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21-year-old Will ‘noname’ Jones, UK League of Legends player for UK esports organisation Verdant, has complimented the UK/Nordics league, the NLC, on its growth this season.
The jungler finished fourth with Verdant, narrowly missing out on being amongst the three teams in the NLC Winter 2025 LAN finals this weekend.
Speaking to Esports News UK during the finals weekend, which he is attending as a spectator and a guest of the NLC, he said: “I’m just really happy with the fact that my home league is growing as much as it is.
“I don’t feel like in the past I had to leave the NLC to have a chance in esports, but now it’s nice that you can be in the NLC with lots of eyes watching you, so yeah, shout out to everyone who’s raising the tides of the NLC.
“It’s really nice to be playing in the NLC, especially in this time period because with the big names in here [like Los Ratones and The Ruddy Sack players] it’s probably the biggest that it’s ever been by far.”
noname, Verdant
NLC viewership broke previous records by more than 1,000% during week one of Winter 2025 season.
On Verdant’s Winter season and missing out on the LAN finals, noname added: “It’s been a bit of a rocky split for us. I think we had much more to show than we actually did. I firmly believe that we’re minimum top three in the league but we just didn’t perform on the day against Bulldog [in the playoffs].
“So yeah, we never came to our full potential. Even in the seeding phase, we dropped a lot of silly games. It’s kind of unfortunate in that sense..
“We did play Nord in a best of three and we lost 2-1, and I feel like that was a winnable best of three, but they were definitely better than us on the day. So I do feel like we had a decent chance against them if we came in prepared well with our drafts, because obviously Fearless brings a whole different perspective to drafting in a best of five, but yeah if we came in well prepared, I definitely think we would have had a good shot.”
On previously playing for Ruddy in the past, he said: “Yeah, well, I think most people who’ve interacted with [Ruddy co-owner] DonJake know that he’s going to create something pretty big in esports, even though not that long ago he was much, much smaller than he is now. I feel like now he’s quite a well-known name within the scene. But yeah, he’s obviously a very big character and my time at Ruddy was pretty fun, for sure.”
On what’s ahead for noname in the future, he added: “I mean, obviously I’m a free agent so I’m open to anything [in the future]. I think changes between the winter and spring split are kind of few and far between, because winter split’s not very long, so teams don’t really want to make too many changes especially since there’s not much downtime between the splits. But I’m open to anything.
“I’m still aiming just to be the best player I can be. I still firmly believe that I’m good enough to compete in the top leagues and the top teams. So just keep working towards that goal.”
From the archives: NoName UK LoL player interview from August 2023 – ‘This is my first EMEA Masters and I want to show a good performance’
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.
