Australia sends the Hounds to Dallas
The regional qualifier winner has been decided with Australia Grayhound winning the Closed Qualifier event last night. Their route to the final was somewhat easy for the squad as they did not drop a single map through both the open and closed qualifiers.
Regularly featured as Australia's mainstay international squad, Grayhound had to fight through the open qualifiers this time around due to their ESL World Ranking which puts them behind Bad News Kangaroos and Rooster, both of whom earned Closed Qualifier invites.
Grayhound cruised in opening match of the Closed Qualifier as they faced easily dispatched Bad News Kangaroos 13-7, 13-6 on Mirage and Inferno, respectively.
This victory set up a match against Rooster, one of the other premier teams from the Oceanic region. Rooster are coming off their appearance at IEM Katowice 2024 where they had played against Virtus.pro and M80, losing both matches. This was another tough affair for the squad as Grayhound powered through to a 13-3, 13-10 victory to earn their place in the grand final.
The defeated Rooster then played Bad News Kangaroos in the Consolation Final with the winner getting a rematch against Grayhound in the final. Rooster rebounded after their tough loss to Grayhound as they won 13-8, 13-5 to give themselves a chance at a second international IEM event in 2024.
Grayhound, however, were determined not to let that happen. They would win in the grand final, but with a much closer scoreline in each map as they secured a 13-11, 13-10 victory over Vertigo and Anubis to punch their tickets to the USA this June.
GrayhoundRooster| Grayhound |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Joshua 'INS' Potter |
39 - 30 | +9 | 90.1 | 80.9% | 1.33 |
| Christopher 'dexter' Nong |
39 - 35 | +4 | 92.0 | 76.6% | 1.30 |
| Jay 'Liazz' Tregillgas |
36 - 28 | +8 | 82.2 | 74.5% | 1.25 |
| Alistair 'aliStair' Johnston |
30 - 28 | +2 | 57.4 | 68.1% | 0.97 |
| Declan 'Vexite' Portelli |
23 - 35 | -12 | 63.7 | 66.0% | 0.79 |
| Rooster |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyson 'asap' Paterson |
38 - 30 | +8 | 82.1 | 72.3% | 1.21 |
 Corey 'nettik' Browne |
37 - 34 | +3 | 86.7 | 78.7% | 1.19 |
| Michael 'chelleos' Hawkins |
29 - 32 | -3 | 70.6 | 59.6% | 0.92 |
| Tynan 'TjP' Purtell |
30 - 37 | -7 | 63.1 | 78.7% | 0.91 |
| Sharvesh 'dangeR' Saravanan |
21 - 35 | -14 | 52.1 | 68.1% | 0.66 |
Grayhound will be headed to IEM Dallas for the second time in their history and will hopefully improve upon their last-place finish in 2023.
