Update (June 26th 2021): The UK’s national Rocket League team for the Intel World Open has been decided after Deevo, Noly and Archie’s roster – named ‘Scouse Scouse Loiner’ – won the Closed Qualifier on Friday.
The trio managed to stave off ‘Fleekzi’ 3-2 in the Grand Finals, which were the only two games they dropped in the Closed Qualifiers.
Archie was statistically the best performer at the event, averaging 2.36 saves per game and 1.09 goals per game with a 30.8% shot accuracy, according to Octane.GG. He plays for UK org Top Blokes, while Deevo and Noly are with UK org Guild Esports.
The roster will now represent the UK in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Regional Finals, set to take place on July 11th.
Update (June 13th 2021): Skelp Esports, who announced their roster for the open qualifiers after this article was originally published, have upset ApparentlyJack’s team to claim the last spot in the UK closed qualifier.
The respective Welsh, Scottish and English trio of Euan ‘Tadpole’ Ingram, Calum ‘Calzafy’ Mathieson and Joseph ‘Growlii’ Caffrey, joined Breezi’s, noly’s and bluey’s teams (outlined below) in the closed qualifier on June 12th for a shot at representing the UK in the regional finals.
We’ll run some more coverage in a separate article once the qualifiers are over.
Original article (June 1st 2021):
Five high-profile rosters have announced their intention to compete in the UK’s open qualifiers for the upcoming Intel World Open (IWO), an international event to be contested by one national team from each country.
The event is supported by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and takes place ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics later this summer. It will be organized by ESL alongside game developer Psyonix.
The five standout rosters, fashioned from a mix of UK orgs and teams, will contest the UK qualifiers on June 5th and 12th 2021 for a chance to represent the UK in the Regional Finals later in July.
George ‘Breezi’ Rusiecki, Dylan ‘eekso’ Pickering and Jack ‘FlamE’ Pearton were the first to announce. The three combine from Team Singularity, SK Gaming and Top Blokes respectively and feature highly mechanically talented players.
Next up was Jack ‘ApparentlyJack’ Benton, Joseph ‘hibbs’ Jamie Hibbert and Kieran ‘rehzzy’ Hogan with their roster. Hibbs and rehzzy make up the remainder of Team Singularity – but instead of teaming with their fellow English teammate Breezi, they instead sided with Dignitas’ 1s extraordinaire ApparentlyJack.
Joseph ‘noly’ Kidd, David ‘Deevo’ Morrow and Archie ‘archie’ Pickthall disclosed their team shortly after. Noly and Deevo are teammates on Guild Esports, bringing in Top Blokes’ archie in place of their usual Dutch teammate. Guild and Top Blokes are ranked 3rd and 4th in Europe respectively by RLCS points this season.
Dan ‘bluey’ Bluett, Jack ‘Speed’ Packwood-Clarke (whom we interviewed in 2020) and Lucas ‘RelatingWave’ Rose revealed their roster a day later. Another eclectic mix, Speed plays for Team Liquid, RelatingWave is currently with Endpoint and bluey is a free agent most recently signed to FC Barcelona. All three are noteworthy players, though none of them have posted strong results lately, however this team has the backing of Guild’s well-known coach, Gregan.
Rix.GG’s Kurtis ‘Kash’ Cannon, WYLDE’s Billy ‘billy’ Hinchliffe and ex-WYLDE player Dan ‘Chippy’ Hypher are also teaming together, according to the Intel World Open signup sheet, though they are yet to make an official team announcement on social media.
21 country- and region-based open qualifiers are to take place across June to determine each country’s national team. Those national teams will then go on to compete in July’s international Regional Finals.
Related article: Dutch Rocket League players from UK orgs form eTeamNL to compete in the Intel World Open ahead of the Olympic Games
