Justinas ‘jL’ Lekavicius made a brief return to Counter-Strike, standing in for Owen ‘smooya’ Butterfield’s fish123 roster in a 2-1 defeat to academy roster, G2 Ares, in the final of online tournament United21 League Season 35.
Even though fish123 had a major quarter-finalist in smooya, and a Major-winning MVP in jL, the roster was defeated 5-13, 13-7, 5-13, meaning fish123 finished 2nd overall.
Why was jL playing for fish123?
The roster includes EPIC 45 champion, smooya, IESF EEC Champion, Matas ‘MAGILA’ Magila, former ENCE player Juho ‘juho’ Lampinen, and former Nexus young gun Radut ‘7kick’ Dragos Cristian.
The roster was recently deprived of former GamerLegion rifler, aNdu, as he made the move to join s1mple at BC.Game. Since then, the roster has used Rasmus ‘kreaz’ Johansson as stand-in, but as the Swede was unavailable, jL was called in on the action.
Still, the Lithuanian didn’t seem too rusty in the server, ending with a dead-even 39/39 K/D and a 1.06 HLTV rating.
The stand-in appearance seemed to be a simple one-time thing, with jL’s recent tweets reflecting his willingness to grind out content creation. In a recent post, he emphasised that his time on the bench “does not equal vacation.” The Lithuanian was benched by NaVi in a “joint decision,” with jL releasing a video outlining his plans.
jL shared the following in a tweet, showing he’s very much committed to making his new venture work:
“This might feel like I’ve retired, but that’s not the case. I’ve always enjoyed creating content, interacting with all of youq and putting smiles on people’s faces and that is what I’m going to focus on for now.
“Taking a break from competitive cs does not equal being on vacation for 6 months and then making a decision whether I’m coming back or not. I see it as taking on challenges that otherwise I would’ve not been able to try due to the packed schedule.
“I’ve been streaming and uploading videos for the past couple of weeks and would like to thank everyone for the support you’re showing, I feel it”
In the meantime, his former NaVi roster made the semi-finals of IEM Cologne with new signing Drin ‘makazze’ Shaqiri standing out in the quarter-final against The MongolZ, who were significant favourites in the match according to esports betting sites.
Certainly, in Britain’s smooya he has a compadre in content creation. smooya is one of CS’s most successful streamers when he decides to turn on the stream.
Currently, however, smooya is headed in the opposite direction to jL, emphasising his willingness to grind in the game and try to make it work in a team-based project.
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.
