The Republic of Ireland may not be the first country that comes to mind when you think of Competitive Overwatch, but Team Ireland are looking to change that at the 2019 Overwatch World Cup.

I got the chance to speak with several members of the Irish Overwatch team and their coach about how the team is feeling heading into the tournament and the Wolfhounds say they’re looking forward to the chase.

Even though they have no Contenders or Overwatch League players on the roster, Team Ireland won’t be letting that slow them down.

The 2019 Overwatch World Cup is the first time Ireland has been to the tournament since 2016 — but it also introduces a new single-elimination preliminary round for every team except: South Korea, Canada, China, France and the United States as the top five seeds.

“In terms of like the format, I do think it’s a really good idea to get more teams involved, and if it’s about making or finding hidden talent, I think the way they’ve gone with it is definitely a good way of doing it,” Team Ireland Head Coach Brian ‘Scrivzy’ Scriven said. “ It’s a good idea to try and get as many countries as possible involved. It will be interesting to see who we’re seeded against and how far we can go, I think we’ll surprise people and do pretty well.”

Ireland will have to fight their way through the Preliminaries for a shot at the Group Stage in 2019.

“Once you get there there’s the preliminary rounds which are only single elimination, so it’s pretty tough.” Irish support Mark ‘Scally’ Scally explained. “There’s going to be a few months of scrims and getting ready for this, then it’s down to one match in the prelim stage.”

Team Ireland is currently in the thick of preparing for the World Cup — and with that comes scrims against other national teams.

“We’re able to be competitive with countries like Spain and Italy, who have Contenders players and a couple of OWL players,” Irish Tank Liam “Liam” O’Donnell said about the team’s practice matches. “So it’s really good to see we’re able to compete at that level.”

Team Ireland’s scrim against Iceland.

As for Sigma and the new meta that has come along with him — that seems to be just fine with Team Ireland.

“It actually suits us, I feel like a lot of teams are going to say that — but it actually does,” Scrivzy said. “Because when we came together a lot of our players didn’t have very current team experience — and all the teams up until that point were just running GOATs.”

“When you run a meta for a year as a team — or more importantly for us — when you don’t run it and fall behind, so the level we were at with our GOATs play was way, way, way behind,” the head coach revealed. “We’re not behind on the current meta, so it definitely suits us because everyone is starting fresh. We’re kind of equal in terms of experience with all the other teams right now.”

Sigma will no doubt be a fixture for teams at the 2019 World Cup.

Role Lock means damage heroes are finally back in the meta, something Irish DPS Aaron ‘FlexG’ Kay is excited about as well.

“Before World Cup we were on Dublin Foxes, which had other Irish players and it was mostly GOATs,” FlexG explained. “We were doing OK, but personally for me, there’s only so much you can do on Brig in GOATs, like — it got really repetitive, so I’m really excited to be able to play DPS again.”

Team Ireland’s scrim vs. Italy

Ireland’s main goal, along with every other team, is to advance in the tournament, but they also want to show the world and people back home what they’ve got.

“I think making it through the play-in and making it into the proper tournament would be huge, that’s the ultimate goal,” Liam said. “Making it to that and getting ourselves on that main stage.”

“Prove myself,” FlexG answered. “Get to play DPS again and pop off, I want Ireland to do well and get our names out there.”

“It’s really about the team,” Scally added. “We want the team to do well, get some exposure, show ourselves as a nice group of lads.”

The 2019 Celtic Wolfhounds. Back (L-R): Liam, Buckle, Wheat, M3WTs. Front (L-R)): Scally202, Eoghann, andygmb, PureIrish, Unregistered.

Coach Scrivzy wrapped things up by hoping that the 2019 Overwatch World Cup would, above all, be a step forward for the Irish Overwatch scene.

“Hopefully this will open some doors for a lot of people,” he said. “We’re all super excited, even if we don’t win, it’s about the experience and about raising awareness, not just for people looking into Ireland, but for people in Ireland too, people should know that we’re close to having a really, really solid professional team.”

The Overwatch World Cup takes place on November 1 and 2 along with one of the biggest Overwatch parties of the year at BlizzCon 2019.

Ireland’s matches, as well as all of the preliminary rounds will be streamed live during the tournament, but the matchups and exact times of matches haven’t been released by Blizzard, yet.