At 19, Jamie ‘Tree60’ Callan had climbed the epoch of UK CS by winning UKIC Season 0 with K10. However, the highly-rated star-anchor’s career was stifled by an unsuccessful period at GamerLegion Academy, a move he now regrets. Going back into the UK scene, playing in the domestically dominant NXT roster, Tree60 is now looking to grow as a team and as an individual to allow this Tree to grow once again.
Esports News UK sat down with Tree60 at the highly contested EPIC.LAN to discuss his time at GamerLegion Academy, his move back to UK CS, NXT’s progression and the “amazing” European Esports Championships where Tree60 was part of Ireland’s roster.
Looking back to your time at GamerLegion Academy. Could you talk about how that materialised or how you got that?
I think at first Leaf was messaging me, he was the IGL at the time, he was messaging me asking if I wanted to join, I think while I was still with K10.
I declined at the time, but then later on, I believe I asked him, because I’d seen that they’d just lost a player and it was just good timing, and I had a trial on the team at the same time as another player, and they went with me there.
How do you think you benefited from your time in GamerLegion Academy?
I think I’ve said it before, like I actually kind of regret joining it. It felt like quite a big waste of time.
It was alright because it was salaried, but then it was kind of, a bit of a culture of just mediocrity in there, and there was roster changes with the IGL and the coach being removed for kind of uninspired choices, I feel.
Did you feel like there was no possibility of promotion when you were in the Academy?
Definitely, yeah, I mean I don’t think we really had much contact with the main team at all. Of course, there was the option of messaging ash [GamerLegion’s British coach] and I definitely should have done that more – asking for help myself, I wish I had.
But we didn’t really have much active interaction, like them coming down and teaching us things.
When you went back to UKCS, like how did you feel about that? Did you feel like you were breaking free, like feeling you could progress again?
It was nice because I was at the top of the scene, but it definitely felt like there were less eyes on me in terms of getting picked up by a higher-level team.
You’ve been playing with the NXT guys for a while, so how are you finding the time in that roster?
We had some trouble the first time around. I had, I think, like a one-month break away from this roster after the first EPIC.LAN win, and I think after I came back, we had a big talk about all the issues that were happening in the previous iteration of the roster, and after we’ve sorted all these issues out, it feels a lot more productive and a lot more, we’re winning a lot more really.
Can you go into any detail about those changes?
I think before the change, there was a lot of stress involved in finding an org, and it felt like every game we played was do or die. We didn’t really have time to work on our problems. It had to be all or nothing; we needed to just be good right then. So it wasn’t really an environment where we could all grow, and being the new player in the team, it was obviously quite hard for me to kind of fit in in that environment.
But after we’ve had this discussion on the issues in the team, it feels a lot better for everyone, and the mood is better.
With the latest iteration, Biscu [ex-coach] isn’t involved in this iteration as far as I know, so is that an aspect of that?
I don’t think Ciaran really contributed to any negative situations in the previous roster. I think the reason he’s not on the team anymore is less to do with me, really.
He was in the team for quite a few years before I joined, so I don’t really know the ins and outs of why he left, but I do know that we are interested in getting a new coach involved; we just haven’t really done too much looking yet.
We’ve got Blaze as the coach for this EPIC.LAN, he’s going to be standing behind us, giving us emotional support here, and I think he’d be a good fit there, at least for this event.
So do you think that kind of emotional element is an aspect lacking in your game? Maybe you get too down, get too emo about certain situations not going your way?
I think what we need in a coach is more someone that holds us accountable and is kind of just like a sixth pair of eyes on the situation. A good thing that Jay will be able to do, as we try him out.
He’s going to be able to take time-outs every few rounds. If we lose three rounds in a row, he’ll be able to take a time-out so it cools us down, we’ll be able to talk about things, because a lot of the time we forget to take time-outs.
What is the roster working on now? What’s the overall feeling on the roster? You mentioned before the recording that you had switched some positions.
Yeah, we’ve just switched some more positions recently, and I think the overall goal right now is just to have a full set, confident map pool. These should be the set positions that we play.
Before, all our roles were mismatched, and people were in positions that didn’t really suit the role they were in on most other maps. So yeah, we should just be working on building our strategy now in these roles and positions.
Do you think that will help with your consistency? One thing I’ve noticed about the ALASK/Perplexity/NXT roster is that you can look up a HLTV match and think like, ‘Wow, they they beat Alliance, they beat AMKAL’, but then there are other matches where you lose when you probably should win. Do you think those kind of positional aspects will help the consistency?
Yeah, I think it definitely would help the consistency, because previously we had a lot of maps where people were just not in roles that made sense, so some people had to be vocal on maps where they really shouldn’t be the person who’s having to be vocal.
Things like that, it depends on if they’re having a good day and all this, whereas if we actually just focus on everyone and the roles that they’re good at and they should be in, then we will actually have more consistent results.
You were in Kosovo for IESF. How did you find that experience?
Apart from the CS, which was really disappointing, I was really disappointed in my own performance there. Other than that, it was an amazing experience. I really couldn’t think of any negatives of the trip. The country was amazing, the people were amazing, and it was just an amazing experience to qualify there with the boys.
I know that arTisT has been trying for three years now to qualify there, and it just feels amazing, just the feeling when we all realise that we’ve actually qualified there.
You mentioned the CS. A couple of the maps were quite close, and you played Czechia. You’d beaten them to qualify but lost at the event. Is there anything you wish you had done differently in the matches?
I’m not really sure what we could have done differently. A lot of the issues came from our lack of practice together as a team.
Maybe if we’d just pugged a bit more before we went, but really, we were playing with Zerpherr, who’s a caster, and Unicorn, who really just plays FACEIT, not any team CS. So it was always going to be difficult trying to find what roles we could have an impact on with those guys.
But honestly, the vibe, even when we were losing, was brilliant.
That was the Bad News Eagles’ last hurrah, so what was it like being in there, and seeing their fans in Kosovo?
The crowd was incredible. I took some videos. It was like the whole arena was completely vibrating. It was just such an incredible atmosphere to be a part of.
And also, one of my teammates, Jackmon, he went and he got a Bad News Eagles jersey signed by all the players.
Here at EPIC.LAN there are a lot of good teams. How do you think facing strong opposition helps you as a team?
For us specifically, I think it’d just be good for the kind of experience of playing these better teams on LAN. Mainly, we’ve only played at EPIC.LANs against kind of lower-level teams, with really the best being like a smooya mix or 8Sins at last Epic.
So for us, it’d be good to play against these teams on LAN, see how it’s different to maybe when we’re playing them in officials online or in scrims online, because the teams that are here, we play them quite often at home.
But I think for everyone else as well, I think that’d be really good for them.
Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.
