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Adam ‘Dinko’ Hawthorne has seven years of tier one experience under his belt as a caster and analyst. However, the 24-year-old Northern Irishman is not content to simply exist at Counter-Strike’s top table. He wants to leave his mark on the scene and be a part of the iconic moments in competitive CS.
Dinko took his time to sit down with Esports News UK to discuss his consistent efforts to improve, as well as his humble beginnings in Northern Ireland, casting in the Wembley Arena at 17 years of age, and his career growth with casting partner Jason ‘moses’ O’Toole.
We’re both Northern Irish, so we’re from similar backgrounds, but our voices are quite different. How did you develop your voice in Counter-Strike?
Yeah, I grew up in a pretty close place to you in Newtownabbey. I got into casting so young that I went to my first tournament in London at the ECS Challenge, I was like 17 years old at the time, and I had much more of a strong regional accent.
I never had the typical Northern Irish accent but my accent was definitely a bit stronger then and when I went to the tournament, everybody was asking me to repeat myself. Everybody was asking me ‘Say it again?’
Some people gave me the advice that ‘You kind of need to change this slightly if you want to actually make something of this,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s a good point.’
I didn’t really want to have to deal with people asking me to repeat what I had already said. So I went away, and over time just changed how I was saying vowels. That kind of changed over time.
From being 17 to now 24, I’ve been on this sort of circus show and it just has naturally become my voice, so I guess that’s just how it is. There’s like little changes that I made just in how I pronounce vowels and I guess that’s how my voice changed over time.
“I’m very fortunate that I have people like Scrawny, Machine, Harry who are all play-by-plays that I really look up to and I really appreciate their work. It’s such a luxury to be in a competitive environment with those people because they’re my friends but also they’re incredible motivation. I would say in particular, I enjoy this friendly rivalry with Scrawny. He pushes me to be better all the time and I really value that.”
Adam ‘Dinko’ Hawthorne
You touched on your casting background there, I know you won an ECS community casting competition with Hawka. Is that how you got into casting initially?
So that’s how I get into like the top tier of casting but I started just by playing in the Irish CS scene. There’s like a very few LAN events but I asked one of the owners of One Tap LAN if I could commentate on their online portion of the tournament. I realised I wanted to get into casting because I wasn’t good enough to be a player, but I knew I wanted to be a part of the show in some way.
So I thought, ‘Why don’t I try casting?’
So, I messaged Alan who ran the One Tap LAN circuit. He had this online portion and I said, ‘I can stream for you and I can cast these games for free’, and he said, ‘Yeah, give it a go.’
So I went on and streamed it myself. I was s**tting it because my PC was really bad, and my internet was bad, and I watched the bitrate tank and I was like, ‘I’ve ruined it, I’ve ruined everything.’ I was never gonna try it again.
I was super embarrassed, but then this one guy called Ivanov, who was in the CS scene, said that I did a good job on Twitter and I was like, alright, that’s enough encouragement to try it again.
So I went and I commentated the One Tap LAN finals at Jordanstown University. I got set up, I casted there. That was my first tournament commentating on LAN. I met MitchMan as well. The next season, we commentated together and he’s doing Valorant as well. So that’s how I started.
Then I entered this online competition, the ECS caster challenge, and I basically did a bunch of these ECS online games, free coverage streaming. It was good for ECS, but it’s also good for us and I thought nothing of it.
I did maybe six games total – there was a lot more I could have done, but I only did six. Then one year later, randomly, I got an email in my inbox from a guy from FaceIt, saying that I’d won the competition and he said, ‘sorry for the delay. We kind of got bogged down with it, but would you like to come to London and cast ECS season 5 finals?’
I thought it was a scam, so I started checking his LinkedIn and his email and found out he was a real person at the company, the real producer, and… I got flown out to London.
We went to Wembley, commentated the Astralis vs Cloud9 game, the opening game. And after that, I just I got my foot in the door enough and I never let it close.
Going back to the One Tap LANs, was siuhy involved in those at the time?
Yes, so siuhy went to one of the One Tap LANs I think One Tap 5 or One Tap 4. He turned up, I think he came with his dad if I’m not mistaken. I think he was very young at the time, but he was there.
I didn’t really interact with him. I don’t think many people did, we just kind of knew he was the best player at the LAN tournaments. He went and won it, left and never came back, and then I saw him playing in the Polish scene instead. Obviously, he’s gone on to do great things, but he went to that LAN once.
Author’s note: siuhy‘s team Rhaeks were runners-up 2nd at One Tap LAN 4
So with ECS you got your foot in the door, but it’s still been a long path to get to the level you’re at now, doing these kinds of events [IEM Katowice, Cologne, Majors etc] even though you are still very young. What do you think was the breakthrough that elevated you to the level you are at now?
When I was commentating with Hawka, we actually started in the UK scene. We did the ESL UK Premiership. We went to the [the old ESL UK] studio in Leicester, maybe like once every other week. We would go to Leicester and commentate the UK Premiership and they got awarded with the B streams of Cologne and IEM New York.
So we got asked to do those as the B stream commentators, and I think people liked us at those, and that was our first opportunity to show what we could do in front of the bigger audience of the tier one events. It came actually from the UK scene.
Then, once that happened, we kept getting more B stream offers, but the one thing that really kind of propelled me into getting to do tier-one events was that Machine unfortunately had some paperwork issues, he couldn’t stay in the European Union as long as he wanted to, so I actually got to replace him and work with SPUNJ at IEM Katowice in 2022.
I think that was the first moment where I broke out on my own and things kind of progressed from there. I started commentating with HenryG, and Hawka started casting with Bardolph, then Moses came along and we formed a new duo. So that’s kind of the moment that propelled me into the next level.
But I would say, what got my foot in the door in tier one CS was definitely the ESL UK Premiership into the B streams.
About the UK scene, the ESL UK Premiership doesn’t exist anymore, Endpoint have put their CS team on hiatus, ITB have collapsed in infamy. The UK scene was important to you coming up, do you have any reflections on the scene at the moment?
I think it’s in a very sad position at the moment. With Endpoint disappearing, I think that’s the big one because that’s the team that were the best for so many years. We’ve seen how many tier-one players they’ve produced, a couple playing in the [IEM Katowice 2025] final right now, you know? So I think that’s the saddest part about it. Endpoint’s gone now so even the best organisation is gone from the UK scene.
But from the broadcast side, that’s the side that I focus on mostly, and I think it’s a tragedy the ESL UK Premiership has gone because how many of the broadcasters are from the UK? You know? There are so many members here, but I think, without those opportunities, you’re going to have to go into the more online era of casting and it’s hard to break out of that because you don’t get studio experience.
As much as the UK scene wasn’t actually fully developed or fully professional, at least those opportunities existed that allowed you to connect with the next level, and those are kind of gone. So it just makes it more difficult and I would say that it’s in a pretty sad position at the moment, the UK CS scene.
‘I think it’s a tragedy ESL UK Premiership has gone, because how many of the broadcasters are from the UK? You know? There are so many members here, but I think, without those opportunities, you’re going to have to go into the more online era of casting and it’s hard to break out of that, because you don’t get studio experience.’
Adam ‘Dinko’ Hawthorne
Now you’re casting with Moses, do you think it helped you in retrospect to not be that anchored to a casting duo, to have experience with a lot of different casting partners?
Yeah, I think I think it was a couple of things that were positives from it for sure. You learn how to work with different types of commentators and different types of people. I think all of those duos had different strengths and weaknesses. With Hawka, we both came up at the same time, we won the competition together, you know? So we were just so passionate. We were kind of like apprentices, learning together the whole way through.
So, it was kind of like going to college for commentary. We would sit on TeamSpeak and go over our VODs, watch the top casters, and learn what they did. We just had that equal hunger to learn and get better. But at a certain point, I think we realised that we had kind of hit the ceiling of what we were capable of doing together because you kind of do need that more experienced commentary partner to get into the next level.
When casting with SPUNJ, I noticed there was a step up and the style that you could have as a commentator and how much casting with SPUNJ was just a different feeling, like it felt like I was learning Counter-Strike by just talking with him. There was just a huge different dynamic and I think that was what opened up my mind to all of the different levels of commentary that you can get to and experience, and that’s a new skill set that I learned.
And then when I commentated with HenryG – he’s one of the best colour commentators we’ve ever had – he brought more of an energy, more of a hype, a back and forth, we had inside jokes so that was a lot of fun.
I learned a lot with him and now with Moses. There are a lot of new things I had to learn because he’s different from both of them, and we have an age gap. So learning each other’s humour and getting along together – we get along well – but it’s finding the chemistry takes some time when you have such a discrepancy in experience and age gap.
So that was something that was definitely unique to try and get through. But I think we’re really doing well in that department now and have found our groove and our style. So, yeah, I think being able to go off and work with multiple different people has been very beneficial for me.
I think there’s a parallel between playing and casting in the sense that it’s competitive and you’re always striving to get better. Do you review your casting? How do you progress and get better?
Yeah, I review my casting all the time. I watch back every tournament. I watch back my big moments and try and learn from them.
I think for me, one of the tough things at the moment – it’s kind of a luxury to have in a way – but I’m learning how to get to the next level at the biggest events and the biggest stages. Sometimes, I won’t perform the way I want to because I’ve never been in that situation before.
And I think that learning from your mistakes and learning things that you can do better is the only way that you can truly compete with the most talented guys you’ve got in the business. So I’m very fortunate that I have people like Scrawny, Machine, Harry [JustHarry] who are all play-by-plays that I really look up to and I really appreciate their work.
It’s such a luxury to be in a competitive environment with those people because they’re my friends but also they’re incredible motivation. I would say in particular, I enjoy this friendly rivalry with Scrawny. He pushes me to be better all the time and I really value that.
So I enjoy the competitive side of things and it’s kind of a unique circumstance where you’re really good friends with the people who are your direct competitors. It actually provides a fun competitive environment.
When it comes to an event like Katowice, everyone wants to be casting the Grand Final. How is the decision made of who casts in the final? Is that agreed between casters or purely a production decision?
It’s ESL’s prerogative who they want to do the finals and last year, I got to commentate the playoffs at Katowice. This year, I didn’t and Harry and Hugo deserve to do the playoffs this year and they have nailed it.
Alex [Machine] and Chad [SPUNJ] are one of the top duos we’ve had in Counter-Strike and they nail the grand finals every single time. So when you look at ESL’s two biggest events, you have the guys that they’ve had in their organisation for a long time and they know the finals. So you know you’re going to get a safe commentary pair to do that. So I guess that’s the decision-making behind it.
So yeah, ESL make those decisions on the broadcast of who is going to do which games.
Finally, you said you watch back your casts. What’s your favourite moment that you’ve commentated and what was your commentary if you remember it?
One of my favourite commentary moments was actually in Dallas in 2022. Top Gun was the highest-grossing film at the time, Top Gun Maverick. Just randomly one day, we went to watch it as a talent group on the off day, and I just was going back in the car and I was thinking like ‘Damn, we drove past the Dallas Mavericks Stadium, we just watched Top Gun Maverick.’
Now something just kind of clicked in my head of a line I wanted to kind of drop in the game and it was something along the lines of you ‘In the city of the Mavericks, he’s proving he’s the Top Gun’ and I knew that I wasn’t gonna have like the biggest playoff game and I didn’t know how many chances I was going to get because I wasn’t in the top duo at the time. So I was like, ‘screw it. If I get one clutch, I’m just dropping it’.
*laughs*
Krimbo had this 1v3 with a Glock, and it was messy, and it wasn’t a memorable clutch, and I was like, ‘f**k it, I’m dropping the line here’. That was one of my favourite moments because I got to experience that for the first time, the creativity and having the opportunity to drop it in an arena, and it was my first arena cast as well.
So I was very happy with that and I was casting with Moses as well. He’s a big Top Gun fan. It’s one of his favourite movies. So yeah. I enjoyed that. That was probably my favourite moment.
Darragh Harbinson is a freelance writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK as well as the likes of UKCSGO, Dexerto and Rush B Media.
