It is hard to know where to begin when writing this match report. Time is a factor, there is another game going on but yet I am struggling to find the words. I think I might have just seen the best game of CS:S ever...

Certainly the entire press area was transfixed around the STV that was blown up onto huge monitors. There were people from all games, all backgrounds, but whatever the reason they were here they stayed to watch and got into it. It is a terrible shame that not many more than 1700 spectators witnessed it, because it was as exciting and as entertaining as any of the action from China this weekend, the WCG having a classic final of its own.

With these two teams you have a set of players that have transcended any level of CS:S played before, a group of players really at the top of their game. For all I might write about the other teams, the other players, I think it is only fair to say that if you want to see what the standard required to win is you only have to look at how these guys play. These teams are capable of beating each other and you would expect it to hang on a knife edge. Having watched both over the course of this event I couldn’t call the game going into it.

De_dus2, done to death, each pixel of sand burned into the back of every player’s retinas... Yet when teams of this calibre square off against each other it seems different, recognisable only by some vague mental association... It doesn’t look like that when you play on it...

The game is underway and Reason as Counter Terrorist take the pistol and the next round, but Dignitas throw in an early surprise buy and make it 2-1... Already you can see who is up for this game. Sam “RattlesnK” Gawn is content to try and pick mid with his AK and the round is won out by a Tom “beta” Hanna three man clutch as Reason are caught short on short... Of course the map is so biased towards terrorists these days, the good teams being able to pick apart defensive set-ups at will and use weight of numbers to secure bomb sites with so much ease. You would expect the momentum to start building from this point onwards.

The next round Reason are on deco and they push mid and b tunnels then hold, simply waiting for exit frags. It is an example of the patience and intelligence that the Reason players always display at LANs, part of why they have won so many. They manage to make some kills, get some guns and it goes to two rounds a piece. Dignitas want to start rolling and they get the next round to take an early lead...

To neutralise RattlesnK’s AWP Reason are smoking mid before they cross, something that is allowing fast access to B, but Guardian – who is playing from outside the site – makes two fast frags in tunnels and then mid. It would have been enough to win out the round were it not for Sam answering back immediately with two huge kills. Dignitas put another round on the board.

When winning games it is the little things that make the differences – clutching those 1v1s and 2v2s... If you can do those you usually go on to win the game. The first distillation of the game comes with a 1v1 between UN and Mx and the Welshman of Dignitas clutches it. The ESL National squad invitation is in the post. He follows that round up with another 1v1 clutch, this time against Sneix and at 6-2 Dignitas look to be cruising.

Then something happens... It is one of those moments that people try and summarise with a shower of colloquialisms and jargon. Did Marek “.PhP” Kadek “step it up” “raise his game” “take it to the next level” or did he simply “snap”? All I know for sure is he simply became an unstoppable force. He rushes mid, hits lower B, makes two frags, then rushes up mid, wounding one player and killing another. It is an aggressive and skilfully executed move that wins his team the round.

Then they get another, and then .PhP, picking up an AWP, gets a five man as Dignitas try and push out on short. Before the tournament he was telling me he felt his AWPing was as good as anyone in Europe, but I simply put that down to European humour. The players on the receiving end were not laughing. A game that seemed to have been slipping away from them was now tied up at six rounds and whatever you say about it being a team game, anyone who saw it knows that it was all down to one player.

It finished 9-6, beta and RattlesnK keen to not let one player hog the limelight, and they finished the half strong, with some AWPing in B-tunnels and we move to a crucial pistol. PhP does it again with two massive entry frags that set Reason up to win the round and piggyback the next few rounds to tie it up at 9-9... I’m looking at my notes and there is a gap in the rounds. I know why this is. The way Reason started to play as terrorist was so good it was beyond belief, Guardian starting to ramp up his game to the level that made a name for himself.

On the first buy round the bomb is ticking away at A and Dignitas are waiting to push up long after making the picks leaving Marek alone on short. It is a situation that no-one could win, while one person defuses from behind cover the other three can simply face the obvious spot to be and wait for you to peek. Instead, some controlled prefire and burst rifling drops all four Dignitas bodies in scenes reminiscent of Hughsy against the old Vitriolic side at SLAP.

That must have been demoralising and the rounds just keep coming thick and fast for Reason. They get seven on the board and Dignitas are reeling. What is the difference between the two sides exactly? The top performers are obvious, but those that watched might want to criticise the people at the bottom end of the scoreboards. It’s not that simple... In any other situation I’d take it upon myself to lay into them, but even those that didn’t have the kills were either being beaten by players that were simply in the zone and unstoppable or had their opportunity to clutch some rounds and didn’t disappoint. Again, Jim “Mx” Smale kept Dignitas in it when Reason had 14 rounds on the board with a three man clutch and the defuse.

At 14-14 the game was poised on a knife edge... People around me were actually hoping for overtime. Reason obviously were not. They managed to get across the finish line thanks to delayed pushes around the map and Guardian finally working his aggressive AWP and making those picks. As Reason win 16-14 you know that Dignitas are disappointed, but they shouldn’t be. They played a great game and came up against probably the best LAN CS:S team right now.

The words don’t do the game justice. Those that saw it know.