After a long day and no sleep for running close to thirty hours I had finally got on the coach home and was relieved to be free of the prospect of any more writing about the UKeSA event. For a rare change the coach actually had leg room and I stretched myself out for some well needed shut eye, ignoring the suspiciously amorous couple immediately to my right.

Somewhere between my first snore and drooling on my shoulder a text came through, the vibrations waking me. It was the Reason manager Ben "Dallow" Dalloway. By this point his team had won the event in fine style, after an excellent final against Crack Clan. It stated that his players had some time to kill before they travelled home and they'd like to do an interview to clear up a few things. The usual bout of excuses were doing the rounds and the players were jaded.

So much for sleep, but I knew that it would shed some light on a lot of the murmurings I had heard prior to the event, and besides - you're always supposed to interview the winning team anyway, even if you are suffering from sleep deprivation and capable of only typing up babble like this opening paragraphs. Marek ".PhP" Kadek usually keeps himself very much to himself. He hates the arguments and confrontation that seems to come with establishing yourself in the European scene. I was as interested to hear what he had to say myself, so we got down to it:

How much pressure did you feel under coming into this event in light of recent accusations and speculation about some of your players?

Before we start I'd like to mention in the interview things that have been been going on in Reason. We didn't practice and had all sorts of problems coming in to the event and yet we still won, but Dignitas are whining again. I don't understand that... Coming into the event I was probably the only one in the team feeling pressure because people seem to throw always some new excuses when we beat them, and we always get lot of crap talked about us behind our backs... Stuff which just is not true. So I felt like we have to prove ourselves once again, like back in the eSuba days. The others didn't mind really. I envy them for that. They are so much calmer than me. I just hate to read comments when someone writes shit which is not true just because they are envious.

What particular excuses have you taken exception to from the Dignitas guys?

There are lots of them and it's not only from Dignitas. It's also from other players, a lot still about ventrilo.exe ... At this LAN admins and teams were having discussions about how to check if players use it, and I felt like only one in room who has no idea how it works. I don't know if others than Wez, who seems to take it cool, are serious or they are just whining for fun, but they shouldn't. I understand in game banter; even I write shit sometimes... But writing essays on Cadred after a lost match ? It just seems ridiculous to me.

PhP composed during the game against Dignitas

Were you worried coming into the game that if you didn't perform how that might look in the eyes of some people?

We never perform online as we should. It is the same in PCWs. We were losing every friendly match against RedLine before Lan79 and this time we got beaten badly in practice against Dignitas before this LAN. That's not a reason to say that we are shit at interpolate 1 and that we practice at 0 as someone from Dignitas has said. But yes, we were bit worried. We don't really like events where you just turn up, plug in and play. We like to warm-up a bit. But it seems to wear off as we have more experience because we care less.

Although the event was something of a let-down in some areas how much did the win mean for you?

We count it because everyone was writing shit. That's why we turned up even though we weren't supposed to. Guardian was ill, he had rashes all over his hands which turned into bleeding wounds later. They are now healed a bit, but it still hurt him to play. We were unsure whether he would be able to come or not. We weren't even practicing that often because of bazy's work and mine studies. When I saw dignitas practicing from 3pm for hours, I have to say I was a bit scared. I thought they would be fully prepared. But then they did have a new roster. Anyway, the win against them means a lot to us, a much more important match for us than final.

There were a lot of rumours flying aorund before this event. Some were saying you were going to fold, some said you were thinking about moving to 1.6, others that you were going to change the team roster... Was there any truth at all in any of those?

Yes, there's some truth behind them. The top end of the Source scene was a bit inactive so we were looking to play few games in 1.6.

Have you changed your mind now based on recent events, or will you still step into 1.6?

Hard to say... We might give it a chance if there are some good local tournaments in it.

Although you generally seem to be well respected across Europe a lot of the time it appears you don't get any credit for your achievements from UK CS:S fans, despite the fact you are a UK org. Why do you think this is?

I think they seem to follow their role-models like ritch and kritikal and try to look as they have same opinions as them. Maybe that. It is hard to say though. Perhaps it is because some UK people do not like Eastern Europeans, even though we are not from Eastern Europe. Slovakia is Heart of Europe. And Czech is even further North.

The final between you and Crack Clan was a great game to watch. How did you feel about it?

We were tired from the Dignitas game because we played our hearts out. Mentally a large part of the tournament was over for us when we beat them because we wanted a victory against them badly. Crack Clan had no pressure because they were attending as a mix and they played really well. They nearly beat us if truth be told. It was much tougher than I expected and they played really nicely.

What players stood out for you this tournament apart from your team-mates?

Well, the only other two that did stand out for me were beta and Mx. I didn’t see all of the games though, but certainly from what I saw and from playing against them those two had a great event.

So With Another LAN win under your belt what does the future hold for Reason Gaming?

We'd like to attend Tex.dk and maybe OOF, but we will be at i37 for sure. I'd like to thank our sponsors and Adam and Ben for making it possible to come to this event and I'm really pleased that we managed to win, whatever people think.