Watching the game on the stream like so many other people I was waiting for the action to start and listening to the pundits sum up what the game was. “A bit of fun and a bit of playing for pride” was their consensus, something that glossed over the fact it was a league game and also ignoring that there is nothing fun about playing for pride at all.

For many nothing hurts quite as much as a bruised ego and I certainly didn’t think that either team would be taking it easy. All of TLR’s players were in the shop window so to speak, having disbanded the team and were looking for new homes, or new games in some cases if internet chatter is to be believed. For YoYoTech a totally different agenda – show that they are not the little brother of the league and can actually be a team that is more than “those guys from ED”, a label casually applied to them despite their ambitions.

As I sat there watching the pre-match build up I had to double take and make sure I hadn’t slipped on WWE… Membrane was hulking up for the camera and declaring that they “wanted to smash” their opponents. On the other side Kofk said with a derisory sneer “Basically, you came for nothing.” and the pundits seemed to strongly back him on that point, making predictions heavily in favour of TLR. I had to concede that on paper I’d have plumped for them too, but there were so many other factors, who really knew how it was going to go? It has become increasingly difficult to predict Source matches outcomes, especially on “specialist” maps where well drilled tactics can seemingly be swept aside equally by carefully thought out anti-strats or the absolute random nonsense of nightmares.

Ben "Kofk" Pratt - "Basically, you came for nothing."

De_train was the map of the day and I had no real working knowledge of who would have the upper hand on it. YYT were a team, but had made a roster change… TLR have the stronger squad in terms of aim, but come into the event effectively as a mix. All I could say safely was that whoever won the knife round was going to pick CT and while it was underway it looked like that was going to be YoYoTech. So much so I even wrote it down on my notepad and waited for the next round. Yet somehow Alex “aLex” Nock managed to clutch a 1 v 3 in the knife after some disastrous team work. The last man was John “Friza” Reilly, who was goaded with a “come on then fatty” before being dispatched, the kind of schtick that Alex is known for that seemingly got him a warning from an admin. That seemed odd – you can’t just ramp up the rivalry before hand then switch it off, but maybe something else was going on that I misunderstood.

Anyway, TLR selected CT and the crucial pistol got underway. YYT executed a split onto the A bomb train, that was quite sloppily done, enabling TLR to pick them off in pairs before they even looked close to their objective. With Senan “menengroth” Quinn the last man left he had to make a 1v3 clutch, with the bomb to plant, a task that should have been impossible, yet he came tantalisingly close. After picking up two kills and getting the bomb he was denied his moment of glory.

The resulting eco rounds saw Alex mopping up the eco frags and even time for a bit of comedy Para WASDA from Ben “Kofk” Pratt. It is to be expected, although I don’t know whatever happened to people actually trying to work a tactic out on an eco round instead of just running towards a rifler in a cluster of five and giving him the staple movie footage spray down.

Part of the crowd that had come to see some of the action this evening

The first buy for YYT saw them trying to replicate the strat that they had gone for in the pistol round and while menengroth did manage to make a pick with his AWP from pop train, this advantage was quickly turned around and the round had slipped away from them again. Given the amount of money spent on the weapons for that round they had to eco again and before you knew it TLR were five rounds to the good.

As we all know, though, CS:S is a game of momentum and one round can make a huge difference to the ebb and flow of a match. YYT’s first round came courtesy of a well worked inner push that saw a 2v2, but the TLR players were having to rotate. In the end perhaps they didn’t co-ordinate that move as well as they should have and both kofk and the youngster Des “des” Bourke were caught cold and unable to prevent the round going the way of their opponents.

The next round saw that A site split again, but this time it was well executed. The players that worked inner fell back to ladder room just in time to catch people out of position and the delayed side push actually made the round a certainty. The next round was more of the same, victory punctuated by John “Friza” Reilly howling like a wolf for some reason. I had been hoping to hear one of his trademark “SEEEEEEEYA”s that he perfected in Infused, but to no avail. Regardless of the strange and bestial banter YoYoTech were on a roll and made the game 5 – 4 and were looking like maybe this was going to be a close affair after all.

Then something radically altered in the game dynamic. Either TLR stepped up a gear, or they got the measure of their opponents strategy, or maybe even YYT just took their foot off the pedal… Whatever it was it was like watching lemmings hurl themselves off a cliff as TLR pegged back another four very comfortable rounds in a row. The camera did a close up on menengroth who did not look happy with what was going on at all and was trying to keep his composure. It is no secret we’ve had our running battles in the past, but I can honestly say that he was the stand out player for his team up to this point so far. I’d always been sceptical as to whether he would ever make the step up in ability to be considered a top player… Yet here he was looking very good indeed with both an AWP and a rifle and although he’d never admit it was probably frustrated that his colleagues weren’t operating at the same level.

The next round saw a variation on a theme from YoYoTech and they managed to get a plant, but only after Des missed a couple of deagle shots at the stationary last man who was planting, before being killed. Had the YYT player decided to go to the front of the bomb train after making another frag as opposed to the back the round it could have been theirs, but such small decisions can have a big impact and in the end TLR did just enough to make it 9 – 4.

The next two rounds were uneventful and went the way you would expect them to at this point so TLR did take a healthy round into the second half. Their opponents needed to take the pistol on which to build the foundations for a fight-back, but simply were out-aimed and now faced an uphill struggle akin to that kid from the Hovis adverts.

The crowd getting actively involved with some of the "banter" that was going back and forth between the teams

With the next two rounds going to TLR, making the most of those eco frags again, the next round was to be crucial. TLR had the bomb planted on the back of A train and Tenshi had just one person to kill to be able to safely defuse the bomb and win the round. Spraying wildly at close range, through a fog of smoke, the opportunity was missed and he was dinked to death. “Are you that bad?” came the question from his opponents. The camera work showed he wasn’t happy with what occurred.

And so demoralised the next round was taken, their forced buy doing them no favours, and the TLR mix had somehow whitewashed a team that had come to the event with everything to gain from taking a potential scalp. 16 – 4 on de_train is fairly comprehensive, whichever way you slice it, and I’d have to say that YYT have a long way to go before they can realistically say they belong in the same company as some of the other teams invited to the event. I derive no pleasure in even typing that. Keen-ness is something that can be rewarded, but you also have to have something else about you, be it in the team chemistry or in the individual brilliance, to augment your efforts. Right now, on this showing at least, YYT need to do a lot of work to find that. Take nothing away from TLR either, they did what they had to do and made it look comfortable. In then end though Ben “Kofk” Pratt was right – their opponents had turned up for nothing. They may even come away feeling like they will be leaving something behind given how comprehensive the victory was.