After Renegades took down Kinguin 2-1 to move on to the grand finals of DreamHack Winter 2016, we spoke to the Australian AWPer Ricardo "Rickeh" Mulholland to find out how he feels about the victory.

Renegades continued their strong run at Jönköping, Sweden by eliminating Kinguin in the semi-final with victories on Mirage and Cobblestone.

As the Australians are waiting for the outcome of the other semi-final between GODSENT and Gambit, we talked to Ricardo "⁠Rickeh⁠" Mulholland to find learn about their CT side struggles and what his thoughts are on all of the recent upsets.

You opened up the best-of-three with Dust2, your pick, you had a good game but your team lost in the end. Let's focus on you on Dust2, as that's a map that you've first got the spotlight on, is there something special that works for you on that map?

For Dust2 manly I think we need to fix our Counter-Terrorist side as a team, as soon as we do that I think that we will be even stronger on Dust2. Other than that i'm happy with the rest of it.

It seemed like Kinguin maybe had a read on you on your CT side especially, when you tried to adapt they already had a solution in place. Did you feel that in the match, that they watched your last matches and had something planned?

I think that they watched our demos. In al honesty, I think it was probably more us not being as good on the CT side, I don't think we even got a round, we definitely need to work on it. I think it's also about me taking more initiative as to where I want to play with the AWP, getting that oppening pick. Because it didn't really happen on the CT side, it was a different story when we were on the T side.

You moved on to Mirage, which was their pick and they played it a lot at this tournament. It seemed they had the series 2-0 in the bag, but you pretty handedly took the map. Was there anything special that you prepared after watching their matches here?

Yeah, we watched all three of their maps from here. Just in general, on Mirage, we knew how they were playing on the CT side and we abused it. We had instant smokes in mid and we took mid control almost every round and it ended up working really well for us. There wasn't a match that we had mid control that we lost. So yeah, we definitely counter-stratted.

Moving on to Cobblestone, you had a bad start and then called a timeout just after winning the first round. As you only have on timeout here, that is kind of a weird decision—who called it and what did you discuss then?

The timeout was called from Yam, I think we were 6-1, we just wanted to sort out our money and discuss what we want to do going into the round. That round specifically, if we won it they would be eco, so we just took our time and even though we won the round before that we still paused and decided what we want to do properly.

Even though you struggled on the CT at this tournament, you managed to close out Cobblestone on CT. Anything special you have to say about it?

To begin with, we lost both pistols, unfortunately, and coming back on the CT side of Cobble is probably one of the hardest map to do it on. I'm extremely happy how my team played, I still can't believe we are in the grand finals, it's just mad hype right now.

We had a lot of upsets here, does that taking anything away from your achievement here or do you think that is normal because you play a lot?

I think in general at the moment, the community and the top teams, even top 20-30, is so volatile, everybody is getting better because we have the Major coming up as well so it's just unbelievable at the moment how many teams can win a tournament. It's super volatile, it's crazy.

Gambit and GODSENT, one of them is going to be in the finals. Do you have any feelings about the teams, who si going to be a tougher opposition?

Personally I would prefer to play Gambit, as GODSENT have the home crowd, but I'm happy to verse either team.

You opened up the best-of-three with Dust2, your pick, where you had a good game but your team lost in the end. Let's focus on you on Dust2, as that's a map that you've first got the spotlight on. Is there something special that works for you on that map? For Dust2 mainly I think we need to fix our Counter-Terrorist side as a team, as soon as we do that I think that we will be even stronger on the map. Other than that I'm happy with the rest of it. It seemed like Kinguin maybe had a read on you on your CT side especially, when you tried to adapt they already had a solution in place. Did you feel that in the match, that they watched your last matches and had something planned? I think that they watched our demos. In all honesty, I think it was probably more us not being as good on the CT side, I don't think we even got a round, we definitely need to work on it. I think it's also about me taking more initiative as to where I want to play with the AWP, getting that opening pick. Because it didn't really happen on the CT side, it was a different story when we were on the T side. You moved on to Mirage, which was their pick and they played it a lot at this tournament. It seemed they had the series 2-0 in the bag, but you pretty handedly took the map. Was there anything special that you prepared after watching their matches here? Yeah, we watched all three of their maps from here. Just in general, on Mirage, we knew how they were playing on the CT side and we abused it. We had instant smokes in mid and we took mid control almost every round and it ended up working really well for us. There wasn't a round that we had mid control that we lost. So yeah, we definitely counter-stratted.



Rickeh feels that he needed to take more initiative on Dust2

Moving on to Cobblestone, you had a bad start and then called a timeout just after winning the first round. As you only have one timeout here, that is kind of a weird decision—who called it and what did you discuss then? The timeout was called from Yam, I think we were 6-1, we just wanted to sort out our money and discuss what we want to do going into the round. That round specifically, if we won it they would be eco. So we just took our time and even though we won the round before that we still paused and decided what we want to do properly. Even though you struggled on the CT at this tournament, you managed to close out Cobblestone on CT. Anything special you have to say about it? To begin with, we lost both pistols, unfortunately, and coming back on the CT side of Cobble is probably one of the hardest map to do it on. I'm extremely happy how my team played, I still can't believe we are in the grand finals, it's just mad hype right now. We had a lot of upsets here, does that take anything away from your achievement here or do you think that the upsets are normal because everyone plays a lot? I think in general at the moment, the community and the top teams, even top 20-30, are so volatile. Everybody is getting better because we have the Major coming up as well, so it's just unbelievable at the moment how many teams can win a tournament. It's super volatile, it's crazy. Gambit and GODSENT, one of them is going to be in the finals. Do you have any feelings about the teams, who si going to be a tougher opposition? Personally I would prefer to play Gambit, as GODSENT have the home crowd, but I'm happy to verse either team.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.