Chad “SPUNJ” Burchill is the in-game leader for Renegades and a fixture in Australian CS:GO. He took the time to talk to theScore esports during ELEAGUE’s media day about their new coach Nicholas “peekay” Wise and the team’s place in the Counter-Strike world.

You picked up a coach about a month ago, peekay. How did he come into the team?

We’ve been wanting a coach for a while, and we were looking at players on some top rosters that have slowly fallen off. We wanted to get somebody like a pronax or a gob b or an adreN. We contacted a lot of these people, and they all wanted to keep playing, so we kind of just stopped looking for coaches for a little while there, and then we realized that we need support staff — we need somebody to assist in the strategies and looking at all that kind of stuff.

So peekay is somebody that the guys respected in Australian Counter-Strike, back when they played 1.6. We had spoken about him before, and if he wants to do it, let’s do it. And it’s been good.

You came second at the Asia Minor. How much of a factor did peekay play there?

It was good, keeping everybody grounded, and he made some good reads while we were playing. It was the first time actually using him live in a competition match, so there was a bit of a learning curve in terms of what we want from him or what we want less of, so we’ve balanced that out since then. During it, it was good. It was good to have someone else there.

How does he affect you as an in-game leader?

It made it a lot easier for me to concentrate on my game. Even though he wasn’t making the in-game calls, it was still mainly coming from me. Just knowing that I had someone else backing me from the strategic point of view, it was great. It made it a lot clearer for me and I could focus a lot more.

Would you say it improved your fragging power?

Probably a little bit, but in the final I still played like shit, so, hopefully I’ll be better in this event.

He keeps the other guys calm, and if I’m calm, then they’re going to be calm, and it just helps across the board. And I think everybody felt that having an extra voice offering advice when things weren’t going well was good for everybody. I think in turn it helps the fragging power.

You guys recently competed in NA. Are you now back in Oceania?

No.

Oh, you’re still in NA?

We are nowhere at the moment. We are citizens of the world right now. We don’t know where we’re going just yet, but it will probably be in NA.

Is that deliberate?

No, that’s just… there’s just so much going on. It’s been hard to decide, where we’re going to end up. And as much as people think we aren’t competing in a lot of stuff, we travel a shitload more than most teams. We literally did a lap of the world in our last trip, so we have a lot of travel time, and we need to sort stuff out. We’re getting there.

What are some of the takeaways from being in the NA region, as opposed to being in Oceania?

A lot more practice, a lot more structured events and a higher caliber of teams. Other than that, it’s similar in attitudes, I suppose, and it’s another English speaking nation, so that makes it easy.

Would you say the whole venture was worth it?

Yeah, I think we could have done a lot of things better as a team. We could have had support staff from the beginning, we could have looked into doing different practice schedules and stuff like that, to optimize our time there. Mistakes were made, but if we go forward with more NA stuff, we know we will improve.

What do you think of the rise of China?

I think it’s great. I think it’s great for our region, especially if it can be competitive in the world. It means that we might eventually go back to our region and compete in events on a regular basis. Right now, obviously, it’s more beneficial for us to be in Europe or America than Australia, But if China keeps growing, and the niche regions — like Mongolia was pretty good — if they keep growing, more money is going to come to the region and it’s going to make more sense for us to go back home and to compete with our local competition.

What did you guys learn at Asia Minor that you're bringing here, at ELEAGUE?

We just need to make sure that we play our game plan and then adapt if things aren’t working. We can’t play to adapt straight away. We should focus on what works for us, but if it doesn’t work while we’re playing, then adapt. In the past, we would try to go in and see how they play first, and then try to adapt to them while we’re going. This time, we’re going to play our style.

You spoke a little bit about the format of the groups earlier during the press conference. Would you prefer the full round robin, as opposed to a GSL-style group?

I do, because it means you get more chances to prove yourself. I would maybe prefer it with a few more teams. If there was, say, eight teams in our group, as opposed to the four, that would be great.

Right now you play these three teams, they see what you do, and then they can just counter-strat because you’re only playing a small sample size. But if there’s a larger size, it would make that a lot harder for the playoff bracket. If it was eight teams, this format would be amazing.

How do you feel about your group essentially being full NA? Was that intentional?

I don’t know if it was intentional. I mean, there is a Brazilian team and an Australian team, but everybody’s competing in the same region, which kinda sucked. And that’s why we went to Europe for our boot camp, because we knew we couldn’t practice with anybody in the NA region.

We do actually practice, contrary to popular belief that we just gamble at casinos.

What are some of your expectations, not just for the group, but for your week in ELEAGUE?

I think it’s going to be a great time, as an event, and I’m really excited to show what we’ve been working on over the last two months. I hope that we can… I always say this at every event, I hope that we play our A-game, you know, come in and really show our potential and just rock up as a unit. Not just one or two guys but the whole team. That’s what I hope for this week.