Fnatic’s coach Chris “Elmapuddy” Tebbit looked extremely positive in our post VCT EMEA interview, as Fnatic look their strongest going into VCT Champions later in the season. Despite a largely inconsistent season so far, they got their act together when it mattered most.
Check our post season interview.
Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games
Lee Jones: Let’s get the negative out of the way first.
What happened on map two?
Elmapuddy: The boys just stopped communicating very efficiently. I think we forced the mid fights on rounds three and four, and after that, the boys just got a bit hectic. It was almost like they were trying to overcompensate for losing those fights together and we struggled to get the boys back into the right headspace. I think I have to call timeouts and tell them to take a breath.
Just basically:
“Reset yourselves for the next round”.
I think whenever I have to call those kinds of timeouts, often we’re doing not very well. Even when I’m calling timeouts for tactical stuff, it normally means we’re communicating pretty well, doing the basics correctly. So, yeah, we just struggled to reset in the middle of the map. We started to come back towards the end, which was good, and I was happy with that. I told the boys; “I like what I was seeing at the end of the map and let’s carry that into map three”. But, yeah, can’t win every map, but obviously improve on that.
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Why do you think map four was so dominant? Do you think they weren’t ready for the Clove?
Elmapuddy: I don’t know, actually. I think we won a few nice kills early on that I think might have put them in a bit of a negative headspace, but I actually don’t know. Bind – you can tell from our vetoes [that] it’s not our favourite map or anything. So I wasn’t expecting that to be the most one-sided map, I think it’s quite a good map for them as well normally.
Lee Jones: Looking at the season on the whole, it might have been disappointing to not have been winning more throughout the year.
Are you pleased at least that you’re at your best during the most important period?
Yeah, we’re peaking at the right time. I think we just look rejuvenated, since the KC win we’ve just kind of been a whole different team. There’s a few exceptions, like that Ascent game today. But just like, the communication, the playing togetherness has been incredible and I think that it doesn’t matter how good your tactics are, if you’re not playing together, you’re not going to achieve anything.
So I think the boys have done a good job. We’re peaking at the right time, which is good. And as you said, we’ve been very successful domestically that we’ve won both the trophies, but we haven’t actually won a game internationally yet, so we’ve got to make sure we do that in a couple of weeks time.
Photo by Michal Konkol/Riot Games
Lee Jones: Gorilla told me that he thought Fnatic wouldn’t have felt the same effects (tiredness) having had extra days off this week and an additional week off earlier in the split.
I wondered if the Fnatic players are feeling the sort of tiredness we’ve been hearing about from other teams?
Elmapuddy: No, Gorilla is correct. We played the super weak early on, and what happened for us is basically once we beat KC we were like 95% qualified for Champs. So then we had the Team Liquid game to end the season to make it 100% and then the finals. So I mean, after that super week we took two days off in a row which isn’t normal. I normally wouldn’t take a full weekend like normal people so I think that helped a little bit. But I think it’s also just the fact that we made a roster move which keeps things fresh again.
You never want to get rid of a player as good as Leo. We never got rid of him obviously, but he’s not playing. But it’s just keeping things fresh. That’s why you see at the beginning of the year teams like KC and Heretics, they look really good at the beginning of the year and it becomes harder to sustain that level. Gorilla is also correct in the fact that we qualified for Champs before everyone else, so we kind of took the week to experiment a bit.
Like that Clove on Bind: “We qualified for champs, let’s just kind of try something”.
Lee Jones: Touching on that roster move, Hiro has been quite a revelation since he’s joined.
Does his impact give you a difficult decision to make once the season’s finished, particularly if Champs goes well?
I mean, it’s Cojo’s (Senior Team Director) decision, not mine, but obviously I’ll be involved. If you win Champs, it’s kind of weird, right? He’s on the best team in the world. But I think at the end of the day, I mean this, Leo is the best Sova/Fade player in the world, so you’re not going to get rid of him.
So that’s not really something I’m thinking about right now. But I think it’s been very clear from Cojo — and I back it up — that Leo is not going anywhere. Doesn’t really matter what happens. He will be on the roster as soon as he’s healthy.
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