect that in a coach. He does try his hardest for us to try and make us a better team. He did a lot for us when we were playing Advanced and stuff, he prepped us well and he worked on our mistakes with us.
Unfortunately he couldn't come to this event due to health reasons and stuff like that, but I'm looking forward to what he can do for us and I think he's already made us a bit better and I think he can do a lot for the team.
You again find yourself in a mix American-Canadian team, so are there already plans being drawn up for the WESG 2018 campaign or what's the plan?
Yeah it'll probably happen again. It's a little unfortunate because it's hard to practice with your team and a separate team like we did last time. So it's gonna be interesting how we handle it this time.
Last time we just tried to practice as much as we could, but even so we didn't get enough practice because you have to focus on your main team. I guess we'll just see, we'll probably talk more about it the sooner it comes to the start.
What do you think of that event as a whole?
I think it has a lot of potential, but they need to work on a lot of things. Like their communication to the players is just very poor, just being honest. I do like the tournament, I think it's a good idea, I'm not sure if I necessarily... like if they're going to make it every year kind of thing, or two times a year, I would prefer if it was teams instead of countries.
I like the idea of supporting your country, but in Counter-Strike it's just really hard to focus on your team and then also focus... and you know the prize pool is huge, so it's tough thing to think about.
Speaking of prize pools, there's been some players who have been complaining about not receiving payments from WESG, have you guys gotten paid out for the last event?
I haven't gotten paid out yet.
With your change from Dignitas fe to CLG Red, you moved up in the ESEA divisions. How were those first couple of matches for you, against higher level competition?
It was interesting because I don't know if it's necessarily that much harder. Like it is harder, I can tell that if you mess up you're gonna pay for it, but I don't know. For me, I like it, I think it's going to be a better challenge, it's exactly what I wanted and I'm just excited for the next season of Advanced.
I wanna try and challenge myself, and I think Advanced is going to be a great way to do that. We have high goals, we wanna try and make playoffs next season. It's not gonna be easy, but it's a challenge that y'know, if we make it, it'll feel really good.
What are your general thoughts on the state of female CS and the separation, should there be separation?
I think female tournaments are great because without them, would this many girls start taking the game seriously? I think it's a great stepping stone. I don't have much of a problem with it, I just have a problem when the women only focus on female CS. I think it'll become more of a handicap. I know that Dig doesn't focus solely on female CS, and I know that maybe a few other teams aren't solely focused.
There's a lot of potential in the female scene and I think that time will tell if they really work hard to become good because there's a lot of respectable women in the scene, and I think with time the community in general will respect that.
I guess to answer your question, I would like to see it mixed in the future, I don't really have a problem with female teams in general. I think there's capable female teams regardless, but I'd be interested in seeing mixed CS and that's the stepping stone that female CS is and in the future we can get to that point.
Can you comment on any of the speculation that GooseBreeder to RES was a thing at one point?
I'm not sure exactly what I can comment on it, but it was something that was interesting. I was interested, they were interested in me, but it didn't pan out and I'm actually really happy with where I am right now.
potter is no longer with that team, do you think she'll come back to the North American female scene, is there a place for her somewhere do you think?
I just hope she keeps competing because she's a really good player. I'm not really sure where she's going to go, but I can't imagine she will stop playing CS.
As of now, CLG Red have a clear schedule until the start of ESEA Season 29. With the addition of GooseBreeder, they will look to improve upon their 7-9 Season 28 campaign.
