On Tuesday the group stage for the ESL UK Premiership came to an end seeing fm-eSports join Team XENEX, exceL eSports and Team infused in the lineup for the offline finals. The fm-eSports side knocked out United Estonia with a 2-0 win, despite having dealt with the departure of two players in recent times. We managed to catch up with Neil “nEiLZiNHo” Finlay to talk about their place in their group games, being in the finals and the fm-eSports roster.

After beating United Estonia 2-0 in the lower bracket, you secured your place in the ESL UK Premiership offline finals, how does it feel to have guaranteed your spot?

Yeah it’s a relief to have qualified. I think everyone was expecting us to attend the LAN finals anyway and if we had our full lineup we’d have probably won comfortably, especially with Infused going through some lineup changes as well. It’s a big event and we’re all just really excited to qualify for fm-eSports and especially Yakkkk. Hopefully we can bring home the title!

The game against United Estonia was closely fought and at times seemed like it could tip in either direction. What brought home the win for you guys?

It was quite a weird game to play, but as weird as it sounds it felt comfortable and we were never really sweating. Most of the rounds we lost were our own fault with people playing too confidently, just to try and close it out, but once we regained our mindset we managed to take the game. On dust2 as well we had something like a 15-9 lead and I think it was just really bad from us in terms of composure and we didn’t take it seriously enough, one of the downsides of having a mix team!

Earlier on in the group you lost out to Team Infused, 2-1, were you still feeling confident after being knocked to the lower bracket?

It was disappointing to lose to Infused but we didn’t really chat about it at all and we kind of just forgot about it, if we had prepared with a full lineup like I said earlier we would have probably taken it and all the maps were pretty close fought. The better mix team won on the day and we just moved on and focused on qualifying. Hopefully the Infused lads can sort out their issues in time for the event as they are basically in the exact same situation as us just now.

With the departure of Kryptix and mikeS, how have you been preparing for the tournament?

After the departure of Kryptix we started to look for potential replacements and played RGN with socN, managing to string a few wins against some decent European teams which is always our main goal and things were looking up. Unfortunately mikeS then decided to take up the offer and play with his countrymen which is understandable and we decided to play out EPS qualifiers with whoever we could get. I think if we played Infused on Grand Theft Auto it’d have been a fantastic spectacle because that’s literally all we’ve played for the past few weeks and I think the majority of the Infused guys have been doing the same!

Will we be seeing Kryptix and socN return for the offline finals?

We will definitely not be bringing Kryptix. It’s his birthday over the finals and hes away for the weekend, and since we’re going to be attending as pretty much a mix team, we couldn’t exactly ask him to skip it. socN however will be attending with us and we shall find our 5th for the event in the next week or so – not sure how the rules work with roster additions etc so we shall see what we can muster up!

How do you feel about meeting XENEX or exceL eSports at the offline finals?

I think we will be facing XENEX in the first game if I’m not mistaken, and we’re excited to play them especially with them having a few ex-team mates of mine in the form of RattlesnK and Puls3. They probably gave us our hardest game at the last iSeries and managed to take the victory so we’ll be confident going into it again even with a lack of practice. Knowing Sam though they will be itching for revenge and they’ve been practicing quite a lot since we last met at iSeries so it will be a tough game that’s for sure.

Final words?

Just wanna thank fm-eSports and Yakkkk for supporting us, hopefully we can find a stable 5 and repay him instead of showing flashes of potential and then have it come crashing down a week later, but with our scene that’s what happens unfortunately. It’s definitely improving though so hopefully we can take advantage of that and make something concrete in the next month or so. Also like to thank our sponsors AMD, Sapphire, Razer, Multiplay and twitch for making it possible for us to attend the offline finals!

The offline finals for the ESL UK Premiership are being held on the 23rd/24th May at the MCM Expo.