Nifty: "I absolutely do not want to go back to [a Minor]"
With the Major carrying on, Michael "Duck" Moriarty caught up with Noah "Nifty" Francis before their opening game with BIG at the FACEIT London Major.
You and your team have had a fairly quiet couple of months since the Minor, partially due to the player break and partially due to your team not being at events. What have you been doing during that time?
After Cologne, we went straight into a bootcamp for the Minor to really put everything into it and get through it 100%. Then after we got through that, we went on a player break for maybe four or five weeks. For me, at least, I spent a couple weeks away from the game as usually every player break or Christmas time that I've had as part of Renegades, has been consumed by the game or the things that have to do with the game. I just wanted to take some time off, spend time with friends and family.
The last three or four weeks of the break I returned to CS, focusing on myself and how I can play and work with my role better. Once we got back into the bootcamp and into that team setting, we had to shake the rust off for a couple of days but after that we got straight into it. I am very comfortable coming into this event with the practice that we've got and the things we have accomplished over the past few weeks and I hope to put on a good show here at the Major.
As you've said, you and your team have been bootcamping in Europe. How important is it to get this practice ahead of the Major for you?
It's definitely very important. I can't imagine what a two week bootcamp in America would be like. I'd feel we'd be playing the same sort of teams over and over again. In Europe there's a wide selection of teams, we get to play against the best of the best and also get to play against the lower tier teams, which is fine, we made good practice out of all of them. Most importantly, we've been focusing on ourselves.
We're playing against BIG first, who haven't played a match in nearly two months that we could look back on, so we've played them in practice a couple of times and they seem to do things a little bit differently to before the player break. It's kind of hard to go back and look at what they could be doing when we play them in our match, so we've been focusing most of the time on ourselves.
Let's bring it back to the past few months, where your team's performances have been somewhere between quiet and unimpressive, ignoring the Asia Minor of course. What has the mentality been in your team after such finishes at the events.
We can use Cologne as an example for this. That was an event where we really wanted to make it to the arena, at least, that was kind of the goal to make it out of groups. We definitely didn't feel great, we had a really close game with MIBR where we were almost able to beat them, if not for a couple mistakes here and there. After that we played B.O.O.T-d[S] and won, before having a close series with BIG where we won the first map before losing out the final two. Right now, none of us are thinking about that, we're just thinking about the Major. We would've liked to have had better results but we didn't.
Historically, Renegades as a team have always had a small struggle getting through the first stage of the Major, whether the original format or the new format. Are you and your team confident that you can break this curse and make it through to the New Legends stage, and potentially secure a spot at the next Major without having to go through the Minor system again.
Yeah, at least for me I don't want to go back to another Minor. I absolutely do not want to go back to one whatsoever. This will be our third Major together, me with this team, where in Krakow and Boston we did not have a good time. You can say whatever, like "third time's the charm" if you're a supporter. We look to make it out of groups here for sure, we're feeling very confident and I think things are going to be a little bit different this time around and everyone's going to see better performances out of most of our players, if not all, this time around. You'll see better teamwork and a load of things, I'm just super excited to be here.
How have you seen yourself develop as the In-Game-Leader for this team, having not established yourself in the role before?
I was IGL on Selfless for maybe a three month period, but I wasn't very good at it back then. But it's certainly been a challenge, while AWP'ing at the same time, it's not easy. I'm always facing new things, which is why it's important to me to have a coach by my side where we can always discuss things, how we can do this better, what can we fix this, can we get rid of this or can we add this. Finding out what are the easiest ways of getting my point across to people in the clearest way possible, just looking for ways to improve that. I feel like most of the time I have a pretty good read on the rounds and the game at hand.
I feel like I have gotten a lot better, something I said recently is that I want to play more against the Astralis and Na`Vi's and other teams at the top more often as I feel that when I've IGL'd against a team at the top I've learned way more than I could have ever expected than teams between 10th and 15th, which is kind of where we're at right now. I really love those games against them, I learn a lot. That's another reason why I hope to make it out of the group stages here, that way we can play against better teams and it'll help myself and everyone else on the team grow
Speaking of working with a coach, you've been reunited with Ryu relatively recently, who you were alongside back in Selfless nearly two years ago. How has he been bedding in with the team and developing the tactics with the team alongside you?
Adding him to the coach slot was everything I had expected him to be. He's very good at enforcing the fundamentals and basics with each player and throughout the team as a whole. That's something that we needed, because I feel that we can do advanced things sometimes or we can play situations well but we didn't do it enough, or as consistently as we could have. He was kind of reinforcement for that and over time I feel that we're getting a lot better at these basic things and are building the foundations for an actual true, contending team. He's doing a really good job at with all of that stuff, you know.
Of course we have our conflicts here and there, between me and him as a coach, between him and other players, between me and other players, and the team as a whole you know. That's the way it is, the way it works and at the end of the day we work through it and settle on something we all agree on. I would say he's been doing great so far.
How much is Ryu's style as a coach different to when you were working with kassad?
Well, kassad was a coach who was very good at mid-round and the very, very in-game points. The kind of things that only ex-players who have dealt with some of the best players now could see and understand. So he was really good at those kinds of things, but we really need something more like a coach's coach. Coming in from real world coaching, real world sports coaching. Ryu really enforces a lot of those things, he kind of carries those aspect and attributes about him and that's kind of what we needed. So yeah, that's another reason why I chose Ryu.
Finally, your first match in the New Challengers stage will be against BIG. How confident are you and your team of pulling off a result against them.
We're very confident, it's different then what any other kind of LAN match would be like just because we're highly focusing on ourselves. There's not much to look at on BIG since their last match was two months ago so we're just staying focused on what we've been practicing and what our game plan was going to be coming in.
As of publication, Renegades are currently facing BIG in the New Challengers stage of the FACEIT London Major.
