Natus Vincere (Navi) have won the latest Rainbow Six Siege UK Ireland Nationals (UKIN) after beating Cowana Gaming 3-1 in the grand final yesterday.
Navi finished fourth in the regular season, joining Cowana (first), WYLDE (second) and MNM Gaming (third) in the playoffs which took place on the weekend.
They beat Cowana in the first semi-final before defeating MNM 2-1 in the upper bracket final and moving on to the grand final, where they secured victory over Cowana again.
Audacity and Demise finished fifth and sixth respectively in the Season 2 league table.
“Well played to Cowana, good game. That’s the first time I’ve won [a tournament] since I’ve been unbanned actually, so that feels good. It was a fun season, it was really great overall. We had a good time.”
Doki, Navi
London Esports and Vexed Gaming finished bottom of the table, and will now play in the Rainbow Six Siege UKIN Second Division for Season 3.
Earlier this month, Navi made some changes to their roster. Swedish player Rickard ‘Secretly’ Olofsson joined, who was most recently with Chaos Esports Club, and the UK’s Nathan ‘Nathan’ Sharp was brought in from MNM Gaming.
Despite that, Nathan was still playing for MNM on the weekend and Joe was playing for Navi. Following Navi’s new signings, UK player Joe will now move to the bench.
Navi UK player Jack ‘Doki’ Robertson said after the final: “Well played to Cowana, good game. That’s the first time I’ve won [a tournament] since I’ve been unbanned actually, so that feels good. It was a fun season, it was really great overall. We had a good time.
“Now we’ve got to wait to see how EUL (the European League) goes. Obviously EUL is very different to UKIN. The style we play is different. The way we play in UKIN favours our individual gun skill and that probably isn’t going to happen in EUL, so it will be a completely different environment with a completely different team. We can’t think ‘we’ve just won UKIN, we’ll be fine in EUL’, that’s not the case at all.
“We’re super confident right now, EUL starts on Thursday, we’ll train hard with Nathan and Secret so we’re ready, and I’m excited get started. It’s going to be a good year, I think.”
Doki was previously banned back in October 2019 for ‘severe toxicity’.
Last year, MNM Gaming won the Rainbow Six UK and Ireland Nationals Season 1 finals.
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.
