aliStair: "I hope people put us as the 0-3"

Grayhound look to mess with everyone's Pick'Ems again after they made it to the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

Grayhound secured the first of two Paris Major spots up for grabs at the Asia RMR after traversing the upper bracket. The Australian side played a couple of close matches but reached the top of the RMR undefeated, beating TYLOO, Eruption, and The MongolZ on the way to Paris.

After the final match against one of the other favorites at the tournament, Alistair "⁠aliStair⁠" Johnston talked about the qualifying series and Grayhound giving up a 12-3 lead on the opener, Anubis, and feeling the pressure again later when they had a big lead on map three.

The 25-year-old also shared his thoughts on winning the RMR for the first time, having placed second ahead of the two 2022 Majors in Antwerp and Rio, and made one promise for when Grayhound compete at the Paris Major.

First of all, congratulations on making it to the Major. You took the short path via the upper bracket — are you relieved that you didn't have to play the second series today?

Yeah, for sure. It's always nice to play knowing you have an extra life in your back pocket. To just win it and win the whole RMR is definitely a big thing for me. I think it's the first time for a couple of us that we've actually won the RMR, so that's huge.

In terms of the greater picture of the RMR, do you feel relief from qualifying and having the RMRs out of your mind?

Yeah, for sure. Not only is there a lot of pressure and energy put into qualifying for the Major, but let alone the last Major of CS:GO. I'm sure everybody wants to be qualifying for that, so that's sort of where we channeled our energy, and now we're home free, we're wrapped.

Talking about the game against TheMongolz, how hard was it to recover from the opening map loss? You started off with a good lead.

Yeah, to be fair, our Anubis sucks, so for us to have gone up 12-3... We knew our T side is actually decent, however we know our CT still needs a lot of work. We sort of walked out of that knowing we can take it to these two, because we've got two comfortable maps coming up. With that in mind, we knew it was just us versus ourselves, so we were pretty confident heading into Inferno, which led to Ancient.

After map one, the map scores were well in your favor. Were there any moments where you didn't feel in control over the game? You gave off the impression of confidence throughout.

You have to play with confidence rather than playing not to lose, you need to play to win. There was some pressure and stress moments, knowing we're up 15-8 on the third map and they started pulling back some rounds, some scrappy rounds, so to be able to close it out was just such a relief.

Vexite said something about shooting bodies in the first map and you personally were pretty loud throughout, as well. Was there any banter between you and TheMongolz, or was it just the way you felt?

No, it was pretty harmless banter. In Australia, nobody really cares if you spam bodies, but I know overseas it's such a big thing, but we genuinely don't care. I think we got spammed in the first map, so we're like 'aight, fuck it, let's have some fun and spam back, let's get into their heads,' sort of thing. At the end of the day, though, it's harmless.

There were several tech issues during the RMR that ultimately resulted in the schedule tightening up. You had to wait for quite some time for the game on day one. What was your experience with these and other tech issues overall?

It can be quite cooking, waiting to play all day and then to wait an extra six hours to then find out you're not going to play. It's just a lot of energy-draining, it's just kind of tiring, so I feel for the teams that did have to actually deal with the tech issues mid-game rather than us, who were just waiting to play. It's rough, but what can you do?

Talking about other teams, Twisted Minds defied all expectations, and is now going 3-3 on map 1 against Rare Atom. What are your thoughts on this team, do you think they are able to actually claim the other spot?

I'd be very surprised. However, they are very sharp, they've got a lot of strong individuals. They play in Europe, they play FPL, all that stuff, so they have that in their corner, whether or not they have practiced. They're going to be real sharp individuals. I'd be surprised if they beat Rare Atom, but I couldn't see them beating TheMongolz, I think.

Are you set now to make some upsets at the Major?

Yeah, for sure! I hope people put us as the 0-3. Keen to have some fun.

What result at the Major other than a win will make you do a shoey?

If we make it out of groups, for sure I'll do a shoey. Pass the Challengers Stage, straight away I'll do a shoey there and then.