Photo credit: Jason Halayko / Red Bull Content Pool
The Red Bull Home Ground 2023 Valorant Grand Finals concluded today as UK-headquartered esports organisation Fnatic emerged victorious with a 3-2 victory over Cloud9.
And Fnatic’s UK Valorant star Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett spoke about how eating a ton of bananas and jumping around during a break helped give him the energy to turn around a 2-1 deficit to win 3-2.
The pro Valorant Invitational saw a closely fought best-of-five finale, with Cloud9 starting strong but unable to stop Fnatic’s momentum as they upped their game round by round, handing the US team their second straight second-place finish, as the Red Bull Home Ground 2023 trophy returned to EU.
Fnatic took the first map, before dropping the next two and looking like they would hand the victory to Cloud9. However, a strong performance on Lotus levelled the score, with all to play for on the final battleground Haven. In the final map, Fnatic took an early lead and never looked back, ending the show with a 13-5 win.
The news comes just over four months after Fnatic won VCT Valorant Masters Tokyo, where Boaster gave a victory speech in Japanese.
It also comes two weeks after Chris ‘Elmapuddy’ Tebbit joined as head coach following Mini’s departure as coach of Fnatic’s Valorant team.
The teams put on a show for fans viewing online as well as attendees at the Ryogoku Kokugikan Arena in Tokyo, Japan. Since Friday, the eight attending teams have been battling it out for a place in the Grand Final.
In the Group Stages on Friday, both Fnatic and FUT Esports put in dominant performances, going 2-0 and immediately qualifying for the Semi-Finals. In the first round, FUT Esports had an especially dominant match against defending champs 100 Thieves, handily defeating them 13-3.
Local fans may have been disappointed that two of the three hometown Japan teams, Scarz and Fennel, were knocked out in the Group Stages, with Cloud9, DRX, 100 Thieves and Zeta Division progressing to the Saturday Playoffs.
The Playoffs began with a dominant 2-0 victory for DRX over 100 Thieves, meaning a new champ would be crowned at this Red Bull Home Ground 2023. Cloud9 vs Zeta Division was a much closer affair, with Zeta taking the first map before a strong turnaround from Cloud9 allowed them to take the following two maps and the victory.
They continued their strong performance in the Semi-Finals, taking a 2-1 win over FUT Esports, the top team in the Friday Group Stages.
On the other side of the bracket, Fnatic took no prisoners with DRX, only allowing them to win seven rounds across two maps as they moved onto the Grand Final.
The tournament was hosted by Valorant personalities Iain Chambers and Adam Savage, supported by a team of commentators, including Tom ‘Tombizz’ Bissmire, Mitch ‘MitchMan’ McBride, Seth ‘Achilios’ King, and Clinton ‘Paperthin’ Bader.
Boaster’s bouncing banana bonanza at Red Bull Home Ground 2023
Fnatic’s British Valorant star Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett said after the win: “I was pretty non-existent during this series at times, but my teammates are too bloody good.
“Also, it’s nice to maintain our win-streak of never losing in Japan! We’ve been pretty lucky here, so maybe we’ll come back again!”
When asked what he was thinking after going 2-1 down, Boaster answered:
“I was pretty tired, it was a long day so I just had to keep eating bananas – I ate three or four and jumped around a little bit, which managed to get the energy back!”
Boaster on his Red Bull Home Ground 2023 turnaround
“It can’t be worse than [Fnatic’s] Loud series in VCT Lock/In, where it was a big comeback. So we’re used to it now and we’re a strong team mentality. Look at us – I’m surrounded by giants!
“Thanks for coming and supporting us – we can see all your signs and jerseys, and your constant cheering.”
He also said he decided to learn the dance instead of saying another victory speech in Japanese.
Fnatic Valorant player Nikita ‘Derke’ Sirmitev commented: “I’m feeling really good as we’ve won here twice now. I’m really happy with everyone, the boys, everyone in the team and the staff for supporting us.
“We had a great match today, we played seven maps and it was really hard, but we came out on top.”
Head coach Chris ‘Elmapuddy’ Tebbit added: “I only met theses guys in person a week ago, so it’s been great to get to know them all. They’ve done a great job and have been focusing a lot on communication, obviously we didn’t get too many days of practicing, but I was happy for them to bounce back and win the game.”
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.
