UKTerrorist

Clanbase OpenCup/EuroCup playoffs: UK's turn

Posted by Zorro- at 18:16 19/1/2004.

The moment of truth is here for the two remaining UK teams in the Clanbase EuroCup and OpenCup, as both face the next hurdle in their respective playoffs over the next few days.

Tuesday, 8.30pm

Tomorrow, the EuroCup semi-final clash takes place between Team AMD Gamer and dutch side surrender or die. TAG had a near flawless EuroCup campaign (which started by beating Clan ONE in the qualifiers), topping their group, and managing to knock out the German side, ProPain, in the quarter-finals (25-12). However, this isn't the first time TAG.cs have met mysod.nl; they also met in the group stage resulting in a 28-20 win.

Tonight, I had a short pre-match interview with ZaG (TAG.cs) and madb (mysod.nl) about the game:

Zorro: To start with you madb, we saw mysod have several roster changes this season, is the current team settled now ?
madb: yes, xire turned out to be an instable factor in the clan (for the second time), and now that we have masterme and r0y we have no problems with each
other and i think we will play with this lineup for a long time.

Zorro: What is your expected lineup for tomorrow ?
madb: Well, since we have only 4 players on the allowed list we will play with one orga :S, we pracced with him the last 2 days, so i think he is stable enough to take a shot at taking out TAG
ZaG: The normal 5, me, teppum, bom, shaq and duck

Zorro: Did your team practice a lot in preperation for this game, or do you for EC matches in general ?
madb: we prac about 2 or 3 PCWs a day because we have netgamez LAN (one of the biggest dutch LANs) coming up, and we did about 5 PCWs with juvenile (the orga) to practice for TAG.
ZaG: We try to practice as much as we can, but that only seems to be 2 games a day, each being 2 maps each, which is alot less than we should be playing considering the amount of time people have on their hands. When we have an EC game we concentrate on the played maps and try iron out a few flaws. This game was no exception.

Zorro: What do you expect of this match, and do you think your earlieer matchup in the Cup (groupphaze), which TAG won 28-20, has any influence on how you take this match ?
madb: i think it has no influence, since only 1 ( correct me if im wrong :D) of our players that currently play in mysod played that group match, a lot of things have changed in mysod since then and we feel we are a better then we were then
ZaG: I'm not gunna go and say we expect a win, but I expect it to be a tight game. They had a few member swaps which could swing the game into our favour but anything can happen, we're not setting our goals too high. As for the previous game, I don't think that is too much of a factor, they had a different line up back then, so we'll just wait and see the outcome i guess.

Zorro: Do you dare to give a final score prediction ?
madb: well ofcourse im going to predict we win, no point in playing the match otherwise :P, ill stick with what snakeye said in another interview, so : 25-18
ZaG: Ooooh, well, if we concentrate on our game and not make stupid little mistakes which i'm hoping we'll do, I'll say a repeat score from the previous time we met, 28-20 to us.

Zorro: Ok, one more question for ZaG to even it up: Will TAG.cs play in the next 'highly anticipated' CB UK/IE Cup, as the tournament layout will be more user friendly for both the better and less gifted teams (more matches on an equal level, by having qualifiers and double elimination playoffs) ?
ZaG: At the moment I have no idea, we'll be having talks after the upcoming GameOn Lan this Weekend about upcoming tournaments etc we're be taking part in, who knows, we might just be :)

Zorro: Ok, thanks for the interview both of you.
madb: k, no problem
ZaG: Anytime.

Wednesday, 7pm

Zebras, participating in the 2^nd Division of the OpenCup, finished second in their group. Into the playoffs, they dispatched of both z0r! (25-10) and sLK in their next two matches. This is their chance to reach the semi-finals, should they overcome SuPa³ in this quarter-final.

Update: Moments ago, the zebras-SuPa³ match, which was planned to be played tonight (Monday), was re-scheduled at the request of zebras.

Good luck to both Team AMD Gamer and zebras, make us proud.
Coverage details are most likely to be announced in #opencup.cs and #eurocup.cs, though will be linked in this newspost as well.