After Aurora took revenge on 9z to qualify for the playoffs at the Thunderpick World Championship, HLTV sat down with Ashley "ash" Battye to ask him about the team's run.
The coach admitted the start to the event, which saw Aurora suffer a tough loss to 9z in the opener, was an eye-opener after a run of good results at StarSeries and ESL Pro League.
"We just played terribly," ash said. "Maybe it's because we flew straight from the third-place game, and we didn't really have any time to rest, and we came straight here, and we had a lot of sickness. But this is only so much of an excuse you can have."
"What we're looking for now is just a little bit more consistency," he went on. "That first game of the tournament was a little bit disappointing because it felt like we had kind of found it, but you can see that on our worst day, there's still a lot of improvements to make."
ash was, however, full of praise for Ali "Wicadia" Haydar Yalçın after recent breakthroughs.
"We're trying to trust him as much as possible because he's a guy who doesn't want to be told what to do so much. He needs a bit of freedom and decision-making, so sometimes it looks a little strange, but his game sense is just unbelievable at times," ash said.
"You kind of give him the star player treatment, where he can just go a little bit of random sometimes."
You can read or listen to the interview in full below:
ash, a 2-0 victory against 9z, and you're going to the semi-finals. It was revenge for what happened two days ago. The first map was surprisingly close towards the end. Now, on Inferno, you were in control from the beginning. Walk me through the series.
I think on Cache, we were incredibly nervous for some reason. I don't really know what's going on. That's probably one of the worst communications we maybe ever had, and I think maybe it's because we really wanted to win after last time because we felt like we embarrassed ourselves a little bit and let ourselves down.
So I think the level there was probably a 3 or a 4 out of 10, but it was just about enough, so I'm happy with the guys. And Inferno was a strange map. It felt like half the rounds they were just disrespecting our smokes and walking through. So it was a little bit weird, but I think the guys did an amazing job of just keeping track of everything and putting away the trick plays and deal with it much better today, so I'm very happy with how we played.
And what happened in that first match against 9z? Because on Inferno you almost came back from 8-4 down. Then on Nuke, a map you're always so good on, you didn't have much of a chance. You couldn't get anything going on the T side. What happened there?
I can't say anything other than we just played terribly. Maybe it's because we flew straight from the third-place game, and we didn't really have any time to rest, and we came straight here, and we had a lot of sickness. But this is only so much of an excuse you can have. It was just terrible, probably the worst we could possibly play. Inferno as well, it didn't feel good for us at any point. So we were just off it in every department.
And they also had a trick where they picked team A and then picked Inferno, which we weren't expecting. So I can't say anything. We were terrible. There's no way around it. We need to fix a lot of this in the future, but I think the guys are feeling tired and a bit sick, and maybe it's a little bit expected early game as well. So we're not looking into it too much, but it's good to see we bounced back and won four maps in a row straight after.
In the pre-match interview, max said he was surprised by the Cache pick. What kind of game plan did you have heading into this? Because after what happened on Nuke, you had to try something else, something different, right?
Yes. We kind of changed the way we played a little bit. I thought it would be maybe a surprise pick, but we didn't focus much on them because I think they haven't played Cache in quite a long time anyway, so I expected it to be very different.
I wouldn't say the prep was a massive reason for why we did well, winning both pistols. And I think they felt poor on that map and not prepared, the same way we did against maybe Vitality at times on that map the first time we played them. So it seems like it was a good pick because we were far from our best on that map, but then we played much better on the second one to make up for it.
It was another great performance from Wicadia, especially on the second map. He's become a true star player for the team. What has it been like for you and for kyxsan to work with him and to try to extract the best out of him?
I can only say positive things about him, really. He's just an unbelievable talent. I've never seen anything quite like this, and I think that maybe he gets top 20 this year, maybe not, but there's potential there to be significantly more than that. And the mentality change for the team from the first month maybe of joining to now, completely different player.
I'm very proud of him because we've had quite a few talks about this, and I think it's been a problem for him in the past, but it feels like there's kind of a little bit of a breakthrough there.
We're trying to trust him as much as possible because he's a guy who doesn't want to be told what to do so much. He needs a bit of freedom and decision-making, so sometimes it looks a little strange, but his game sense is just unbelievable at times. And you kind of give him the star player treatment, where he can just do a little bit of random sometimes. But yeah, he's doing a fantastic job, and I think there's a lot of potential in there for him to get a lot better.
Now going up against FURIA in the semi-finals. You lost to them at EMC. You beat them at EPL. A very close matchup in theory. What kind of expectations do you have?
It should be a good game. I think we respect them a lot. I think they also respect us. Maybe they're a little bit underrated right now. Maybe we're a little bit overrated because of the start. It's probably somewhere in the middle.
I think we're playing great CS. They're just a really dangerous team. It's a team that can win any tournament all of the time, so we need to bring our A game. Maybe so far we've been more like on our B game. But what I've noticed from the guys so far is when we play against the best teams, that's when we get the best out of them. So I think it'll be always a close one against these guys, and I'm really excited about playing them again.
After a bit of a rough start with the international team, things are looking up. Second place at StarSeries, third place at EPL, now semi-finals, potentially a final. It seems like the team is peaking at the right time with the Major around the corner. Would you agree?
A little bit. I still feel like we come out of a lot of the games feeling that there's a lot of improvements we could have made. So I'm not sure so much... I've heard people say a few times it's honeymoon, but I feel like we already maybe passed that period, and now we're kind of in a-
It's been a while…
It's been a while, yeah, but we're kind of at the period now where there's more complaining and people being open, saying what the problems are and things like this. I don't think we're in the honeymoon period, but I think the skill level keeps us quite solid anyway. And like I said, when we're playing against the good teams, we feel more power and energy, especially from woxic and Wicadia. They really feel like the importance of the game matters a lot.
I think what we're looking for right now is just a little bit more consistency. So that game that we had, the first game of this tournament, was a little bit disappointing because it felt like we had kind of maybe found it a little bit, but you can see that on our worst day, there's still a lot of improvements to make.
And can we play a little better on those worst days when it's the Major and a lot of pressure? That'll be where the big tests are with this team. We need to keep our expectations reasonable because we are new, and we haven't had much practice in the last few months.
9z
Maximiliano 'max' Gonzalez
Franco 'dgt' Garcia
Ignacio 'meyern' Meyer
Luciano 'luchov' Herrera
Matias 'HUASOPEEK' Ibañez Hernandez
Bruno 'BIT' Fukuda Lima
Ali 'Wicadia' Haydar YalçınPast 3 months
Aurora
Ismailcan 'XANTARES' Dörtkardeş
Özgür 'woxic' Eker
Jimi 'Jimpphat' Salo
Damjan 'kyxsan' Stoilkovski
Ali 'Wicadia' Haydar Yalçın
Ashley 'ash' Battye
Ashley 'ash' Battye