UK Rocket League players have been impressing in the 2024 RLCS Open Qualifier tournaments.
Oxygen Esports shine in RLCS Open Qualifier 5
In last weekend’s RLCS EU Open Qualifier 5, Oxygen Esports – featuring UK players archie and Joyo, and Polish player Oski – finished second.
They reached the final, where they were beaten 4-1 by BDS’ French/Moroccan team.
Each RLCS Open Qualifier features a swiss stage and a playoffs stage, with Oxygen actually finishing top of the swiss stage with 3-0 in matches and a +8 game differential, the most of any other team, as per Liquipedia.
Archie said: “Off day from us [on the final]. Happy with the top two and GGs BDS, well deserved.”
On the open qualifier in general, he added: “Going free on swiss is nice, you can sit back and relax. We played really solid on defense and if you have a solid defense, you can make scores happen.
“We win when I shoot well. And I always get a chance to score, and was averaging four goals per game. If I keep that up, we can win, because my teammates are insane.”
And UK players featured in all teams in fifth to eighth place, with Top Cougars having accro and RelatingWave, Jobless rehzzy and eekso, GridServe Resolve Kash, and Team 3 noahsaki.
The news comes as Gregan, the coach of Top Cougars, announced his retirement from full-time esports on the weekend.
UK esports org Endpoint finished 17th-24th.
There are of course plenty of other UK players and talent in Rocket League, with several throughout the Open Qualifiers this year, but we’ve focused on some of the top eight teams for the sake of conciseness in this article.
GridServe Resolve release documentary after RLCS Open Qualifier 4
In the Open Qualifier 4, which ended on May 5th 2024 and was won by Vitality, Gentle Mates Alpine finished second, and orgs with UK players finished 3rd/4th: Oxygen Esports and GridServe Resolve.
In 5th-8th was KC, Luna, BDS and Jobless, with KC having UK player rise and Jobless rehzzy and eekso.
Following the qualifier, GridServe Resolve released a mini-documentary highlighting the path to their top four finish.
This shows some good insight into the life of a pro esports team, including the coaching, prep, interactions between players – and the emotions that surround these. It covers matches against fellow UK org Endpoint, as well as beating Team BDS to reach top four and then playing the eventual winners Team Vitality, all from Resolve’s matches at the British Esports National Esports Performance Campus in Sunderland.
GridServe Resolve include UK player Kash, Austrian player ivn and German player Rezears, as well as Welsh coach Tadpole, head of performance AJ and COO Jeff Simpkins.
On reaching top four, a teary-eyed Jeff said: “I can’t even describe the pressure and the emotion in the room, it’s unreal. Everyone’s gonna be like why’s he crying, he just won and got top four!
“I think for us as an org, it’s huge, we put so much time and passion into it. At some point it’s gotta pay off, right? It’s the adrenaline in the room and everyone watching the games, it’s insane. Our lads are unreal.”
The documentary also comes shortly after GridServe Resolve Rocket League pro players challenged the games industry at the London Games Festival 2024 opening night.
G2 become first team to qualify for the RLCS London Major 2024
The Open Qualifiers of course lead to the Rocket League RLCS 2024 London Major, which will take place from June 20th to 23rd, with a live audience in the Copper Box Arena on the weekend of June 22nd and 23rd.
European teams have been amassing points from the qualifiers, with the standings currently looking like this:
Vitality, Gentle Mates, Oxygen and BDS are in the front-running, with GridServe Resolve and Jobless close behind.
Europe’s RLCS Open Qualifier 6 kicks off on May 24th and runs until June 2nd.
And from the North American qualifiers, G2’s all-American roster have become the first team to qualify for the London Major:
The news comes after the RLCS 2024 season changes were announced at the start of this year, which saw the adoption of a more open qualifier focused format.
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.
