Kingfisher: "We have always felt we were capable of beating good European opponents"

Right after being eliminated from the IEM Rio Major against Vitality in front of a crowd that wasn't supporting Grayhound, David 'Kingfisher' Kingsford, the coach of the Aussies, talked with Ryan Friend from Dust2.us about the team's win over Cloud 9, Declan "Vexite" Portelli's potential, the future of Asian Counter-Strike, and the preparations for the Major.

Let's talk quickly about the preparation for the IEM Rio. We saw that there was a boot camp over in Poland, it seems that the socials for each of the team kind of went quiet. What was that preparation like? Were you guys trying really hard on things?

Yeah, I think it was probably one of our best boot camps yet, just in terms of focus, day-to-day. We only had eight days on PCs, so we didn't take any days off, every day was just a ten or 11 hour grind. People weren't really on socials, we weren't really streaming or anything, we were just working day to day. Every day felt more and more productive, if we had a few more days even, I think we could have come into this event even stronger because you get greater returns as you go on and you deal with less jet lag every day and get into the groove of things. It was a great boot camp.

We can see from your record and your game performance that this was a pretty impressive showing from an Australian team. You pushed Cloud9 all the way, you were able to beat them, and you had some close games elsewhere. Does that give you more confidence as you head back home?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that win over Cloud9, especially, is very important for the team. We have always felt we were capable of beating good European opponents but we had a fucking long spell there where we just couldn't really get over the line against them or even (unknown), so yeah, I think our performance here, we will be disappointed for now but also we can be proud of our win against Cloud 9, and we can be proud of how we played the second map against Vitality.

Talk to me about the mentality at that 17-17 round, when sh1ro had his PC crash. I talked to Liazz and he said it's unfortunate, you guys have scrimmed against the Cloud 9 guys a lot and you know them and you felt bad, but in your head were you thinking "this is our time, we can actually do it"?

Honestly, it overshadowed Declan "Vexite"'s play there. He ran through that CT smoke and killed two, and I thought "Yeah, this is it, we have fucking done it" and when we saw that sh1ro timed-out, we were just like "fuck", we felt bad for a moment, and then we just had to refocus, we were still trying to win that game whatever happens. It's unfortunate it went down that way, but you just have to take it and go into the next round just full focus, you can't feel bad for the other team, really. Yeah, we like the Cloud 9 guys a lot, and they scrim us a lot and we hope they can make it through as well.

Talk to me about Vexite. He seems to be this up-and-coming player kind of now into one of his bigger teams and he's been performing out of his skin.

I think Jay [Liazz] had a touch on it yesterday a little bit as well. He is just experienced, beyond his years, he plays with incredible composure even in high-pressure matches, something very rare for an 18-year-old, and what he is bringing to the team is he is filling out a role that I think we needed for a while and you start to see now the results getting better and better, and it's just been two months with him. As time goes on, I think the role that he is filling and what he is bringing to the team will keep getting fucking better.

Do you think he is one of the next players that can even potentially make a jump to a North American or European team?

I hope not, but is he capable of it? Yeah, I'm sure he is. He still needs to get more experience under his belt and I'm looking forward to spending more time playing with him and seeing how this team can progress forward.

The crowd is one of the biggest topics that everyone has been talking about here. You went up kind of against them, as people were supporting Vitality right there. What do you make of the crowd? How did you enjoy it?

The crowd is amazing, man. The noise, the way they chant, it's like a football game, it's incredible. I really did hope they wouldn't be going for the overdogs for this one, you kind of want the crowd to be rooting for the underdogs, but ZywOo is an incredible talent, I see why they are rooting, they want to watch him play and perform. To be honest, I think for most of the players we weren't really focusing on it, or hearing it too much because we were just focusing on our game.

Let's talk a little bit about Asian CS. You guys have had one of the best appearances here, neither one of your teams went 0-3 for the first time in what feels like a long time. IHC has also pushed a lot of teams to the edge, especially 00 Nation there, taking them to three maps, all of the overtimes. How do you guys feel that Asian CS is not being represented at this top level or not being recognized enough?

I think that, definitely, Asian CS deserves a bit more recognition than it currently has. It has to come with results as well, last major we went 0-3, this major went 1-3. You can't expect too much recognition when your international results have been shaky but IHC especially, they are a fucking great team. I think that the Asian RMR, the four team format that they had just doesn't make any sense with the region because IHC is strong but there are a lot of strong teams in the region that just don't even get the chance because of their performances on the online qualifiers to play on the RMR, as well as the Major. So I think that's probably the biggest indicator that we are a little bit behind in terms of recognizing Asia.

What do you think the community can do better to help Asian CS?

I'm not too sure. I think it's up to the teams themselves to just improve and have good results overseas. I think one thing the community can do is just rally behind Asia and really try to force Valve's hand into giving us eight slots for the RMR with the actual same two spots for the qualification.

What are you going to take away from this whole experience when heading back home?

I think we will take away a wealth of experience in terms of just playing these high-pressure games against good teams, reviewing these games you learn more than you ever learn from a scrim against the same teams. Seeing how they played under pressure on officials and how we played under pressure and getting that complete picture is just completely invaluable. We are going to come away and study these games and come back a stronger team.