Ricky "Rickeh" Mulholland is the secondary AWPer for Counter Logic Gaming and the first Australian player to play on a non-Australian team in CS:GO.

The team will compete at the SL i-League Season 3 finals, with their first opponent of the group being none other than ELEAGUE Major 2017 champions Astralis.

Ahead of his games in Kiev, Rickeh spoke to theScore esports about his transition to CLG and the growth of the Oceanic scene.

Let's start with your move to CLG. I think that team has kind of been in flux for a while now and I don't think anyone would have put money on picking up an Australian. How did you come to join CLG? What was that process like?

So basically, after I found out that I would be leaving Renegades, I was approaching a bunch of different teams, just to see basically what's out there in terms of stepping forward in the North American Counter-Strike scene.

One of the first teams that wanted to trial me was CLG and I ended up playing a couple of games with them. We found out we're really good as a team together and they ended up wanting to play with me, so I decided to go to CLG.

I look great in this @clgaming attire lets be honest :D prac/media today!! pic.twitter.com/HbX3KJsrsY — Rick Mulholland (@Rickehcsgo) April 3, 2017

One of the things that was involved with you going to CLG was you shifting over to a secondary AWPer, while previously you've normally been the primary AWPer. Was that a big change for you?

The positioning and style of play that I would use when I was playing primary AWP is very different to what I'm doing now, I would say I'm more of a hybrid support role. I can still pick up the AWP if I want to, but there's a lot more rifling involved.

On top of that there's a lot of new positions that I have to learn as well, but at the same time, I'm definitely up for the challenge and I'm interested to play different roles as well as picking up the AWP. So it's a good experience for me and it'll improve me overall as a player.

You've mentioned your openness to a hybrid role, but how comfortable are you as a rifler? Have you noticed yourself improving with an AK or M4 since you've given them more priority?

I think in the short term, I have been improving bit-by-bit, but at the same time, for me personally, there's consistency issues with the rifling. So, I feel like I need a little bit more time to get used to it, but I think I'm holding my own.

Is the team helping you deal with that? Do they give you much advice in that regard?

Yeah, they give me advice and they're also very open, just in general, with what I would like to do. So if there's a certain position that I'm having a hard time with or if I feel I can have a little bit more impact on a different area of the map while I'm rifling as well, they'll take it into consideration.

They'll let me change up spots to make me feel a little bit more comfortable while I'm transitioning into rifling a lot more. So they're very open to suggestions that I make, things that I would like to do to improve, to not be as inconsistent with getting used to the rifling.

We've talked a bit about the gameplay side, what about the out-of-game stuff? I mentioned prior that the team was in flux, for example James "hazed" Cobb was out, then in, then out again and then Yassine "Subroza" Taoufik left the team. How would you say your interpersonal relationship with the team?

I don't know much about what's happened with the previous players, but I would say that CLG as an organization is very professional. They have a bunch of different things which help out the players outside of the game and inside of the game.

So we have a player development manager that works with us outside of the game as well and we have specific drills and certain things that we have to do to make us stay healthy. We have a certain time we have to wake up, we have certain drills we have to do and it's all very professional.

We have a couple other perks as well, so we have a chef that cooks for us in the morning and makes dinner for us as well. So it's a very good environment.

In a video CLG released on March 15, leadership was a big topic. You've mentioned the player development coach Mike Schwartz, FNS who's the IGL, but then there's also the coaches Chet "ImAPet" Singh and Matt "dayV1D" David. Considering all of them, what's the leadership dynamic like within the team? Is there maybe one person that everyone goes to for everything or is everyone on a similar level?

So, probably one of the best things with CLG is, if an individual player has something that's on their mind or if there's something they feel like they want to discuss, the mentality behind it is it's not worth holding anything in. Everything can always be discussed constructively within this team.

We have the player development manager, it's kind of like having a psychologist. He makes sure that people don't step out of line, don't do the wrong thing and making sure they're putting in the right amount of time into the game.

Regarding internal issues, this is one of the best teams I've been in, in terms of how they go about it and how they deal with certain situations.

Well considering that, how comfortable are you in those situations, also considering that you're the newest addition to the team? Do you feel comfortable bringing up issues, or are you maybe still testing the waters?

I'd say I'm extremely comfortable, if there's something that I feel like I want to say that will be constructive and criticizing at the same time, I feel like I'm free to say pretty much whatever I want. I don't think the team, same as everybody else, we're very equal.

If somebody feels like they want to say something, they can and we can discuss things as a team and that's the best way to go about it. I feel free, that I can actually say stuff to this team.

One of the big storylines that came out of the ELEAGUE Major was Astralis and their usage of a sports psychologist. You've mentioned Mike Schwartz plays a little bit of that role, but has bringing in a more specialized person in that role been discussed, or do you feel you already have enough support on that end?

I think there's already a lot of support. It depends on what sort of team, and the mentality of the team that you have, so it's hard to say. If you have a team that's more introverted and like to keep to themselves, then sometimes it can be beneficial for the players.

Some people keep in things for weeks to months on end and it builds up to the point where it all blows up and then you have a massive argument. But in this environment, it's not like that, we haven't come into any of those situations and I think it's because of the support that we have around us that helps us focus on the game.

Monday morning coaches meeting. Always aiming to provide our players with the best training and environment possible 💪 A post shared by Counter Logic Gaming (@clgaming) on Feb 27, 2017 at 1:27pm PST

You've been talking about a lot of positivity regarding the team and I think it's shown in your games since you've been playing. Obviously you guys qualified for SL i-League and narrowly missed qualifying for DreamHack Austin. What would you say are some of the factors in CLG's recent upward trajectory?

I feel like the guys, previous to me joining, they weren't really sure what they wanted to do for a fifth, so that plays into the team's mentality a lot. Not to say they're not necessarily happy playing with who they had as a fifth, but if you know you don't have a core five and you know somebody's going to be leaving the team after a couple months, it's a little difficult to maintain strong mentality about the game.

But now that we have that stability, I think people are really happy and it shows in our gameplay.

Let's talk a bit about Kenneth "koosta" Suen, he's seemed to have a big resurgence. Do you have any insight into why he's all of a sudden woken up and playing the way that he was when he was on Enemy and just wrecking tier 2 teams?

It's hard to say really. I think it comes back to knowing that we have stability in the team now and knowing that the core five is going to stick together for quite some time. We have already shown significant improvement with me joining on top of that, so I think he's just in a good place at the moment.

Since we've been talking about the positives, I wanted to put you on the spot a little bit. Is there maybe central issue that you guys are dealing with right now, or maybe something that you guys have already dealt with, going into SL i-League?

For us, one of the big things that we've been working on is after-plant situations. We may give away a couple rounds quite easily after the bomb is down and after holding specific spots in a site.

Depending on what team we're versing we can get a little antsy, so to speak, and we go for picks that don't really make any sense. So we're just working on things one by one and I think we're improving overall just in general, but certain situations like that are the most important one for us at the moment.

Switching gears a little bit to you coming over to NA. You've been in the U.S. for about seven months, across both Renegades and CLG, so how have you acclimated?

I am used to it. And yeah, the whole reason I decided to stay in the North American scene is because the scene in Australia is technically a lower tier scene and it's not really profitable to be playing there. So if you want stability in the work that you do, specifically for Counter-Strike, this is the scene that you have to be in.

Yeah, the transition has been good, I'm pretty much used to it now. And we have time to take off during the holidays, so I can go back to Australia.

How have you adjusted to pubbing and practicing with NA teams? Is there are big difference between the NA and OCE teams?

I think it's just the fact that they have ESEA Rank S here, which is more of a competitive environment for professional players. That being said, they just recently introduced Rank S to Australia as well. But yeah, the North American scene in general has a lot more benefits due to Rank S and the specific players that play in that pug environment.

Other than that, practice in general with the North American teams is pretty decent. There's a lot of strong teams in Pro League, so you have a variety of different styles to practice against.

Touching on the Australia scene, have you followed the ZEN League at all?

I have a little bit, but I mainly just follow one of the old teams I used to play for, Team Immunity and I see that they're doing pretty well.

How do you think it affects the OCE scene?

I think, not only the ZEN League, but also the Australian scene in general over the past year has grown so much. It's actually unbelievable to see how many tournaments are actually running in Australia. There's more tournaments and more online leagues that have been run, at the moment, in Australia than in the North American scene and the European scene.

So, it's good to see the growth and it'll be interesting to see the turnout of IEM Sydney and see what sort of fanbase we actually have down there.

On a different note, that's another thing with Sydney, as well as SL i-League, there's slots being given to Asian teams, a lesser scene as far as CS:GO. What are your thoughts on that?

I think the Asian scene is massive. I think they've been around since the start of CS:GO, so I'm not exactly sure why they have issues, performance-wise, when competing in international events. The Asian scene in itself has always been really big and has always been up there up there and they field just as many teams as the North American and European sides have.

Well, when you were competing back in Australia, did you ever scrim with any Asian teams, like TyLoo or anything?

We couldn't scrim with them, because the latency difference was too high in Australia, but at the beginning of our international ventures, the majority of competitions that we went to with my previous team Immunity, were actually in the Asian region. So we would go to Singapore or Korea or China, or something like that.

And yeah, we would always face these teams. The two biggest teams that stood out at that time, and probably still do now, would be Vici Gaming and TyLoo.

TyLoo are one of three Asian teams competing at the SL i-League Season 3 LAN finals

Going into SL i-League, what are you looking forward to in Kiev?

I think the Swiss-system is one of the coolest formats, since you get to play three games. If you lose three games, you're out, but if you win three games, you're in, and they're all best-of-ones.

We have Astralis first up and I think the best thing you want versus Astralis is to have a best-of-one to start off with. Not to say we can't win a best-of-three, but Counter-Strike these days is just one of those games where anything can happen if your team is a certain skill level.

I'm looking forward to the Swiss system and I'm looking forward to basically just playing a LAN event. I haven't been to a LAN in a couple months now.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.