Hello MiGHTYMAX, before we talk about Team Endpoint and the rise to the ESL Pro League, let's take a look back at your career since you were part of the first Team Endpoint team in September 2016. At 19 years old, were you fully focused on CS:GO ?

Were you already in the leadership role? What made you take on this responsibility ?

I never had any IGL responsibilities until fairly recently in my career, I was always considered a “support” player, and I used to help teammates in games with mid-round calls and suggesting calls to the IGL. However, I realised that I needed to adapt in order to progress, especially inside the UK scene where a lot of the old guard IGLs were moving away from the scene, or retiring from the game completely. This left a huge gap that the younger players needed to start filling, and when you compared the other European scenes at the time, there were so many examples of older players filling this IGL role with the experience they earned over so many years of playing.

I think in late 2018 I ended up having a chat with Adz, the Endpoint owner. I explained to him that I didn’t know what to do with our team and that we were drastically failing in expectations, and he said he had faith in me to become an IGL. After this period I became an IGL. Although at the start, I was pretty reluctant to do so, it was a massive change for me in terms of the responsibility that would be put on my shoulders but over time I’ve figured parts of the role out and to this day i’m still figuring it out.

Were ALEX at LDLC and dephh at Complexity inspirations for you ?

I think it was a combination of inspiration and realisation of what could happen if the work was put in. I remember playing at a UK LAN at the end of 2015 I think, and then it felt like the day after it ended dephh was shipping off to America, it was almost inconceivable to think that it could happen to a UK player but it did. I don’t recall really speaking to ALEX whilst he was in LDLC until we went to WESG together - I didn’t even realise that he was British if I’m being completely honest. Nowadays it’s a bit different, with multiple players managing to “escape” the UK scene, I think everyone becomes at least a bit inspired and motivated when they see it happen.

While you were still a young team, as was your national scene, you dominated the ESL Premiership and had more difficulties on the European scene via the ESEA leagues. Despite the results in MDL, what did you learn playing those teams ?

After three years representing the structure you got kicked with the rest of your teammates. What did the team need to make it through ?

I completely understood the reasons behind this. Our whole team got dropped, we were underperforming and I was under delivering as a captain and IGL. Looking back at it, it was a pretty bad time in terms of my career - I was still new to the leadership role and it showed. A full team reset was required, and I even told Endpoint that I needed a break, so it ended up working out for both parties.

How did you see your future on CS:GO at that time and what did you do during your six months without a team ?

Shortly after I was removed, I was asked to stand in for Endpoint in the UK ESL Premiership and we ended up winning that again. After that, I just took time off from everything to do with CS. I don’t think I touched it for 2 to 3 weeks. I didn’t have any idea about what I was going to do. I knew that the prospect of a European venture was pretty small, there always seemed like there was a bad trait attached to UK players, and since undertaking the IGL role I wasn’t statistically performing like I used to - so I was under no illusion that venturing out from the UK scene would be easy. I ended up being asked to be a part of a few European projects, but ultimately they didn’t amount to anything and were short lived.

At the beginning of January 2020, Endpoint started from scratch with a new five with you as leader. Did you have a major part in the choice of your teammates ?

The inception of the roster happened around November/December 2019. I had no team at the time, and saw on HLTV that there was another WESG tournament with regional qualifiers. I asked around the UK scene as you required 3 UK players to participate in the qualifier, and everyone was already playing. I ended up asking Surreal one evening without much expectation of an answer and he said yes. At the time he was in the Phoenix (ex-Epsilon) roster with Thomas and CRUC1AL, so we fulfilled the 3 required UK players. We had almost every role covered with 4 players, so we knew what we needed for the last piece of the puzzle and we all decided on getting robiin.

At that time you were still with Thomas and not flameZ so each team member had already played with at least two of his teammates. Did this proximity speed up the process of building the team ?

Yeah it’s a pretty weird feeling when you make a new team that doesn't feel like a new team because you’ve already played with some of the players in iterations of older teams. I think it definitely had its merits because we all knew what to expect from each other and we were all friends. I think the only person I hadn’t played with in a team before was Surreal, but I only heard good things about him going into this team building process.

With players like Surreal and CRUC1AL who had finished 4th and then 1st in seasons 29 and 30 of MDL but also, robiin, who was used to MDL and having participated in a Major, the DH Winter 2013, did the objectives go further than the rise in MDL ?

The one thing we were quick to address were our goals in early 2020. Our most important goal at the time was to secure qualification to MDL, and beyond that we didn’t set anything specifically other than achieving Top 30 in the HLTV rankings. We figured that we would reassess our goals each season, and reflect how far we had/had not gotten.

After one month of existence you recruited a coach, RossR, how was this choice made and what does he bring you ?

I knew of Ross from before this team. In another iteration of an Endpoint roster we were close to picking him up for his coaching services, but it fell through. However, we decided we wanted to bring on a coach and decided that we didn’t want a type of coach who brings a gameplan of how we should play, and for us it was easier getting a fluent English speaking coach and I recommended Ross to the guys. We listened to what he had to offer and thought it was a perfect fit.

He brings us what I assume most other coaches provide a team. He monitors our practice, and brings an opinion on issues. He has great candor, he is always able to be critical on any issues that arise and is always giving us a different perspective.

From your first season in Advanced you managed to access the MDL and you finished 4th. What were the strong points you could build on? Conversely, what did you have to improve ?

The big task we had during that season was quickly building our map pool to a point where we could control a BO3 format without having to sacrifice a whole map due to us not playing it. Obviously a situation like that is very hard to come by in a BO1 which the regular season was, but for the playoffs and beyond we were playing a ridiculous amount of CS. The level of grit and determination we showed by putting in the hours day in day out was something that everyone in our team felt pretty accomplished with. Some days we would practice half a day and play officials the other half of the day, and other times we had officials all day. It was a crazy period. We probably had more bad days than good due to the amount we played, but we always overcame it and pushed on. I think the one thing we realised from that season is our level of consistency was pretty poor in general. We would go from dominating a team, to getting humiliated by another team. After the season I figured that it was bound to happen with such a new team. Your play book gets shown and without continuously adding to it, some teams can counter you pretty easily or get a fairly easy read of how you like to play.

At the same time, you participated in several online events, in particular the #HomeSweetHome events in which you managed to put up good results until you won the 8th edition. Did regularly facing teams such as Complexity help you gain confidence ?

It was incredibly frustrating. Every week for 8 weeks we participated and it felt like every time we smashed into a brick wall. I think after the second or third time it just became a running joke inside the team that we are going to play Complexity again in the playoffs. One time we finished first in our group, and they finished second after an upset result, which of course meant that we had to play them in the quarter finals. They completely dominated us, and to be fair, we were able to be pretty jovial about it and not get too upset. We realised a lot of errors in our game, and that we weren’t ready to compete against the top level just yet. When we weren’t playing Complexity, we had a pretty nice time, we were playing decently against the next tier of opposition and were able to compete on the server.

During the summer you were able to take part in the DH Open Summer in which you qualified and despite the fact that you didn't make it to the playoffs, a result caught my attention. Facing MAD Lions, in the first playoff game of the pools, you managed to win a BO3 in which you lost the first card 16-0. We find that again a few months later against mousesports, 16-1 before winning the game again. Where does this strength of character come from ?

I’d like to credit the amount of CS we played during the first 6 months of 2020. We had so many bad days and we probably built a strong mental resilience due to those days. We checked HLTV as a team and saw that at one point we were the most active team in the world with an official match every 1.3 days or something crazy like that. I think that we generally remain calm when we play as well, we don't comment on bad or poor rounds and we don’t argue with each other so that way we don’t tilt each other. That was actually something Ross drove into us at the start of the year. It’s incredibly important to maintain mental resilience in CS. If you get utterly dominated, who cares. There’s 2 more maps to play. At least that’s how we approach it.

In June, the structure recruited a manager, Srab, how has it changed your daily life as a player ?

Before we recruited Srab, I pretty much did everything inside and outside the game on my own. Booking practice, handling tournament invites, speaking to admins, making sure our schedule had no conflicts, booking official matches and more. For all of these tasks to be taken off my shoulders was incredibly relieving. I’m very happy with how we were able to recruit him, and the team managers are often undervalued.

Did he help you manage Thomas' departure for Envy just before starting the new MDL season ?

It was pretty much all hands on deck when we realised that Thomas would be departing. We had meetings a couple times a week as a team to come to terms with the fact it was happening, and how we should progress further. However, when it came to finding a new player, I think most of the work was down to me and Ross, with some input from the team once we had compiled a list of players.

Why did you look at flameZ to replace him ?

I was on Teamspeak with Ross one evening and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do about replacing Thomas. We were forming a list of Free Agents and FPL players and we saw flamez on the FPL leaderboards. I think at the time he was playing for Singularity, and I checked in on a game he was playing that evening. I watched a couple rounds and told Ross to check this guy out. He was relatively unknown but was performing really well and making some really good decisions in the game and I said I wanted him. We initially wanted mezi who wasn’t at C9 at the time, but we couldn’t afford him so once we had sorted that out it was a no brainer for me. I actually remember one of our first practice games we were playing against NaVi and he was playing insane, just 1v3s with 3 1 taps etc. I felt like at that point everyone in the team was convinced to get him.

So you started this MDL season with him and after hitting the bottom of the rankings (0v, 6d) you totally switched gear (10v, 1d) to get into the playoffs. What was the trigger to get there ?

The start of the season was incredibly rough for us. We just came back from the official 4 week player break to play DH Open Summer and then a few days after the tournament concluded, Thomas was bought by Envy. We found ourselves on another unofficial break for 2 weeks as we had to figure out who we needed to replace him as the start of MDL was rapidly approaching. We were looking down the barrel of relegation after starting 0-6 and we figured that we were just playing fundamentally poor. We had a brutally honest team talk that everyone was involved in, and we just pushed on. We took it one game at a time. Slowly and eventually we were able to swing the poor start into an incredible and historic finish.

Tell us how you experienced the playoffs and, above all, the final against Sprout (3-2).

We took it a game at a time. We looked at our bracket and we had tough opponents and realised that some of them we had played before and lost so we were under no illusions that it was an easy route. I didn’t feel like there was any pressure on us to perform in the playoffs after such a poor start to the season, but we found ourselves in the final vs Sprout. We always struggled in past matches against Sprout and with it being a BO5 we thought if the veto went extremely well it could be a 3-0 for us or on the flipside it could be a really close game. We started the series extremely slow, they absolutely dominated us on our map picks and we were able to win on theirs. To be honest it was a really intense series, and our mental resilience came in clutch again. To lose your first map and map pick 16-2 and bounce back is just incredible.

On the same day you played your first game in BLAST Premier Fall, losing 1-2 to Heroic. Even if fatigue had to play, we logically felt the Danes taking the advantage thanks to their experience and their very solid gameplan. On which lines do you think you will have to work before starting the ESL Pro League ?

We were really happy to play BLAST as we were originally playing against EG, which for us is a new experience. However, we ended up playing Heroic which again became a bit of a joke inside the team. It felt like we always ended up playing them in tournaments, a bit like Complexity in the HomeSweetHomes earlier this year. We knew it was going to be incredibly tough, not just because it’s Heroic but playing a BO5 shortly before playing them is super draining. Before we start Pro League, we just need to keep building on our foundations with FlameZ. We will get more practice in and a stronger map pool to compete against the best teams.

More generally, what are the goals for the structure now that you are going to taste the ESL Pro League and start participating in T1 events ?

Obviously participating in more and more T1 events against T1 opponents won’t be easy. It’s gonna be a tough learning curve, and the only thing we can focus on is ourselves over this Christmas break and I have to ensure we are coming into 2021 with a new playbook, new ideas and a better way of playing if we are going to consistently compete and hopefully win against these opponents. We are going to monitor our schedule more carefully to ensure we don’t feel any “burnouts” like other teams have and we have come close to having before. It’s going to be an exciting time for us as a team, it’s the first time some of us have ever been in ESL Pro League so we are going to give it everything we’ve got.

Thank you for this interview that allowed us to get to know you and your team and, as is the tradition on our site, we leave you the final word.

They’ve heard it a thousand times but I want to thank Adz and Pete, the owners of Endpoint. Without them, I probably wouldn’t still be here playing CS. They’ve supported the UK scene for a long time and with this roster we are finally at a point of competing inside the Top 30 and we qualified to Pro League. It’s been a really crazy ride for me being under Endpoint for so long in so many different teams. Also a massive thanks to the Endpoint sponsors: CeX, Overclockers, Noblechairs, ASUS ROG & Thrustmaster.