Welcome to the first of a (hopefully) regular column, where I dive into a particular team or player in order to give an idea of how they’re getting along in the RLCS. Heading into this season of RLCS, Team Singularity were firmly placed as Europe’s tenth-best team. However, they shocked the Rocket League community when they took down Renault Vitality in a thrilling five-game series. Despite having a 1-3 record, many have backed the Danish organisation to reach the playoffs and secure their RLCS spot for another season. In this piece, I’ll be taking a look at how they took down Vitality, as well as what they’ve been missing in their other matchups so far. Noly Partially thanks to his stunning shot against mousesports last weekend, many have pegged Joseph “noly” Kidd as their rookie of the season. After all, he’s not only scored some magnificent goals already but he’s also consistently found himself on top of Singularity’s leaderboard. By far his most unbelievable goal this season was that impossible redirect against mousesports. With both of his teammates in no man’s land after bumping each other, he decided to take matters into his own hands, dispossessing Kyle “Scrub” Robertson before using his flip perfectly to slot the ball straight past the remaining mousesports defenders. It was truly a sight to behold, reminiscent of some of Linus “al0t” Mollergen’s redirects back in season four.

Statistically, noly has also been on top for Singularity. He’s scored the most goals, made the most saves and has earned over 38% of their total score, finishing all but one series with the most points on the team. It’s clear that his explosive mechanics and all-around offensive capabilities are a huge factor in his team’s striking prowess, But stats don’t tell the whole story, and I’m not yet convinced. From watching his gameplay it often feels like his decision making fails to live up to his incredible mechanics, with the former ZeNoMoon player often making questionable touches and going for hopeful-at-best flip resets when he has teammates waiting in the wings with a wide-open net to shoot at. Let’s take a look at some examples.



The first example is just a few seconds into Singularity’s third game against Reciprocity - the only game in that particular series that they would end up winning. Here, noly has Leon “Godsmilla” Mares to his left, in a totally open position and having just collected a 100% boost pad in the midfield. Noly’s first touch, off of his own post, placed it in a perfect position for him to send it over to Godsmilla and start a Singularity counterattack.

However, noly instead decides to go for a dribble play by tapping the ball slightly to his right. The dribble is immediately stopped by Thibault “Chausette” Grzesiak as Singularity are forced into a defensive position, with Godsmilla eventually coming to the rescue with a last-minute goalline save.



The second example is from the same game, just over a minute later. Here, noly goes for a hit off of the wall and is presented with two options. He can either pass the ball over to ThO or attempt to beat Victor “Ferra” Francal to the ball.

He opts to go for a flip reset in order to try and get the ball past Ferra, instead being dunked by the Frenchman, wasting a huge opportunity to score at a point when momentum is firmly in Reciprocity’s favour and leaving him stranded in the opposition corner with not a single point of boost in his tank. I was able to find these two clips by watching not even two minutes of Singularity gameplay, in a game that they won, in a series where noly outscored his closest teammate (Godsmilla) by 144 points. Let’s take a look at a different game. My final example is one that many will already be aware of, which is his missed save in the final moments of SNG’s match against mousesports. Noly goes up for a save, gets close enough to the ball to trigger a ‘ghost hit’ and it sails over his head into the back of the net. However, looking more closely at the situation shows us that, even if he hit the ball, mousesports would still have had a fantastic opportunity to take the series in those dying seconds.



Looking at the positioning of noly’s car when he goes up for the ball (and assuming that he would be slightly further up due to actually hitting it), it’s likely that the ball bounces straight off of the ceiling and lands roughly on the dot. With Godsmilla on his way to the back corner, and Kyle “Scrub Killa” Robertson having more than enough boost to catch up to the wayward clear, it’s not unlikely that the Scot would have been able to put it home. In the end, it didn’t matter as noly missed the save, handing mousesports the series on a silver plate.