Netherland's finest interviewed

Why don't you start off by introducing yourself and your team to our readers?

Hi, I am Frank van Schaik aka Frank_S/craven. I’m 20 years old and working for DigitalMind since the start in 2005.

Congratulations on winning your national ESWC Qualifier (Holland). You are clearly the best team in your country and won quite comfortable. Was this because of the hard-work the team put in or because you simply have no competition within the your national borders?

A bit of both, it’s a fact we got the best players in our country but also the team is really motivated and is training a lot to make a show of it at ESWC.

Although the team are clearly superior to the domestic teams, when it gets to an international level you seem to never be able to make it past the last hurdle. Why do you think this is and what changes have you made or will you make to prepare for the ESWC 2007 Finals?

We just ended up 2nd on WGT Dreamhack Summer 2007 after too much server crashes and troubles. We definitely deserved the 1st spot over there but not everyone knows what fair play is. Anyways, we got a good preparation for ESWC this year, much better then the other Dutch teams of the past years.

What are your expectations of the ESWC 2007 Finals?

I expect that MYM will win the tournament and that we at least go through the poules this time.

Who would you most like to play at the Paris Finals?

I personally don’t really think about which team we should play, there many good teams over there. We just need to pass the group stage.

Out of the teams that qualified for the ESWC Grand Finals (mouz, attax, dignitas, goodgame, emulate) who do you think will be the hardest, and the easiest to defeat?

Meetyourmakers, fnatic, Attax and Pentagram will be the toughest ones I think. There are no easy teams there but at a good day we can win from everyone.

Benelux has struggled to make it into the international scene, with no team ever achieving a top 3 finish at a major event. Why do you think this is?

Well I think the Netherlands is a country where you have a lot to do. For example Sweden is a pretty cold country, I would definitely behind my computer over there in winters. And in other countries “esports” is more a fact than it is here.

Any last words?

I would like to thank corepad/coreGamer for making this all possible for us and of course want to thank all our fans for supporting us during Dreamhack.