Welsh League of Legends player Barney ‘Alphari’ Morris has spoken publicly about Origen’s disastrous season in the Summer 2020 LEC.
He was top-laner for Origen before they rebranded to Astralis – and Alphari left to join Team Liquid in the North American LCS.
Liquid last month won the pre-season Lock-In tournament and are currently joint fifth with Evil Geniuses in the Spring 2021 LCS, with 5 wins and 4 losses.
Last season, Origen finished bottom of the LEC standings.
Speaking in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) post on the League of Legends subreddit, when asked what went wrong at Origen considering on paper Origen weren’t considered a bottom-tier side, Alphari said: “So much went wrong.
“Ultimately there were clear player limitations and growing conflicts/tension in the team.
“The coaching staff also suffered a lot with Kayys [head of scouting and strategic coach] being let go in between Spring and Summer, and while I respect André [‘Guilhoto’ Pereira Guilhoto, head coach] a lot and think he did a lot of things right, there was no one really present to provide mental support or take the necessary steps to try and fix the team – also because we only had us five players and Andre.
“I think people weren’t playing as good as we all expected of one another at Origen, and instead of supporting one another and trying to make the most of the situation, we lost trust and tunnelled on the wrong issues. The problems and negative team atmosphere snowballed out of hand.”
Alphari, Team Liquid
Alphari added: “I took a lot away from the experience and realised I should do more to try and look after myself and also try to help my teammates.”
On other UK-focused topics, Alphari also said that back in season 3, he used to watch videos of UK caster/content creator Foxdrop, as well as gbay and solorenektononly to learn the fundamentals of the game.
And in regards to his former UK teammate Maxlore, he said: “Me and Maxlore are still bros, I’ve watched a couple of his games in the LVP. I think it’s a shame a lot of people lost faith in him after one rough year, I think he still could compete in the LEC.”
Alphari responded with a mix of wit and bluntness:
On the recent debate around the possibility of changing the NA player import rule to allow more international players on LCS rosters, Alphari commented: “It’s obvious to me that it shouldn’t be removed, but it also wouldn’t bother me at all one way or another if it is or isn’t.
“I don’t think importing tons of EU or KR players is going to make NA tons more competitive internationally (though probably a little). There are a lot of talented NA players – Vulcan, Blaber, Tactical being easy ones to point out – and arguing that to win Worlds you need imports just seems like a lazy excuse to me.”
On EU vs NA, Alphari said: “I’d probably say EU is ahead of NA because of the work ethic and the soloq/scrim quality. A lot more EU players actually play with confidence and will try to play their match ups and use their champions to the limits, whereas so far from what I’ve seen in NA, a lot of players are either scared on stage or unsure of how to do it.”
Alphari also admitted he was ‘very close’ to joining Vitality with Perkz, but that it ‘wasn’t meant to be’.
Alphari was one of the first UK LoL players we interviewed here at Esports News UK way back in 2015.
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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.
