Ben Scott

October 16, 2019

For our final installment of team profiles for the up-coming Zowie eXTREMESLAND Regional Finals, we sat down with Grayhound Gaming players, Chris “dexter” Nong and Simon “sico” Williams, who have just returned from a successful run at DreamHack Malmo.



Grayhound Gaming has been the staple team of Australian Counter-Strike for over two years now, having been established back in June of 2017. Currently ranked 16th globally, and ranked as the best team in Australia, this team has been on the cusp of greatness for a very long time, only ever making minimal roster changes throughout their existence.





Active Roster:



Chris “dexter” Nong

Oliver “DickStacy” Tierney

Liam “malta” Schembri

Simon “sico” Williams

Joshua “INS” Potter





2019 has been an extremely successful year for Grayhound Gaming, securing second place at the Katowice Minor and finishing as champions of the Berlin Minor, and the list goes on. With that being said, there is no doubt that Grayhound Gaming are favourites to take a qualifying spot at the Zowie eXTREMESLAND Regional Finals and potentially go on and win the finals in Shanghai later this year.

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2019 Key Achievements:



2nd - Asia Minor Katowice 2019

1st - Asia Minor Berlin 2019

7th/8th - IEM Sydney 2019

7th/8th - DreamHack Malmo 2019





Dexter and Sico on Zowie eXTREMESLAND Finals



Coming off of a successful run at DreamHack Malmo, having defeated Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses, we were curious to know how confident Grayhound were going into the Zowie eXTREMESLAND Regional Finals. Dexter went on to tell us “we’re pretty confident. Anything can happen in Counter-Strike though, so it’s not good to be arrogant approaching the finals.”



“If we can beat Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses on LAN, then it’s always possible someone lower than us can beat us,” dexter said.



On the topic of achieving their goals at this event, Sico started off by saying they need to “keep performing at a high level and work as a unit. Also, not underestimating our opponents will be key.”

Dexter just gave us the straight-up answer of “win”.



It’s now been over a month since Joshua “INS” Potter joined the roster to replace former teammate “erkaSt”. Luckily, we had previously interviewed Dexter about his thoughts on the way INS has slotted into the roster. “He’s fit-in well, the rest of the team have two years of making decisions together, and Josh hasn’t been a part of that. All of what’s to come is part of rebuilding our line-up,” Dexter said.



To add a bit more to the topic, Sico stated “Josh is going really well. We didn’t seem to take a hit on our level of competitiveness with the chance and communication has improved, which is obviously a big factor in Counter-Strike.”



With a month passing, it’s clear that the rebuilding stage is in the past. Grayhound have now gone on to have extremely impressive online results and one of the best runs at an international event in Australian Counter-Strike history, despite INS only being on the roster for a month.



We revisited Dexter’s answer about whether there’s anything the team needs to attend to before qualifying for this spot. “We don’t have to change too much, we just need to play and do our best under the circumstances.”



With Sico being the most recent installment to the roster, other than INS, and also coming from the ORDER line-up, we asked him how this roster compares to previous rosters. “The environment here is great. Everyone gets along well and has a mature approach in-game, in terms of improving and taking on criticism. I’m happy with our progress so far and I’ve also managed to secure a business degree,” concluded Sico.

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View on competitive atmosphere in Australasia



Like all our other team profiles, we pressed Dexter and Sico on their view of the competitive atmosphere in Australasia, and explored the topic of which teams to look out for in the scene.



Dexter kicked off by stating “the competitive atmosphere is getting better, but the growth needs to be supported with the organisations playing full-time, and growing as much as possible, which isn’t on par just yet.”



“As I’ve always said: big money, big business – first you get the sugar, then you get the power and then you get the women,” finished Dexter.



Sico’s offered his thoughts on the competitive atmosphere by stating “it’s slowly getting better, but it still needs more investment and infrastructure to build up and be as competitive. Our recent international success hopefully helps the scene out too.”



We concluded our questioning by asking both players if they know of any teams to keep an eye on, both competitive wise and any that are doing extremely well locally. Dexter kicked off by saying “Genuine Gaming has done really well recently, but have sadly failed to achieve anything. Other than that, I haven’t been following the scene too closely, as we’ve been overseas during ESL AUNZ a lot of the time. Although it’s clear that the effort is growing.”



Finishing off the interview, Sico stated “I’d just say the usual suspects. I haven’t watched much of the scene because we’ve been busy at tournaments. Anything can happen on LAN though, and we’ll always need to be on our toes.”





As stated a few times in the article, Grayhound Gaming are clear favourites coming into the Zowie eXTREMESLAND Regional Finals and plenty of local Counter-Strike fans will be keen to watch the hounds compete on home soil. Currently ranked at first place on the HTT Power Rankings, it will be interesting to see if the hounds can hold back any upsets coming into this weekend.

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