Earlier in the year we talked to one of Cardiff University’s League of Legends teams, the Cardiff Creamy Memers.

Nicholas Powell and his team have taken the South-West region of the NUEL by storm this season, topping the group by a good margin.

Despite their success, there is one Cardiff University team which have gone one step further this year.

Kelvin Chung is the captain of CUsn + NaCl, Cardiff University’s strongest League of Legends team.

The team consists of five of the university’s best players:

Tanveer ‘Mr Tank’ Ahmed – Top

Sohib ‘its Nokaz’ Balkhy – Jungle

Jacob ‘Farradise’ Farrington – Mid

Matteo ‘Somewhat Korean’ De Rosa – Bot

Kelvin ‘Mocking K’ Chung – Support

Mr Chung and his team are currently competing in the NUEL’s national league, which sees the UK’s top 32 university teams compete every week.

I spoke to Mr Chung to ask him about his experience competing in this year’s NUEL and how far he believed his team could go. He said: “We do believe our team can push to finish top 3 or 4 on a good day, we just need to work on shot calling and following them as a team. If our synergy and shot calling can be further improve, providing meta shifts do not affect us too much, I believe our team can finish top four.”

Although Mr Chung was praising of his team, he did concede winning the entire national group would probably be a step to far. He said: “I think the chance of winning the league is pretty slim. There are two teams that are clearly better than other teams, especially Aston Yellowtails. They have master and challenger players and have been playing together for a while now and their shot calling is always on point.”

Of course success in eSports does not come easy, it requires an awful lot of dedication and practice like with any sport. To those starting to play League of Legends looking for advice, Mr Chung says: “I think playing with and against a group of friends will definitely help a lot. Friends will usually point out your mistakes, what you should do at certain times or situations, and you can improve very fast.

“As a support player, I think starting out playing some simple yet effective supports can help you progress, champions such as Soraka or Sona. Once you understand all the basic stuff like item builds, match ups, CS, minion wave, champion abilities etcetera then you can start playing other roles and champions to get a feel of other lanes.”

The number of people playing eSports is increasing daily, and like many other people, Mr Chung believes eSports definitely has a place in the near future. Mr Chung said: “eSports is already a big thing, especially in Asia where I am from. In the West, NBA and football teams are starting to invest in eSports teams, and it shows how big this thing is.

“As time goes on, the ‘eSports is not a sport’ or ‘gaming is for nerds’ mentality will go, since our majority of our generation, at least those in our age group, enjoy eSports. The next generation will definitely get caught with the hype of eSports, not just League of legends, but all the future eSports titles as well. ESports as a whole can only get bigger and brighter in the future in my opinion.”

I’d like to thank Mr Chung for taking the time to speak to 5v5 and wish him and his team all the best in their upcoming matches. We hope you make the top three or four you’re striving for.