Rooster book a place in ESL Challenger Atlanta

The orgless Rooster lineup have qualified to ESL Challenger Atlanta after taking down some of the top teams from Oceania. Rooster's road to Atlanta was fraught with peril, as the team lost their opening match against The Art of War, needing to battle their way back through the lower bracket, besting Housebets (formerly known as Bad News Kangaroos) and Mindfreak on their way to a rematch against the Hong Konger-Australian lineup. The series ended up being far closer than many would of expected, with Rooster needing to claw back a 2-1 victory after losing the first map in the final series.

The squad will once again head out of the country, having previously competed at IEM Katowice 2024, but this time will be doing so without their top player, Corey "nettik" Brown. The 21-year-old recently joined TALON in Europe as the organization looks to make a splash with its Australian contingent. The team recently settled on Kalan "Sliimey" Lorenzo as a replacement for nettik, with the former Mindfreak player set to make his international debut in Atlanta.

Rooster will be joined by fellow countrymen FlyQuest, as well as teams like M80, BetBoom, and ODDIK as the squad who have already qualified for the event.

Two more teams are still yet to qualify, one from Europe and one from North America. There is some controversy brewing in North America as several teams have been forced to choose between the IEM Rio Closed Qualifier or the ESL Challenger Atlanta Closed Qualifier due to overlapping dates.

The current team list for ESL Challenger Atlanta consists of: