You were a part of some very talented rosters at Sin Gaming, and the first one that comes to mind is the Rift Rivals team of Dhokla, Ryoma, FBI and Rogue. The Bombers now have a very similar lineup and are considered split favourites off the back of that. What do you think was missing at the time?

We were one game off grand finals, when people look back at results they think you know, you were close but you lost in the semis, but we were literally 1 game away, 2-0 up. I think the biggest thing that was missing for us was experience.

FBI and Ry0ma were playing their first splits, and it was Rogue’s second year. I don’t think anything was missing other than time. Unfortunately the team disbanded and never reached the potential. I think we looked really good when playing together which results showed.

What was the experience transition from Sin to Mammoth like for you personally? Obviously Sin Gaming was a brand you worked very hard to help build, were you disappointed by the change or was it “onwards and upwards” with new management involved?

Towards the very end of Sin, I helped keep things together. During the transition period Louis and Roam asked how I’d feel if we rebranded. I said we had our run and if you think it’s what’s best for everyone I was happy for the change.

I’m not silly, I understood that there could be better opportunities over the horizon, especially knowing who was involved and why they wanted to do it, I said sure why not?

Take us through the mindset of a pro player who is in the twilight of their career, or potentially on the fringe of making the cut in the OPL. Is it a stressful experience? How did you deal with it?

It’s actually a very stressful experience, in the sense that you always have to deliver results. Any results based business, whether it’s corporate or sporting, that’s stressful. Results are stressful.

I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story, but at Rift Rivals 2017 I was sitting at my hotel bed, League helped with some downs like when experiencing my sporting injuries. I remember specifically sitting on my bed thinking 2017 could be my last year, I was kinda getting emotional about it that this could be my last tournament, my first and last international tournament and I remember sitting there for a good five to ten minutes, not crying or anything but feeling emotional.

It was one of those things when realising that; a) the stress of having to do well because the region is depending on you and b) knowing that I may not be playing for much longer. This was a light bulb moment, very surreal knowing that I was able to have the opportunity to play at Rift Rivals and competitive League of Legends but also knowing it was coming to an end.

How to deal with this was by always keeping doors open and not closing them. I kept these open by doing things like studying, I was very proud of putting plans of A, B, C in place for life after League while still playing. I created my own path on how to get out when it would happen. The easiest way to deal with it is to ensure you have a plan B, if you’re on the cusp of retiring or trying to break through the OPL, you should always have a plan B, even in sport, in business, in everything make sure you have a plan B.

In your twilight years make sure you’re building plan B, don’t shut off options and make yourself the best person you can be.

You’re a massive supporter of mental health awareness, working with the likes of Tom Boyd. What does it mean for you to be involved with an organisation like Headspace?

To be honest, I’ve achieved a lot in League, although I was never the best on the server, but I achieved some pretty honourable things, high place finishes, promotions and Rift Rivals but representing Headspace is the biggest achievement of my life, it’s the proudest moment of my life.

One way or another one person or another suffers from mental health. A lot of people asked for help, and to also be recognised in public places like the airport from the promotion means a lot. I don’t think of myself as a celebrity like Tom Boyd, Usman Khawaja yet here they are recognising me.

You don’t remember things like watching the ads unless it made an impact on you. The whole experience made me speechless and I’m finding it hard to describe what it truly means to me but it helped me shape what I want to do in life, and that’s help people.

To be the best in my sport, I have to stare at a screen for 12 hrs a day. In order to keep my mind sharp & in the game, I have to focus on that too. I exercise to give my mind a break, cos our minds need training as much as our bodies. https://t.co/nwfUizsGLz for tips & advice. pic.twitter.com/pjKveholGl

— Brandon Defina (@SINJuves) July 25, 2018

You’ve been a part of several rosters in your time, pick four team mates and a coach to round out your perfect team.

Before playing support, I had played every other role competitively at some point. Raydere and I meshed really well together so I stuck to support. When I decided to leave Chiefs I felt like trying something different and taking a new path. At the time the meta was really good for me in the top lane as I had quite a few champs that had to be banned out against me. I probably would do it again for another role at some point.

It definitely has been too long since I’ve been in the postseason. Honestly, there has been a few unlucky circumstances in some of the splits for me, and I wasn’t even sure if I’d still be playing. Even earlier in the year after Split 1, things were rough for us as a team as we tried to sort out our core issues heading into the split, and to finally be back in the finals is amazing. Ever since the inception of the gauntlet run I’ve wanted to go the whole way and take down everyone one by one.

I’m not sure I’d say they’ve left me behind in their career moves. When Lost went to Legacy and made finals I was happy for him, even more so now that he’s with Echo Fox. Ever since playing with him on Chiefs Black I knew he was an incredible ADC and that he could go far, I’m just extremely glad that he has made a name for himself.

I really hated laning against Tgun with a passion. It always seemed like he played without any care for jungle pressure and would always do the unexpected.

Tough question, I guess I’ll list all the available people first.

Top: Swiper/Praedyth/Pabu/Sleeping
Jungle: Domo/Spookz/Juves/Zahe/Shorterace/Seb
Mid: Heavenz/Swiffer/Rymeister/Omni/Chuz/Looch
ADC: Raydere/Cardrid/Lost/Cake/Raid/Tiger

It feels bad to not name some certain people, I’ll say one using 1 from each different team I’ve had.

Top: Sleeping
Jungle: Shorterace
Mid: Swiffer
ADC: Lost
Support: Me

I’d also like to choose Inero as my coach.

I began working in TV when I was 16 and I was about 19 when I started trying to convince everyone I worked for that gaming should be a priority for entertainment production. Unfortunately there were very few broadcasters that would cover gaming to the level it deserved. Now we’ve carved our own path and are creating, broadcasting and operating esports worldwide. It’s surreal to see it grow so fast but also unsurprising as it’s a core passion for so many people.

There are two main challenges with the OPL versus traditional sport broadcast. The first is operating 1080p at 60 frames per second (technically it’s 59.94 in Australia). Trying to sync all of our broadcast equipment to this frame rate and resolution is a lot more difficult than you would anticipate, mostly because traditional broadcast technology operates at 1080i. But the results are spectacular. Being able to watch the OPL at such a high definition is something I now crave when consuming traditional sport broadcast.

The next challenge is something I touched on earlier; structure. How do we make the OPL the most entertaining broadcast it can be week-to-week and what does the audience want to see from start to finish? Being a relatively young sport, we’ve got a lot of freedom to explore that space, which makes it really exciting. If you’re watching the cricket or aussie rules or a major tennis open, there’s an expectation of what that show looks like, what information you’ll get and how you’ll experience it. With the OPL we have the opportunity to explore and develop our broadcast in ways traditional sport broadcasts are very limited in.

Don’t tell Bailey that… he’s quite the diva.

In Oceania we run a lean crew compared to, not just the other English speaking broadcasts, but traditional broadcast on the whole. While everyone has a particular role to fill we rely on each other to provide advice, suggestions and feedback in order to improve the show. We’ve got a sensational crew working on the OPL, some of these people are veterans of sporting broadcast and their experience and knowledge of how to tell a story gives me the freedom to explore and change the show, not just in preparation, but on the go.

Our crew (not including on-camera talent) is currently comprised of the following: Audio Director, Vision Switcher, Graphics Operator, Record/Replay Operator, Floor Manager, 2x Camera Operators and our Observer team.

Seeing the polar opposite reactions in 2017, between Phantiks’ tears of joy and the Chiefs boys’ obvious pain was, for me in the control room, like feeling all of those things together at once. Excruciatingly amazing. That would be right up there in most memorable moments. Generating that narrative hype and seeing it play out on the rift, those are the moments a Producer cherishes.

In the last two years it’s been a joy to watch how much the teams have grown in confidence on camera. Whether it’s been on the hangout, post-game interviews, coach interviews, through their own content or on media days, being able to work with them on developing these skills is incredibly rewarding.

There are two things I’ll call out here as being ‘standout moments’. EGym transitioning from pro player to shoutcaster is the first. Bryce doesn’t do anything half-way and working with someone so hungry to improve and entertain is a Producers’ dream. He’s just a genuinely great guy and it’s been a pleasure working with him every week. It certainly helps that Jake is a world class shoutcaster and able to guide him, but take nothing away from what Bryce has put in to get where he is. Second is the headspace round in split 1 this year. The players and teams put so much into making the headspace round the most impactful event it could be. This was an event meant to recognise something the OCE community cares deeply about and the players gave their all to it.

From a technical standpoint, the NA LCS is king. They have the resources to create the best looking broadcast and persistent content around it – and they do it well. From a storytelling perspective I think the LPL is currently on top, mostly because of how the league has developed and the way the team has told that narrative. Listening to Fish’s call in the 2017 Split 1 LPL final then watching the final game at MSI is spine-tingling (Froskurinn carrying the narrative between the two was all class).

For OCE, our strength is connection. We have a unique ability to connect the players with the audience. Some of that is cultural and some of it is the nature of how our region has developed. The community is the third player on the stage and it’s one of the reasons we brought Nichboy in this split to help drive our live engagement. Through the broadcast we can create an environment that is more conversational, fun and momentous than any other.

To this end I’ll reiterate that if there are things you’d like to see on the broadcast, you should be a part of its development and tell us.

I feel like I have yet to open up an obvious path for Oceanic players, as I still have not played insanely well in the Academy League or made it into the LCS to warrant people looking into the OCE region to import. I do hope that one day I will change the general view of oceanic players being sub-par or incompetent compared to other regions and I also hope that whoever represents us at MSI or Worlds does the same as well.

There definitely isn’t a large difference between the team play in OPL and Academy because the games in both leagues have many inconsistencies. I feel like the most noticeable disparity between the two, is the raw mechanical skill of the majority of the players. In OPL, you can rule out a lot of the players from mechanical skill alone, but in Academy, almost all of the players have the potential to outplay or show up on a certain day and have an outstanding performance. There are also more resources available to Academy players in general, as there are larger companies/organizations in NA that help facilitate the growth of their players on their Academy squad.

Honestly most of us didn’t even expect to make it to the finals at all; our first goal was to make it to playoffs and only after that were our sights set on winning. Our roster on paper didn’t look good at all, but we improved drastically as a team and as individuals as the season went on. Losing the grand final didn’t feel as disappointing as it seemed because we put up a 5 game series after going down 0-2 in the beginning; so being able to play the series out such that we had chance to reverse sweep was exciting and rewarding in its own right. Going into summer split some teams are revamping their rosters, so it’s hard to predict how things will pan out. Expectations leading into the second split won’t be low as we have already proved to ourselves that we’re capable of contesting first, but we don’t expect to win easy as we have a lot of room to improve still.

At the beginning of the split playing against the bigger, more respected names in the league had me a little nervous; but as I practiced more and more against them I came to the realization that they weren’t as far ahead of the curve as they seemed in my mind. League is a team oriented game in professional play nowadays, and that one star player can only do so much when it comes to winning. This diminishes the effect of the astounding players on a lot of the academy rosters, and if anything it taught us the importance of having good macro or cohesion as a team.

Being the first player in the OPL to have an OPL Championship on two different teams would mean a lot to me. To be completely honest it’s pretty easy to be forgotten in esports if you don’t have any accomplishments or achievements to show. Earning it would be a testament to my hard work & dedication and something I would be proud of.

Playing against my old team in the Grand Final is significantly more important to me then previous OPL Finals. Last year on Dire Wolves, we were focused on proving that individually, we were the best in our roles domestically in which we showed against the Chiefs in 2017. I took a chance on an untested roster with a different approach, organisation & coaching staff. Regardless of what happens, I’m just happy to be apart of a team who have an aligned goal with the focus of improving together. I’m looking forward to playing against k1ng who has really improved a lot after Worlds and I commend him on that.

At the time, I was considering giving up being involved in esports/League of Legends and pursuing study. After working with the roster & losing to the Chiefs in 2016, everyone was really disappointed with the result and the ambitions of the team grew stronger. Phantiks suggested going to Korea to Rippii and I was approached to join the team as a player and not a coach, so I decided to give it one last shot. When I decide to retire, I would like to stay involved in esports whether it be casting, coaching or management.

My brief stints in playing other roles have definitely improved my understanding of the game on a competitive level. Learning lane match-ups, what to communicate and item spikes helped me to learn how to shotcall on a basic level. Communication is the third most important thing in League besides (Mechanics/Decision Making) so getting the fundamentals down and building on it definitely led me in the right direction when I was a rookie.

This is my dream team without any of the players on my current team.

I wouldn’t be able to boil it down to a single reason. There were several key turning points for us last year that were the reason for our dominant year.

• The pre-season Korea bootcamp
• Bringing Shernfire onboard and his broader view on the game
• Sharp’s development as a coach throughout the year
• Our performance director, Jonathan Brown influence on the team
• Changing the way we approached practise and prepared for matches
• The excitement of everyone moving full time into a Gaming House
• The location of our gaming house in Pyrmont minutes away from the OPL studio
• Losing the series in Week 4 of Split 1 to Legacy
• Expanding our coaching staff in picking up Jack Kayser as our analyst
• Our first international experience at MSI in Brazil

Everyone had something to prove, being around the scene for so long without a championship title to their names. We believed in each other and rose up alongside one another.

The decision to step back from playing at the end of 2015 was a very tough decision for me so the desire to come back was always lingering. However, as I’ve gained more responsibility, skills and expanded my knowledge on entrepreneurship, that desire has slowly fizzled away.

Entering the stadium in China for the first time and seeing the Dire Wolves banner next to the Worlds logo and teams such as Fnatic and Cloud9 made me realise just how far we’ve come in the short time Dire Wolves has existed. From a business perspective the sheer amount of eyes on us at Worlds made sponsor conversations a lot easier.

We also got some insights on the fan base locally. There were a significant number of League of Legends fans from OCE who came out of the woodwork saying they didn’t know whether to support us or Cloud 9 when we went up against them. This intrigued me, knowing how passionate Aussies are in supporting their national team which changed the way I thought about growing Dire Wolves fanbase.

It has been exciting to see these big players come into the scene who I believe will level it up for everyone. At Dire Wolves we are always looking to push the bar both on the performance and business side. We foster a startup culture, allowing us to innovate and move quickly which I think plays a big factor in us being able to stay ahead of the game.

For me personally, I am simply obsessed in building Dire Wolves and transforming esports in Oceania. I’m thinking about how Dire Wolves can be better in all aspects essentially every waking moment of the day.

This is a tough one but my all-time Dire Wolves super team would be:

I really don’t know what to say to help people get started with becoming a coach. It’s something I just stumbled into and I’m constantly learning how I can improve and make myself better at it. Networking and building your brand are two huge things for actually finding a job in the scene with the way it is right now. Also, being open minded and humble will help you grow as a coach. I see a lot of people come in and get huge egos after a bit of success in whatever league they’re in and that usually doesn’t bode well for them. Realizing that you’re not this wild mastermind coach, and that you have even more room for growth than a player does, is extremely important.

Rick is amazing, really. You run into a few people in life that are able to just steal everyone’s attention with the way they speak and the words they say, and Rick is one of them. Whenever he has these sit-down talks with players/staff, you can tell his heart is really invested in everything he’s telling you and it makes it so easy to get on board with what he’s saying. Being that type of mentor for a younger generation of coaches and players is something that I one day hope to be.

Our staff’s approach to the scouting/recruitment part of the off-season paid off heavily. We managed to get an incredibly talented group of guys that all had a similar mindset, and that really carries everything. We had a few different roster scenarios that could have played out, but we placed a large amount of importance on how well the personalities and desires of everyone would mesh. With how our practice has gone, and the success we’ve seen, I think it’s pretty fair to say our assessment of this group of guys was correct. Huni, Dardoch, Fenix, Altec, and Adrian are all great to work with and they truly deserve the success they’re seeing so far.

The reason we looked at Oceanic players in the off-season was really just to gauge the strength of the region’s players as a whole by bringing over a few guys we knew were good. We reached out to a few teams to get their boys to come over, but Legacy were the only ones to get back to us. I didn’t have contacts or a real good grasp on what players in other wildcard regions were like, so OCE was the easiest target for me. In esports like CSGO and COD, you see players from countries like Brazil and Australia find a lot more success internationally than you do in League of Legends. There are definitely players in those regions that could compete in the LCS someday, but it’s really hard to break in and get a chance here. I’m very hopeful that the franchised league will make opportunities for those players more available in the future, but it’ll take some time.

Ok I’m gonna include a runner up in each position too because it’s really hard to say with a lot of the guys, but it’s usually clear who the top 2 are. I’m also omitting all my old teammates because I’m biased…

Last year I was apart of pretty much a brand new roster and it was a refreshing feeling to have a clean slate and to learn how to play the game as a cohesive unit from the ground up. This year, I’m just repeating the process with a bunch of new and even less experienced players. It definitely has its upsides and downsides but I think in time we will be a roster capable of great heights.

The AFC have helped bring Legacy up to a higher standard of performance and this means that we have much more out-of-game support than we did when we were just Legacy. We’ve moved to a new gaming house so that we can have better quality of life, we’ve been given more contacts and people to talk to in case we need support and there’s definitely going to be more improvements made over the year in regards to training and boot camping.

My experience in Japan was mostly positive, before I left Australia to go play there I definitely had my worries about whether or not this would be good for my league career and me as a person. I ended up going because even if I didn’t have a good time as a professional player, it would be an invaluable life experience. I ended up enjoying my time there and I had a lot of fun crushing the challenger series. The food was great, the country was great, playing Korean solo queue as well as competitive matches against a bunch of players I’d never played against before was amazing. I’d like to go overseas again to play in the future.

Towards the end of 2016, when I was starting to get offers from OPL teams, I was having a rough time deciding whether or not to stay in Japan. OPL in 2016 was purely online except for the LAN finals, so when I heard that OPL was moving to a LAN format as well as every team getting gaming houses and salaries going up across the region I was extremely interested to return home and play with the new knowledge I’d gained playing overseas. All of these factors led me to want to play in OCE again. (as well as the crushing defeat in the promotion tournament)

In my opinion a dream team to build around me would probably look like:

I feel like Mimic has the highest potential as a top laner that I’ve played with and against so far.

Shernfire is the jungler I respect the most that doesn’t play in major regions.

Lost is the best mechanical ADC and least mistake making player I’ve ever played with.

Rogue for me is an extremely talented mechanical support and I think with this lineup that is what we’d need from our support player.