Salamander's disqualification from Challenger League

Okay so here we go I guess. First and foremost I’ll try to avoid mentioning names wherever I can.



I dont even know where to begin – this is going to a bit personal and emotional (although I’m one of the least emotional player in our team), so bear with me on this one.

I want you to take a look from my perspective. A 20 years old guy, with financial and family issues, who travels 4 hours every single day to attend his University classes (3rd semester in software engineering), who works through almost the whole summer to help out his parents’ debts, tries to achieve something big in the game. And he did. Yet, he is probably more depressed that he has ever been.



Lets go back to april this year. After the MNEB (hungarian nationals) finals, where my team could only get the 2nd place, we were looking to put together the best team from the hungarian tier 3 scene, originally started with Strike and w1oza. After some considerable lineup changes, we ended up adding Hedsut and Rep as our 4th and 5th players. I also have to mention our two coaches, who helped us a great deal to get where we are now. Titan, who is there to arrange scrims and help us make (counter)strategies, and Fauw, who was always there to help us mentally, especially in the hard times, and he is also the one that helps us out in making out of the game decisions and talks (for example finding the right organization, and do the talks with them).



If I recall correctly, the mentioned main lineup (Strike, w1oza, Hedsut, Rep and myself) formed in early August – we didnt really have much time to prepare for the first 2 quals, also didnt have a lot of chance in regards of the 2 big powerhouses that made it then (Forze and BDS). But, in the middle of August, we went for a week long bootcamp (shoutout to the Salamander org) – and boy oh boy, how much we have improved in that one week. The amount of practice that we did there had a huge impact on our gameplay. Also, there was an extra person (not personally on bootcamp), that made a big difference for us. Probably you’ve already guessed it, he is SirBoss. Our original plan was to play the qualifiers with him, and if we get in CL, we would play with Rep there (because of his contract with Penta).



We tried out different kind of scenarios with him. By default I’m the IGL and the main shotcaller, but on scrims, we tried out if I were only the secondary, making SirBoss do the primary calls. And while after a few scrims we opted back to me as primary (since I also would be the IGL without him), it was a great learning experience for me, because I feel like my IGL-ing has improved by learning from him. Also he helped us corrigate some smaller things in our gameplay, for example communication, executions etc.



On the 3rd qualifer, we played the 1st day with SirBoss, and the rest without him. We didnt end up really well on that, so lest jump straight to the 4th one.



Our original plan was to play through the whole qualifer with SirBoss. We played the 1st day with him - it was a clean sweep. And then the other day, we got protested 1 hour before 1st match of the day – for playing with SirBoss. It also was really unfortunate, because we were already in a warmup scrim with him, and Rep didnt even plan to play that night (SirBoss came to the place of Rep in the quals if thats not obvious for someone). The admins made their decision that night: We are able to play the qualifier, but without SirBoss.



So thats what we did. We won all remaining hard matches with Rep. I want to give a huge shoutout to him, because he was still motivated and could play his max potential, even tho we basically ditched him for SirBoss in the qualifiers – I wouldnt do that again if I could go back, but we are all humans and make mistakes.



The sheer amount of emotions that got released on that night is unimaginable. It meant the world and everything, that after all the shit that we’ve been through, we made it to Challenger League. The League, where we could’ve faced two top4 teams from the major. A team, that 2-0’d G2 a week ago on LAN. On fucking LAN. Im just gonna put our comms from the final here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8agtvn0vJ30&feature=youtu.be



After that, days just went and came by. We arrange scrims with tier1 teams, working harder than ever, even next to work and studies. The short amount of time that I spend in front of my PC either includes scrimming (usually from 19 to 22 from Monday-Thursday) or studying.



And suddenly, last Friday while I was travelling home by train, looking forward to have a chill weekend, we got an email. That a protest ticket has been reopened (that was originally made over 2 weeks ago), and we are disqualified from Challenger League. Even after we did all the formal things (like giving our social links to them etc.). I couldnt believe it – I was on the edge of fucking crying in public, and I am really not an emotional person. The sole reason was playing these 3 matches with SirBoss on the 1st day of the 4th qualifier (these are pretty much considered public):

https://play.eslgaming.com/rainbowsix/europe-pc/r6siege/major/challenger-league/season-10-qualifier-4/match/37169701/

https://play.eslgaming.com/rainbowsix/europe-pc/r6siege/major/challenger-league/season-10-qualifier-4/match/37169619/

https://play.eslgaming.com/rainbowsix/europe-pc/r6siege/major/challenger-league/season-10-qualifier-4/match/37169741/

Because of these 3 not that significant matches (Im NOT degrading the teams here, all 3 of them have great players, but we have to be honest, e.g. MKERS is a much bigger and more significant opponent to face, which we've beaten with Rep in the last qualifier) the dream is over for us.



I can still barely find words. The type of double standards that we are facing are fucking unbearable. Im not gonna specify any team or any player among these lines.



Teams not getting dq’d for rougher violation of rules. Also, we were not the only team that played a qual with a pl player (this is NOT an attack against that team), even before the 4th qual. Yet, ESL couldnt put something as simple as this rule in the Qualifier ruleset. We would had to read the PL rulebook for that, which is different from the qualifier’s (you might think that it was our mistake that we didnt read and take into account the Pro League ruleset, I’ll leave this question up to you to debate) – 2.10.5.5 if we want to be exact:

„Pro League Player that participates in Challenger League Qualifiers, cannot play Pro League matches in current season.”

Not the most definite rule if you ask me, you can also twist out its meaning. But whatever, its not up to me to decide.



Basically, so much work put into something that someone simply takes away from you. Quite depressing to say the least.



If you are reading this line – thank you! Thank you for wasting your precious time, stranger (or not stranger) on my little rant and personal story.



Our motivation is now a little bit lacking, but I promise you one thing: we'll stick together, and we’ll be back, stronger than before. Challenger League Season 11, we will be there. I swear.



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