UK CSGO organisation CAZ eSports have acquired the ESL UK Premiership champions The Working Men.
The team beat Reason 2-1 in the spring final earlier this month
Ben Bagg, COO of CAZ eSports, said: “Since setting our sights back on the UK market we had the best opportunity in Jakem’s team. After working with Jake for around a year already and having a fantastic working relationship, it was a no brainer to speak to them about CAZ.
“After their performance at EPS and online we are very excited to develop with them and take the UK esports scene by storm.”
CAZ’s new line-up will now play in the Multiplay UK Masters competition and in the ESEA Main League.
The roster consists of the following:
- Jake “Jakem” McCausland
- Robin “robiin” Sjórgen
- Kostas “tsack” Theodoropoulos
- James “Kryptix” Affleck
- Jake “Boaster” Howlett
The roster has been signed after CAZ dropped their previous CSGO roster, following some drama over pay at DreamHack, where their former players complained they didn’t receive enough money from the org during the tourney, for food and accommodation.
eSports journalist Richard Lewis laid into CAZ over their dropping of the roster.
CAZ have since put out a statement apologising over their handling of the situation. Their new UK CSGO team is still together, and they have hired a new HR manager, but Eren Lawrence from CAZ management has left the org.
CAZ have promised they won’t make these kind of mistakes again.
On the previous roster, Ben had this to say: “The team’s performance at DreamHack was fantastic and I would like to thank them for their effort, but overall the team was not performing overall how we would have liked and the results were just not consistent enough.
“We had a rocky event at Dreamhack, however we are happy with the way it all turned out, thanks mainly to the team and their dedication. However we are going to be moving away from them now as we set our sights back to the UK for sometime. We as an organisation are keen to help develop UK talent, which is something we are pushing with our academies, and by returning our focus to the UK, we hope to help grow the scene itself!”
Jakem returns to CAZ eSports after leading a successful line-up with them in the 2015 season.
He commented: “The Working Men was created initially as a mix team and somewhere I could play with multiple different people who I had not played with before across different leagues. I am happy to announce that we have found a core line-up that we are happy with and we look forward to the upcoming i-series and hopefully UK Masters.
“More importantly, it is great to be representing CAZ again and the team looks to pick up where we left off before. Thanks to Ben and Liam [Biggs] for the opportunity again.”
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
