Cloud9’s Overwatch League franchise London Spitfire have announced a handful of new player signings as their roster rebuild gets underway.
The individual announcements were made on the Spitfire Twitter account this week, with a total of four new players joining the team.
The players include UK talent Jamie ‘Backbone’ O’Neill (DPS) and Owen ‘provide’ Warner (support)
German tank player Daniel ‘Hadi’ Bleinagel has also returned to London Spitfire, while French tank Gael ‘Poko’ Gouzerch has joined from Philadelphia Fusion.
You can see more info in the announcement tweets here:
The response to the signings was largely positive, however there was some negative reaction to Prov1de’s announcement.
He was kicked from LA Valiant prior the 2020 season over screengrabs that showed him using racial slurs two years prior, but was cleared to play again earlier this year. He now says he’s excited to prove to people that he’s “changed for the better, not only as a player but as a professional and as a person”.
The new players join European DPS players Johannes ‘shax’ Nielsen and William ‘SparkR’ Andersson, bringing the team to six in total so far.
The Spitfire didn’t have a good time this year, picking up just one win in the Overwatch League season. For a look back on that, we interviewed Hangar 9’s Tony Ray on following London Spitfire and the pain of losing.
Esports News UK has also produced other content on Spitfire recently. Ahead of these signings, we interviewed UK Overwatch caster Legday on London Spitfire’s future and what they can do to get more competitive for the 2022 Overwatch League. We also looked at what could be next for Spitfire, before these signings were made.
Overwatch esports is up in the air right now – Overwatch 2 has this week been delayed, with no set release date right now.
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.
