dephh: "I didn't want to retire from playing and then be that guy that's playing still"

M80 are one win away from the Copenhagen Major.

M80 have been dealt a cruel blow at the RMR after their IGL Marcus "⁠maNkz⁠" Kjeldsen announced he will be missing the tournament due to personal reasons. That meant the team would play with their coach Rory "⁠dephh⁠" Jackson, whose last on-server appearance came at the end of 2019.

The British coach has surprised many with his level, though, as he currently averages a solid 0.99 rating at the tournament, with his team one win away from the Major after defeating Wildcard in the 1-1 pool.

After their victory, dephh sat down with HLTV to discuss his feelings about being a player again, M80's search for an IGL, and tomorrow's decider clash.

If you do not see the SoundCloud embed above, you can listen to the full interview here.

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Talking about the win quickly, you're 2-1 now. Bounced back from your loss and now you're on the brink of qualification. Tell me about that and having the chance to qualify with you standing in.

After yesterday, we just said that we have to reset, we can't think about the day. We knew the veto was going to be completely different anyway to the maps we played yesterday. We knew we had to clean-slate it, come in with full confidence, full energy, and that showed on their best map right now in the tournament and a map that we used to veto with maNkz.

It was cool to actually play Mirage, we really wanted to do that, and I'm glad we got to do that today. But credit to the guys, they stayed in it even after losing Vertigo. We stayed in it and closed it out.

For you, obviously this wasn't something you expected, to be standing in for an extended period. What has being back on the server been like?

It's been... I've loved it, but I've also been like... I didn't want to retire from playing and then be that guy that's playing still. It feels very bittersweet and I've really enjoyed playing with these guys, actually getting back up to the CS2 meta and these guys teaching me as much as I'm teaching them. I'm just going to keep going until we actually find a full replacement.

Tell me about finding that full replacement. I know Swisher said that's something you're still looking for, and you tweeted it out. Obviously, maNkz seems to not be coming back, what is the situation with that and with trying to find a new captain, what's the timeline on that?

I think the public was slightly confused, but we wanted to, as our message as an organization, to say, 'Hey, maNkz is off the roster, but he can decide if he wants to express how he feels and the situation that led to that.' We just did the bare minimum, and hopefully maNkz can come out when he feels better to actually post about what happened and all that good stuff.

Right now we're just looking for options, we've got RMR cycles and Major cycles so we might have to just be patient. We've contacted a lot of people and we're in a lot of talks, but we found that it's quite difficult to get a European guy out to NA. It's just easier to compete from EU for the most part, so it's one, attracting the bigger dogs, and then two, finding the right guy.

So you're still looking Europe-based for an IGL then?

Yeah, we don't see much stock in NA. These guys [M80] are ready for the European system and how they play, and they want to play at the big LANs. For the past 3-4 years, it's mainly credited to EU callers.

In the case of you finding another IGL after this, you would go back to coaching, is that right?

Yeah, I would go back to full-time coaching. I'm working with stamina, he's essentially been the interim coach during this. He's working at home and also doing analyst work, he's been super cool so shoutout stamina.

Going into tomorrow, you have a chance to qualify. Don't know who your opponent could be yet, but there are a few draws that have you against Liquid, and generally it's going to be a difficult match. How do you feel about that?

Yeah, if you're playing the final game to make it to a Major, the game is always going to be hard. We're just going to wait till our draw, hopefully we don't get an early game again so we don't have to prep like crazy. Whoever we play, we're just going to come out swinging and see what happens.

Those 10AM matches are brutal (laughs)

They are fucking brutal, because you have to get up at 7!

Stewie2K would agree.