Geepak goes public!

The UK scene is without question one of the least known out of all of the major counter-strike nations, countries like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the USA take most of the spotlight when it comes to counter-strike 1.6; but today i would like to bring you all a bit of an insight when it comes to the United Kingdom's cs 1.6 scene.

The UK has two main leagues, these are theSGL ( www.thesgl.com ) and CSGN ( www.csgn.co.uk ); theSGL is the newer of the two but is the most active and respected at the current time; however CSGN is about to fight back! CSGN was for years owned by a guy named stono, he ran CSGN to a very high level and made the site into the single most known CS 1.6 league in the country; but sadly at the end of CSGN season 7 everything just stopped moving, no more CSGN seasons were planned and nobody knew what the fate of CSGN was to be; a final CSGN season 8 took place earlier this year, however the season was surrounded in controversy with regard to the pay-to-play division, CSGN lost a lot of support and quite a lot of people lost respect for the league; something had to change.... and now it has.

Gavin “Geepak” Weeks along with Graham "Gonad" Callaghan have recently taken ownership of CSGN, these two are well known for running one of the best UK gaming organisations in TrademarkGamers, and now their going to have a go at running a league. I recently caught up with Gavin “Geepak” Weeks for a chat about the earth, the universe and everything; enjoy!

Hey, first of all i would like to thank you for taking some time out of what must be a busy schedule for you these days, running both a league and a top clan; can you tell our readers a bit about yourself, where your from and what you do within the e-sports scene.
Hey, well my name is Gavin Weeks i am a Web Designer for Future Publishing (they make PCGamer) I work and live in Bath in the UK.
As far as e-sports goes im actually on a small break at the moment due to moving to a new house so dont have the net set up, but other than that i do a lot of everything, but mainly a lot of the focus is on CSGN, its future and the brand

Well since you brought it up, i did want to ask you a little bit about CSGN. CSGN has for years been run and owned by people like stono and Obsidian, and now it appears as thought the man at the top of all of this is well, you. When exactly did you acquire CSGN and am i allowed to ask what you had to give to become it's new owner?
Well in regards to the passing of CSGN that has to remain private ;) but its not just me at the top of the CSGN ladder these days, Graham "Gonad" Callaghan is the other main guy im working with on this venture. I just tend to take more of a public facing role to everything TmG & CSGN. Jamie (Obsidian) will still be heavily involved with CSGN and responsible for the everyday running (why fix something that sisnt broken?!) He knows what hes doing and everyone in the community knows and respects him. It would be disasterous if me or Gonad were to just swoop in and take over without anyone in the CS community knowing who we were :)

Well that's fair enough, it sounds like you are taking a very level headed and logical approach to the running of the league.
CSGN is without question one of the top leagues in the UK, only UK leagues such as theSGL can even claim to be of the same quality; CSGN has a lot of history and is liked by the UK community, but the last season caused a lot of controversy and didn't really help CSGN's reputation. How do you plan to boost CSGN's reputation in the coming years?
Well we have very big things planned for CSGN... New site, more supported games, CSGN events, are just a few examples! The brand will be significantly bigger and with the addition of the Open Cups between seasons, there will be a lot more to do when a season isnt in progress.

Nice :) We heard rumours a few months ago about TmGL – will this still go ahead or is CSGN now your big focus? And will CSGN become TmGL in a few seasons time or will the CSGN Brand stay?
Well i can't give too much away regarding our motives but CSGN will stay! Its a superb brand to work with and obviously has the following and reputation. The general plan is to merge TmGL into CSGN and have the TmG & CSGN brand running seperately; although it will still maintain various obvious connections, similar to how companies like PC World & Currys run seperate but are owned by the same people.

Well just to finish in regards to CSGN, are all of the well known CSGN sponsors such as Steelseries and Pulsegaming going to be staying with CSGN for the foreseeable future? Or will CSGN be looking for sponsorship from other people?
I cannot reveal anything regarding sponsors im afraid, we have plans and we hope to stick to them! Although I can say Pulse Gaming will be staying on, they are a fantastic organisation to work with and their service it top drawer!

Well that's good to hear, and good to hear that you have planned that far ahead... Can i ask a little bit about TmG. TrademarkGamers are widely known as the second best clan in the UK, they are second to only 4Kings who they have troubled on several occasions, most notably at ESWC UK LAN qualifiers. But do you see TmG ever going any further than the UK scene? TmG have not attended any major European LAN's and we have heard uneasy rumours coming from within the TmG camp over the past few months. What do you see in the future of TmG?
Well as you can imagine, its a bitch keeping a good eye on everything thats going on, especially with everything CSGN. Although most of your readers will be CS players we have also reached high levels in other games such as CSS & CoD2, the COD2 guys have been to a couple European lans and pulled off top 8 finishes; Wonderbase Lan being the most recent. In regards to rambling, you shouldnt always believe what you hear ;) As far as we see it with TmG, the only way things can go is up :0

That's true enough, and i apologise for my ignorance, but if we can focus specifically on the cs 1.6 team for a moment. When sLy left we expected him to be replaced by one of the UK powerhouse's such as maybe Rattlesnk or one of the Virtuoso players, people were very surprised when Rob was brought in as a replacement and a lot of people believed it to be the wrong decision for TmG. Last week we heard that TmG cs 1.6 start player Kurt1s was very busy with his full time job, and that the other 4 players were unhappy about the level of activity; is this true and will there be more changes within TmG in the near future?
Well frankly we like to allow the teams to deal with the situations with activity & rosters themselves, although we like to be kept up to date on whats going on. In regards to the actual activity, its almost christmas, its never an extremely active time of year, exams, office parties, deadlines etc, first and foremost TmG people have personal lives and as far as we are concered they will always come first. We trust what the players, do, say and decide and i know no matter how things go now and in the new year, it will always be for the best.

Well that's good to hear, and good to hear that the TmG staff are running things in such a professional manner :) - I shall stop taking up so much of your time now and leave you in peace, thank you for taking the time out of what I'm sure can be a very busy schedule to do this interview :D - If you have any shouts, the time is now ;)
Its no problem at all and a pleasure to do so :) I have a couple shoutouts...
To all of TmG, everyone at CSGN (Get yourselves ready for CSGN OC06!) to our sponsors, Pulse Gaming, Steelseries, Logitech & to everyone else in the e-sports community, without you we wouldn't have a job!

As you can all see Geepak seems to have thought thinks well and truly through; the UK scene is not one of the most known and so I hope people were not disappointed by the content of this interview. Recently theSGL Invite games have been viewed by many hundreds of people from around Europe using HLTV.org proxies, and everyone has given us positive feedback; if CSGN returns to its former glory you can bet that the level of play will step-up a level, and we look forward to bringing you every single shot live on HLTV.

| CSGN | TrademarkGamers | theSGL | UKCT |