Just in case the cultural reference is wasted on you “The Little Train That Could “ is a children’s story about a small train that has to pull some particularly weighty cargo up a steep mountain. Bigger and better trains turn down the opportunity for a variety of reasons, leaving the small mechanical protagonist to push itself while uttering “I think I can, I know I can” over and over until it succeeds.

While it might sound inspiring to your inner child, it is a rotten piece of propaganda that is designed to indoctrinate American children into believing all that nonsense about the American dream and how hard work invariably pays off.The TLR story at this event seems to be an almost inverse of it. The running joke for CS:S teams is that if you can’t get a free LAN then “The Last Resort” is of course TLR and many players have benefitted from this understanding over the years. They coo about how much the team means to them, how it’ll be different this time and how they have a renewed respect for the organisation and the manager, Michael “Chef” Robinson, before performing erratically at a beer fuelled event and then promptly folding. Even the players locked into this behaviour have started to dub this “The Cycle”.

And so it was this time. The team that was supposedly coming, after booking their place with a fourth place finish in the Thermaltake Online Cup, effectively fell apart for a variety of reasons depending on who you talk to. The manager seems convinced he was being taken for a ride, the players seemed to have placed their appearance at i40 low on their priority list, not least of all potential start player Ollie “crazycat” Netherton who will be following the action from France. While the manager sees the players as being to blame, some of the players don't share that belief. The kicked Louis "macky" McErlane voiced his opinion:

Chef again living up to his status with this amazing string of changing lineups so drastically even PEZ would be proud of. Granted, some of it was out of his hands with Ollie not being able to go because junior Ollie was in junior Miss France. After Mole going elsewhere, Aleski did the usual magic of getting a LAN out of chef, even turning it around to make it sound like Alex was doing HIM a favour the genius part. We had it all sorted... Tucker and Alex to replace the missing pair.

Then LittleChef strikes, although it sounds like he did a good thing for once, it for sure was not intentional. After removing Alex (the one he asked to make a team for it) for him being under Team Dignitas contract and thus would not be allowed to wear the TLR shirt he was removed and then removed me due to being off the internet for 2 weeks. Leaving PEZ on his own, even after trying to reason with Chef did not seem to work, it is a laughable story to say the least. Now he actually has a decent team, with Luke and Dan playing together, Pez and Jack, and then you have Tucker on his own, not knowing any of them, this will be the best bit. Something like this is just (I hope) going to be coined as pulling a Chef, similar to the Friends anecdote Pulling a Monica, only stupider. Don't worry though with my expertise, and a few words out of a thesaurus youll see us together again.

Whatever happened the manager decided to ditch his current team and throw together a mish mash side of players at the last minute. The strange part is that it’s likely to work in their favour because they have ended up with not only a better team than before but one that probably represents TLR’s best chance of winning an i-series.

Louis "macky" McErlane was deemed surplus to requirements... He wasn't the only one

There’s a strong argument to suggest that this mix – with absolutely no chance of a lifespan beyond this event – is perhaps the best assembled under the TLR banner. Dan “Re1ease” Mullen, another of the returning ENC heroes, was rightly nominated as MVP after a string of fine performances and seems to be free from the distractions that were hampering his ability in previous line-ups. James “PEZ” Perrott has now managed to manoeuvre himself out of the spotlight glare he was in with previous teams and should find a new lease of life free from scrutiny. Luke “Kritikal” Green, despite his detractors, remains a fine captain and someone who is known to bring the best out of his players. The return of the “retired” Jack “Callisto” Mason, an under-rated player who simply faded into the real world without causing much of a fuss, in keeping with his quiet demeanour.

With this ensemble cast of players being added to the surviving Phil "Tucker" Hynes and a field of UK teams that represents the new school it is arguable they are the best of British in show. How they will measure up against the Europeans is perhaps another thing entirely, yet the gut feeling is that they could be on a collision course with DEMONiC.mix… Why? Well, the two sets of players have already been hanging out together, sharing war stories and enjoying a messy night out. Needless to say the banter is running high and they’ve already said in confidence, friends or no friends, they’d like to get one over their erstwhile colleagues, even if it is only for something as simple as bragging rights.

Of course this event is VeryGames to lose and many people see either the Finnish of eXelon, the Italians of OX-Gaming or the G-team driven DEMONiC as being the only teams that could lose respectably to them. Everything else is portrayed as some embarrassing whitewash in the making. Yet, there has to be a case that can be made for this team to be potential winners even if some aren’t convinced. Each player can be a match winner in their own right and while they may have no tactics, no practice time and possibly no chemistry, they do have the right blend of ingredients to be a surprise package that no team should take lightly. Their detractors would point out that the same ingredients that make them potentially great are the same ones that make them a potential powder-keg.

Of course, in the insane world of TLR you can never predict what is going to happen. The only thing that is certain is that it will always contribute to the soap opera that is the UK scene, even if sometimes the scripts are a bit tired and recycled. I’ve seen plenty of organisations being penalised for doing something fundamentally “right” – backing their players over big names, supporting big names as best they can, giving new talent a chance – yet this is a situation where the all kinds of “wrong” might just be the best thing Chef has done in a long time.

A trainwreck it might well be, but if it gets over the hill and down the mountain it’s safe to say that none of them will care. Could this answer to mistakes made be the team that brings a gold medal to TLR? They think they can…