“Anything less than qualification would be disappointing personally” were the words of sico heading into the Asia RMR, and it’s hard to make an argument against that.
His Grayhound side have consistently been the best team in Oceania, and qualification from the region has never been a big issue; but with the rest of Asia involved in the RMR, things become a bit tougher.
sico himself recognises that Oceania isn’t really strong enough to test Grayhound right now.
“We've been at the top of the Oceania pack for such a long time now, so overall I would say we have outgrown our region,” he stated - though did concede that might not always be the case. “In saying that, the competitive scene in AU has definitely been improving, especially in recent times.”
Spending time in Europe is always going to be helpful for these teams, and sico believes a large part of why the scene has struggled to both test them, and get close to beating them, is due to that practice gap.
“It's like night and day. In Europe, we get to properly expand our theory, on a greater practice schedule against greater competition. That alone makes all the difference as AU is a fairly closed circuit where we sit at the top with little practice diversity making it a lot harder to overall learn and improve.”
There’s inspiration, at least, for everyone in the Asia RMR. While IHC and Grayhound can draw on their own experiences abroad to remind them that they can play at the top level, there’s still things you can draw from those before you, and for some of the other teams it’s nice to have a role model.
“At the end of the day, the pathway of jks, dexter and honestly all of the original RNG/100T guys is somewhat the dream. 'Small' region players and teams breaking out as underdogs and putting up results and wins against the best in the world is always going to be inspiring to everyone, not just the fellow countrymen”, before adding “even though I’m from New Zealand… same difference, though!”
Speaking of IHC, sico exclaimed it would be “awesome” to play them in the final, as “they're a great group of guys and it's always cool playing against the home team in their home country,” which is a lovely sentiment
He also pointed out his own record of qualifying for Majors, and reminded us all that he’d qualified for every Major since Berlin 2019 - an impressive record - and when asked what the next step was, he answered with typical Oceania dry wit.
“Win the Major, obviously,” was the first response, but it was followed up by a later admission that “making it to the Major is the goal, anything on top of that is a bonus.”
Grayhound head into the Asia RMR as one of the favourites, and as the opening line suggests, would be very disappointed to miss out - but this is one of the strongest team line-ups Asia has put together.
They’ll have to be at their best to maintain sico’s record.
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