hades: "There were no thoughts, it was just pure excitement and happiness"

9INE's star AWPer touched on their run at the second RMR and what it feels to be the first Polish team at a Major in five years.

9INE have become one of the tier two upset stories of the BLAST.tv Major Europe RMR B, winning three on the trot to qualify for the Valve-sanctioned event in France. It was no easy route for the Poles, either, as they took out G2 on Nuke, BIG on Mirage and Vitality in a two-map series on Vertigo and Anubis.

A visibly emotional Olek "⁠hades⁠" Miskiewicz shared his thoughts after the qualifying match against Vitality on what his team achieved, becoming the first Polish side to reach a Major since 2018, doing so against a stacked field, and what's to come for a side that made a name for themselves online and now have the chance to continue showing their prowess on LAN at IEM Rio and the Paris Major.

You guys went 3-0 at the RMR to qualify for the Major. You needed a few minutes to compose yourself after the match so tell me what were those first thoughts that went through your mind?

There were no thoughts, it was just pure excitement and happiness. I am still shocked we did it, you know? 3-0 against such good teams is unbelievable.

You said it, 3-0 is unbelievable. This is the best possible case scenario, right? Especially at the RMR where crazy things are happening and nobody really knows what's going on. Could you ever imagine that?

I mean, I saw us going through, but maybe not 3-0. [laughs].

You got some big scalps too against partner teams and part of the established circuit and you guys came out of left field. We've been following you for a while, the great ascent in the first half of the year, but this is another level. Tell me how it was to go against such established teams, especially as you have some experience, but some of your teammates don't have as much. How did that work out in getting everyone motivated and believing that this 3-0 was possible?

We play with such a style that we sometimes win rounds that we can't win and then we lose rounds that we can't lose. We just believe in every single round and every game, especially on LAN you see everyone hype each other. When you are hyped, the whole game just works better, you hit more shot, you make better decisions, and you feel the game better. You just try to be as hyped as possible and it just happened.

The big thing being the first Polish team at a Major since 2018. It's been many years, what does it feel to be a part of this, especially as it's the last CS:GO Major and it's been the game that we have been in the past ten years? So what does it feel to become that Polish team that finally made it into the last CS:GO Major?

I mean it feels really nice because it's the end of the legacy for CS:GO with the new CS coming, so maybe other teams can look up to us and we can set some kind of example so in CS2 more Polish teams can join the Majors and high leagues — that's what we hope for.

So you guys want to be a little bit of a role model for the rest of the scene, so tell me how that's been with the Polish support and how is the scene is doing? It's been a long time since we've seen a team that can do this so where's the Polish scene now and how have you guys been feeling it?

The Polish scene, as I said in my previous interview, it's slowly getting better and people are seeing that in order to achieve something you have to work hard and play a lot. It can't be like it used to be in the past years.

The fans have been crazy and my followers have been on and on, especially since the start of the Major [cycle] with hundreds and hundreds of notifications, so you can see that Polish fans lacked a team that is on the biggest stage.

Can you give me a little condensation of what it was like to get into ENCE, getting dropped, going back down and playing internationally for a while, going back to the Polish scene, and rising all the way back to the top again?

The end of ENCE was pretty rough, I was in a bad space mentally, and in-game I was having bad performances so I went to Finest to find my own form. There was a lot of stuff going on so we couldn't stay together and at the end of the year we parted ways. I wrote to nawrot and then I just felt like this would be a good space for me. We've just been working hard, and I've added some stuff that I had from different teams and they showed me their stuff. I told the boys what was good and what isn't, and then we just kept working on all this stuff and it just clicked.

All of the online grind from the beginning of the year has been paying off now. You got to the RMR and you got through it, now you are flying to Rio, and then you are going to Paris. You have all these LANs ahead of you, how excited are you about it all?

Really excited. I love traveling and I love tasting foods from other countries too [laughs]. Just being back in the tier one scene and playing against all the best teams, seeing all the guys, it's been really great.