We caught up with Jay “liazz” Tregillgas at IEM Chicago after Renegades found themselves exiting in last place.

The Australian player talked about the recent dip in form, the teams morale, their plans, and more.

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VPEsports: Digging right into this event, if you look at it at surface level it’s a really bad event because you went out without a win. However, you guys have really been keeping maps close. Is this an overall performance issue or a problem just closing out maps?

liazz: I’d probably say it’s an overall performance thing. Compared to when we were on our streak from Shanghai and the Major – during that period we weren’t losing so many stupid rounds. There’s not really any other way to put it.

For example, I think in our game against ENCE we lost like four or five anti ecos. We lose like silly 3v3’s and 2v3’s, 3v1’s. Especially against Vitality in the Mirage game. We lost 16-12 and I think we lost in the first half like four 3v1’s in a row and if we won just one of them we would have broke their economy and probably run away with the half like 9-6 or 10-5 but instead we lost it pretty hard and didn’t give us much space on the CT side.





VPEsports: It’s hard to dissect what happened between that Major run and now because things like visa issues are out of your control. You finally get the boys back together and things aren’t terrible in Dallas but then it seems like you guys have only one like one match since.

liazz: Yeah, it’s not good. Definitely lost a lot of momentum when we lost Sean for that period. I think our chemistry actually took a hit. For me personally, I fell into the dumps when we started losing – it really hurt my confidence a lot. And Sean hasn’t said anything but I think it might have hurt Sean’s confidence a little bit as well.

Right now we’re doing everything we can to work on it and just trying to play as much as we can but it feels like even when things are picking up on an individual level, the basics are slipping through. We learn one thing and something else goes out the other ear, ya know?





VPEsports: Have you guys brought in a team psychologist or doing the other structural things a lot of teams are doing?

liazz: Yeah, we have a team psychologist and he’s great. He helps a lot but there’s only so much he can do, right? We’re going from event to event so he doesn’t really have all that much time to sit down with us and actually talk things through. Every once in awhile we’ll have a talk with him and it’ll help us temporarily but we can’t really get on top of things and fix things until we get a break.

After this event we have a decent break and then we’re going into a boot camp before Berlin. We’re going to try to do everything we can there. After we lost at this event we sat down and had a meeting and talked about all the things we want to fix before Berlin and came up with a plan. Hopefully things go good.





VPEsports: What is your vibe with the team? You can tell you’re a little somber about it, not very upbeat because it is a sucky situation to have had that rise up, run into these issues, and now the confidence have your confidence shot. After that talk is everyone all in or are things still iffy?

liazz: Coming into this event, everyone was still hyped and had pretty high expectations. We were thinking we were gonna make top four, top two even. After this event, obviously it was a big hit coming in last, again. Everyone’s really upset right now obviously, but I think that after the talk we had that everyone took a step back and we’re gonna reset. We have a little bit of a player break right now and I think that will screw everyone’s head on in terms of motivation.





VPEsports: Do you think players should be focusing on their own game over the team play given the whole confidence issue?

liazz: Event to event it’s been different. Going into Dallas, due to the break and visa issues it was individual things. Then it turned into team things because we were all focused on individual stuff. We’re trying to get into a schedule like we hit before the Katowice Major like in terms of our bootcamp and how much we sit down and have team discussions during our practice days, how much time we need to practice.

At this event I’d say it was more of a team thing. I think everyone’s guilty of not putting enough work in individually apart from maybe jks, but I think that our shortcomings in the recent events have probably been towards team chemistry.





VPEsports: When the team talks about an event like this, do you guys give yourself some slack if the matches are close? Is there a difference in how you guys handle a 16-12 or 16-14 versus a 16-7?

liazz: I think at first that’s what we were like. We took it with a grain of salt if we lost a close match. We tried looking at it like that but it’s just been like two months of 16-14’s. I think if you look at our results, in our last 15 losses like 10 of them are 16-14. It’s just ridiculous numbers. After awhile it affects you a bit, you can’t really just say alright it was close. You can’t come up with that excuse anymore.

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