shox: "We weren't ready to play under the pressure of the Major; we finally managed to switch that off"

After G2 survived their elimination match against fnatic in the 1-2 pool, we caught up with Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon to get his thoughts on his team's showing so far at the Major.

With a 2-1 victory against the Swedish side, the Frenchmen are now sitting at two wins and two losses in the first Swiss stage of the Major after struggling in the previous two rounds, losing two Overpass encounters with ENCE and AVANGAR.

shox gave us an interview after G2's win against fnatic, commenting on the earlier struggles and the latest victory, as well as on how his two newest players, Lucas "⁠Lucky⁠" Chastang and Audric "⁠JACKZ⁠" Jug, are dealing with the pressure.

Judging by tweets from your CEO, ocelote, the quality of practice you put in ahead of the event didn't quite match the output here, as you lost two Overpass matches to ENCE and AVANGAR, so tell me about what the struggles have been.

Yeah, Carlos is definitely right, what we were showing in practice lately, all the preparation we had during January was pretty good, to be honest. What happened is just that we didn't play how we had played in practice, basically. It's a mix of a lot of things. I just think we weren't ready to play under the pressure of the Major and that's what caused the poor showing since the beginning of the tournament. We finally managed to switch that off and take it positively and just play our game, as we did on the last two maps today. I'm really happy about it and I hope it's only the beginning so that we can continue this way.

Overpass was the decider against fnatic and you looked like a completely different team compared to the aforementioned losses, with a very dominant showing from the start, what did you change coming into the decider today?

Not that much, I would say. Maybe we had better preparation, but we could see on Mirage that the preparation didn't do anything. So, basically, it was the same thing as the previous maps we had played before. Going into Mirage, we played scared, we didn't have good communication, we didn't respect our basics and it looked like we were kind of scared overall. After this, it was definitely the last chance to turn it over because otherwise we would have left the Major without really playing. It looks like everyone had something in their head that helped us to just feel more comfortable. Also, even if we know it's been really hard since the beginning and we are really disappointed with what we are showing - except for the last two maps against fnatic - we stay strong together, we fight together, we are going to do it together. There is no individual or whatever, we are in the same sh*t when it goes bad and we are in the same mindset, happy, when we win. We just keep fighting and I hope again that we can surf on what we unlocked today.

How are the two new guys, as the rookies, dealing with the pressure that you were talking about earlier?

They were pretty excited, it is the first Major, it's like a dream as a CS player to just compete at the Major. I don't think they were scared about anything, but when you feel the battlefield and overall, it's never what you can expect, so it's very new for them. Even if it was hard, they showed today that after a bit of experience, after a few matches, they were really on point and ready to compete with the best.

Does that make you feel more comfortable now after showing that in the fnatic match, going into the fifth round?

We haven't talked about it yet (laughs), so I don't know. But yes, of course we are happy because that's the first positive thing we are showing, clearly, since the beginning. It has just started for us, I would say, and we just want to continue to compete as we did today.

The only two options for you to play against in the next round should be FURIA, if they win against Cloud9, or TYLOO - what do you make of each of those matchups?

Honestly, I don't really have any preference as we saw that we could lose to any team, so the main focus would be just to play our game, definitely.