Nouns pull out of ESL Challenger Melbourne CQ for vital preparation

ESL have announced that Nouns have elected to pull out of the ESL Challenger Melbourne Closed Qualifier ahead of it starting on March 27th. This decision left many scratching their heads as Nouns have been on a tear recently and looked to be the favorites for another LAN outing, however, the decision comes with a good reason.

Long-time Nouns member, Carson "nosraC" O'Reilly, told Dust2.us that the team made the difficult decision to pass up a chance at the LAN down under to focus on their bootcamp in Monterrey, Mexico for the BLAST.tv Americas RMR. He said that due to the due to the team also qualifying to the BLAST Premier Spring American Showdown, it left the team in a difficult situation where they would either have to outright cancel their bootcamp or extend it to be begin on March 29th, the day when the Spring Showdown is set to begin.

After weighing their choices, Nouns decided to opt for a longer bootcamp and to play the BLAST Spring Showdown from Mexico. However, this decision came with the downside of forcing them to miss out on the Melbourne Closed Qualifier due to March 28th, their travel day, also being the second day of the Closed Qualifier.

While it was undoubtedly a difficult decision, playing the Spring Showdown makes sense due to it giving Nouns potential practice against the teams they are likely to face in the RMR, along with the total match commitment being lower in a worst-case scenario.

With Nouns pulling out, ESL have elected to invite the third-place team from the Open Qualifier, Vendetta, to replace Nouns. As such the four teams in the bracket are now: