ESL Challenger Melbourne 2024 — The Lack of Depth

ESL Challenger Melbourne has been and gone. Seemingly for some people, it lasted an eternity and for others, it flashed right by. For myself, there is a lot to take out of this event and I inadvertantly highlighted during a deleted tweet of mine.

If you’re unaware, I had stated that if this tournament is used as any sort of measurement whether Oceania should have their league renewed. It would be intellectually dishonest and incredibly cynical in order to do so.

The main motivation behind this tweet is that Oceania really only has 3 teams that could realistically contest ESEA Advanced Europe which would be Flyquest, Bad News Kangaroos and Rooster. This is essentially tier 2 Europe CS.

When you take two of them away to participate in ESL Pro League and leave 1 spot for Rooster and a 1 spot for another OCE team. It leaves extremely slim pickings. Let’s compare this to the North American, Asian, South American and European scenes where this isn’t the case.

For Europe, you still have an entire Tier 2 scene and Spirit who were not at ESL Pro League.

For North America, you have Nouns, Wildcard and NRG.

For Asia, you still have Atox, IHC and Rare Atom.

For South America, you still have Pain, Legacy and Fluxo.

However, in Australia — you’re left with Rooster and that’s it. There is no other team that’d would even survive in ESEA Advanced within Europe.

This is why I made that tweet. Australia has such a small population size compared to all the other scenes. The fact that we had/have a team that can compete with Tier 1 given the lack of investment, the lack of variety we encounter and the lack of players is a small miracle.

When theory meets reality…

This showed further in ESL Challenger where all Australian teams went out at 5th, 7th and 8th respectively. They just had no chance against MIBR who are on the cusp of Tier 1, Apeks and Aurora who are upper tier 2 and Rebels who are in the middle of Tier 2.

No Australian team won a map against an international opponent. And honestly, how would we? The depth just isn’t there. I give it to KZG that they openly tried to take on MIBR despite knowing they had no chance in hell.

Rooster performed incredibly well against Rebels and MIBR with Asap capping off a stellar LAN but they were still unable to win map against an international side.

They were pitted against well-drilled sides that have played in atleast multiple highly competitive events such as CCT. They are most likely salaried in some capacity as well.

You could argue that Sunday School weren’t really a team given that they are not participating in ECL Australia but that wouldn’t have mattered. You put in Vantage and DXA and I guarantee you that the same result would have occurred.

Does it gets worse?

This was not really highlighted until recently from my interview with guag. You can check out my interview with guag here.

Guag had mentioned that there is a lack of young players within the CS2 scene. He had mentioned that he doesn’t run into many sharp kids compared to previously.

He mentioned that the youngest player in the Top Australian Teams are roughly 20–21. I believe the last player that was unable to participate in ESEA Premier due to being below the age of 16 was Vexite. Vexite is now almost 20.

A lot of this can be due to Valorant where a lot of players are moving to due to less opportunities in CS2. This occurred immensely in the CS2 scene where NA was in the doghouse for quite a bit. It took awhile for it to resolve as all the CS2 players who were unable to get good at Valorant eventually returned.

However, for the Australian Scene, it seems a lot stickier. We’ve only had one person return from Valorant and that would be Crunchy. Crunchy proceeded to return to Valorant after he was signed to an organisation.

Although, we’ve had people come in from Fortnite such as Alecc and Jynx which is definitely promising.

You could also mention that Guag hasn’t had much motivation for CS2 and hasn’t ran into those individuals.

We had 7ALOR, Rhyu and a few others who’ve had breakout games in ESEA Open. We have also had pain who has now joined Mindfreak.

I personally think the depth is there but we should always be wary of how the grassroots scene is actually going by checking in now and again.

What can we take from this?

Do not be disheartened from the results in ESL Challenger Melbourne. You were taking on teams that were well beyond your paygrade. I’d say for Rooster, this is what getting to the next level will be.

This was a good experience to see what a well-drilled team looks like and how they operate.

The mistakes that you were used to be able to get away with in the Australian scene will be punished and then some more.

Trust, teamwork and communication is paramount in these sort of games and having binders of strategies/defaults is incredibly important. If you have a pattern of doing X before doing Y, it will be countered and it will be accounted for.

If you have ever read Elige’s feedback to Cojomo — he puts extreme importance on not telegraphing what you are going to do. This is why you need a large range of defaults.

You need to have a plan for every round on what you’re going to do. The plan may not work but as long as there is some intent behind it or thinking behind it. The team can trust it, execute it and adapt it on the fly.

At the end of the day, this is all easier said than done. I trust that our players as well as having fun are always focusing on how they can be better, how can they be better for the team and learning different styles of play.