Before his first match of the group stage on Friday, we grabbed David “DAVEY” Stafford to get his thoughts on the ESL unbans, Valve, and more.

David "⁠DAVEY⁠" Stafford was most recently a part of eUnited, but currently finds himself teamless. This weekend he is attending the event with ownage, a mix most notably featuring Braxton "⁠swag⁠" Pierce.

A former member of Splyce, DAVEY also sheds some light on the team's qualification campaign for the MLG Columbus Major and the issues that doomed the international roster featuring Enkhtaivan "⁠Machinegun⁠" Lkhagva and Asger "⁠AcilioN⁠" Larsen.

The peak of 2016 for you was probably MLG Columbus, walk me through that. We went to the Minor and almost got knocked out by an IM team, we were really slow starters. We ended up making it through the groups to play OpTic in a BO3, and got really lucky with the map draws. Then we played Selfless in the finals and koosta just sh*t all over us, it was the best LAN performance I’ve ever had against me. So we didn’t even qualify for the Major Qualifier, and then three days before it we get an email from Valve because The MongolZ had visa issues. They had to ask Chinese teams and Australian teams first, but they were also unable to go. At the Qualifier itself we beat CLG on Cache, and Vexed on Mirage - the score was 16-7 but a bunch of rounds came down to 2v2s. We got lucky a whole bunch of times in a row, basically.

DAVEY recounted Splyce's magical run to MLG Columbus 2016

Following the Major was when Splyce experimented with the international roster, did you run into communication issues and other problems? There definitely were some problems, maybe because everyone was from different places, and cultural differences made it that some players didn’t get along. Personality conflicts were actually the biggest problem with that team. There were communications problems too, but every team has communication problems, I swear it is just the English language’s fault. Other languages are so much more concise, English is so complicated. After parting ways with Splyce you joined up with the eUnited Premier squad, was that a difficult transition coming from Pro? No, because I had Pro offers at the time, and honestly after talking to the owner and manager of eUnited I liked their business plan and the team, and I also thought we would be good enough to make Pro League. I didn’t want to play for a lower tier professional team with an organization that I didn’t really believe in. Back to the present, you’re here with a mix featuring swag, what are your expectations for the event? I think we should win it, we have the team with the most firepower. Obviously there are teams here that are way more practiced, so we have to get a little lucky with the map veto. The gameplan is to win with our skill more than anything. What are your thoughts ESL on unbanning ex-iBUYPOWER and the other players? I think it is a good move by ESL, it was about time. But I think it is kind of irrelevant from a competitive point of view. It is good that swag can play in Pro League, but he can never be a world champion right now. But until Valve unbans them, until other events like ELEAGUE unban them... It is a good start, but we have to keep pushing Valve to lift those bans. What are your thoughts on Valve as a publisher? I think they keep a good balance between helping the game and being hands-off, they leave a lot up to tournament organizers. Every now and then they do something big, like the round time change. I do wish that Counter-Strike got the attention that Dota gets, it always seems that Counter-Strike is like the stepchild.

After defeating Ben's Anime Team and District 7 in the first rounds of the Fragadelphia 11 playoffs, ownage will take on Bee's Money Crew in the Upper Bracket semi-final stage, with the match scheduled to start at 19:00 .