RUSH: "I never expected to go this long without going to a Major"

Nouns have entered the Perfect World Shanghai Major Americas RMR aiming to qualify for their first Major after three unsuccessful attempts at the Rio, Paris, and Copenhagen RMRs. Their fourth attempt comes after the blockbuster addition of ELEAGUE Major Boston 2018 champion William "RUSH" Wierzba, whose experience is invaluable for the young squad.

Unfortunately for Nouns, this experience was unable to secure the team a winning match in their debut in Shanghai, with Nouns being crushed by paiN on Vertigo. Following this loss, which Nouns into the 0-1 pool, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore had the opportunity to speak to RUSH remotely about the loss, Nouns' mixed results ahead of the RMR, and RUSH's dream of returning to the Majors after five years, among other topics.

Note that this interview was recorded immediately following Nouns' opening match against paiN and before their match against BESTIA.

Tough loss to start the RMR, what do you think went wrong in this opening match against paiN?

The main thing that went wrong was the start of the game, the first half of the first half there were a lot of close rounds that honestly probably should have gone our way, we just didn't play to a high level.

We just lost the first half after winning pistol and the second round, there were 1v1s, 2v2s, close rounds and then our money got away from us and we didn't read the game properly going forward in that half.

When we had a chance to come back by winning CT pistol we then lost a full Glock round which is unacceptable at any level so after losing that Glock round that pretty much solidified the game for us because we won both pistols and if you can't convert the Glock round then "GG".

The veto took Nouns to Vertigo which is a map the team have struggled on recently. Was the plan to steer the veto to Vertigo or were you counting on another map?

The veto went as planned. I don't want to go into too many details about strengths and weaknesses but I would say we expected the map.

How does the team feel about their Vertigo right now? Despite it possibly leaving the map pool soon is the team confident in their prep on it?

We've been playing Vertigo a lot and we bootcamped in Europe for nine or ten days before this and we feel good on Vertigo now. There's no point to stop playing it until Valve says they're taking it out of the pool even if there's rumors about that.

What can you tell us about your British bootcamp, what were the priorities for Nouns there?

The priorities were for us barebones to get good practice which is a given when you go to Europe but the other one was to identify which maps are the strongest for us. As I said before I'm not going to go into details but I feel like we were able to do that at the bootcamp.

We wanted to just grind basically against European competition because we're not able to do that in North America.

Nouns have struggled to qualify and play in EU tournaments this year. Do you think that puts the team at a huge disadvantage at the RMR?

I'm not sure for Nouns but I think you're right about the lack of international LANs since the last RMR [for the team]. But I went to ESL Challenger Melbourne with Party Astronauts which I guess you can count as an international LAN. But that was more of a pug scenario but yeah it's tough to navigate playing these big, important events where you play against international teams and the last time we played against international teams was six months ago.

It's tough and that's what going and having the bootcamp is for, to simulate match environments. It would be nice if we could play in some of the cups, the betting cups that NA lacks, but at the same time that also gives away your hand on our map pool and what you're strong at. It's on a team by team basis on what they decide to do.

Your last event before the Americas RMR was ECL. How do you feel the team performed there despite missing out on the EPL spot?

The last two ECL seasons were big disappointments because we lost to Wildcard two seasons ago for the EPL spot and that was bad and the second time it was worse because we lost to Party Astronauts. They're not a bad team by any means but at the time we were the stronger team and they upset us and we got 13-0'd on Mirage which is embarrassing as fuck.

We didn't really think about that and it is important to qualify for EPL even though it's not until next year, but we didn't really think about it after it happened because we still had matches to play and a bootcamp coming up so you can't harp on it too much.

It is the team's first time in China like many of the NA teams. How has your experience been in Shanghai thus far?

This is my second time in China and the first time in a big city. The first time was WESG 2018 so it's been a while. But what I notice most is that people are really friendly and the fans are really nice. There were a couple of guys waiting outside the hotel and one guy that recognized me and Jeorge at the mall and they were very helpful and friendly because not everyone speaks English here.
They helped us a lot and were super nice, also the Perfect World employees are all really helpful and nice and I have no complaints besides the fact that we have to use certain programs and VPNs to access certain American sites and chats. But that's the only thing that bothers me.

Otherwise everything else run by Perfect World is incredible and they're doing well so far.

Looking towards your next match, the 0-1 pool is full of teams like FURIA and Liquid that faced upsets earlier in the day. Who do you feel most ready to face off against in the 0-1m pool later today?

I feel like both of those matchups [Liquid, FURIA] were teams we hadn't expected to play this early on so it's definitely not expected but we're going to do our due diligence. Between the two I don't really have a preference because they're both at a similar level and we played neither of them in practice because they're usually in Europe.

We have to play high-level CS to go 1-1 and I don't have a preference.

You have been with Nouns for six months, how would you sum up your time with this team?

When I first joined we got a honeymoon phase and we played pretty well and we got better, but maybe we hit a bit of a stalemate in growth at the halfway point. It didn't feel like we were getting better and we were making the same mistakes and not winning important matches.

Obviously there's some we have won, like versus NRG to make the Americas RMR was one of them but there's some we lost in a lot of qualifiers and it's up and down on a graph you know where we have peaks and troughs.

It's not really a steady growth and we have to find that balance to consistently get better and grow opposed to having high highs and low lows basically and not being able to know which Nouns is going to show up on any day.

What would it mean for you to overcome this 0-1 start and qualify to your first Major in five years after previously weighing retirement?

I never expected to go this long without going to a Major but that is kind of a product of COVID because I believe Complexity would have gone to one if we had a normal scene. But besides that it would be awesome because this is a really hyped Major and there's nothing else to say besides it'd be fucking amazing because it's rare for players to have this amount of time without having success in the game and then to come back and do well or make it far.

I'd like to be one of those players and I think I can still do it. Prime examples are HObbit who came back and started dominating, it's really cool to see that. cadiaN back on Rogue in NA wasn't the greatest and then he proved everyone wrong [on HEROIC]. Another example is Snappi, those players are examples of players the community counted them out and they proved everyone wrong.

It would be cool to do that as well for the NA community.

So you'd like to prove everyone wrong and make it back to the top and qualify for the Major?

Correct. I don't think I get a lot of hate or doubt necessarily but maybe I'm more so doing it for myself that I want to prove that I have it, but it would be an affirmation to get some fan hype but yeah it's more so a personal goal of mine.

Nouns will aim to stay alive in the Perfect World Shanghai Major Americas RMR tonight when they face off against KRÜ in a best of three series at 01:00AM.