In one of the biggest underdog runs of the year, M80 has made it to the playoffs of BLAST Open London.
Its setting, the OVO Arena Wembley, is one its coach, Rory “dephh” Jackson knows well. He played on the same stage in the quarter-finals of the FACEIT London Major 2018 with Complexity.
“Coming back into the arena and seeing the stage, there’s definitely some memories coming back,” the British coach told Esports.net. Having transitioned to VALORANT in 2020 before coming back to Counter-Strike 2 to coach M80, he described being back in Wembley as a “full circle” moment.
Coming Full Circle
Counter-Strike 2 and VALORANT are two games that dephh clearly cares a lot about. He told Esports.net that his 2018 run with Complexity ranks amongst his top two achievements during his long esports career. The other? His run with XSET at VALORANT Champions back in 2022.
And yet, as M80 approach its quarter-final clash versus MOUZ here at BLAST Open, it has also become evident that this run with M80 is close to making that top two a top three.
“I really enjoyed the Complexity team during FACEIT, I really enjoyed the XSET team in VAL, and now I’m really starting to enjoy this team too,” he said.
An Unlikely Run
Expectations were high for M80 in the run up to the recent BLAST.tv Austin Major. One of the deadliest squads in NA CS, it has a strong tactical base in dephh and German IGL Elias “s1n” Stein, as well as one of the region’s greatest fragging prospects in Mason “Lake” Sanderson.
However, with the team exiting the Major in Stage 2, its hype seemed dead and buried. But the arrival of “good vibes” Jadan “HexT” Postma and the squad embracing the “wacky shit” in the CS2 meta seems to have reinvigorated M80 into a side that is once again capable of shining on the international stage.
Of course, in typical British fashion, dephh is also slightly self-deprecating in his assessment of his team’s unlikely run.
“In general, we’re seeing a slight degradation in Tier 1… Everyone else seems to be going through the moment of not being full strength and we capitalised on it,” dephh told us.
There’s still pride, though. A smile tells us he knows how well his boys played during the group stage: “It wasn’t too hard. The matches weren’t too hard. Even the NAVI game, for the most part, if we didn’t throw a few rounds due to nervousness, I honestly think it was a clean 2-0.”
Image Credit: Adam Lakomy, ESL
The Hometown Hero
Although he may have been overshadowed by flashy AWPer Owen “Smooya” Butterfield during the FACEIT Major (and both dephh and smooya are both largely now pushed aside in favour of worshipping the current king of UK CS, William “mezii” Merriman), it’s important to remember that dephh will also be a hometown hero as he steps onto the Wembley stage once more.
A figure who in both his coaching and playing days has been closely linked to the North American scene, dephh laughed as he told us he no longer knows who he belongs to: “If I come back here my English accent comes out, but then I go back there and my accent gets fucked up again.” He says.
That said, with a tough game against German organisation MOUZ set to decide whether its heroic run continues, the roaring British crowd could just be the little push M80 needs if that crowd decides to get behind one its most successful exports.
Our time with dephh ends with him giving that crowd one simple message: “Against a team like MOUZ, there’s no reason for the crowd to not cheer for us, right?”