Demise’s Head Coach NEAR: “We can compete with every team in the league.”

As the UKLC summer split quickly approaches, two new organisations will be put to the test as Demise and NVision enter the competition for the first time.

For people who are not aware, Demise (formerly EJBY Brotherhood) and Nvision defeated Darkspawn Gaming and Bulldog Esports in the Forge of Champions promotion tournament, to rightly claim their spot. EJBY Brotherhood managed to secure a place in the UKLC without the need of an organisation. When the team’s spot was available, Demise quickly snapped up their roster and now a new organisation enters the rift.

Demise’s head coach, NEAR, believes that despite his line-up being relatively inexperienced, they have the quality to beat all challengers in the UKLC. Because of this, the coach expects his players to deliver results as soon as possible.

He says: “My expectations are high this split. Yeah, it‘s our first split as a team in the UKLC. But the roster and the staff behind the team is hardworking and everyone wants to reach as high as we can in our first split. With Demise behind us and supporting us, we wanna make them proud and reach our high goals with them,“

“Compared to other teams in the UKLC, I have a good feeling that we can compete with every team in the league. Our run in Forge of Champions was impressive and I expect the team to do the same in UKLC, or even better.”

Demise decided to keep EJBY brotherhood’s roster mostly the same with Viggo (formerly of Darkspawn) the only new addition, replacing Shayzien from their Forge of Champions run. The former MnM Gaming coach wanted to remain loyal to the players who gained promotion last split.

“It was sure for everyone that we stay with the core players (Ceikey, Vixen and DenVoksne). As the head coach, it was my final decision on who joined and who didn’t. Demise was nice to us and said that we can decide which players we want or not.” 

NEAR also coached EJBY throughout their Forge of Champions run and clearly has faith in his team’s ability.  So, changing the roster for the UKLC seemed pointless considering how much time and effort the German has put into this line-up.

“I’ve been coaching the core lineup for seven months now. We had good results in the past, and now we wanna aim for high goals together in the UKLC. I had a little break with the team for one month but two weeks before FoC started we came together again. We were able to stabilise everything and get the team coordinating again and then yeah. Haha. You saw what happened at Forge of Champions.”

Both Demise and NVision will have a lot to prove coming into the UKLC summer split. While Forge of Champions provided everybody with a taster of what they can do, can these sides compete against the likes of Barrage, exceL UK and Fnatic Rising?

If NEAR’s comments are anything to go by then perhaps Demise could surprise a few teams this split. Very few expected the line-up to qualify for the UKLC and yet they did. Can the underdogs continue their run and mount an unexpected title challenge?

By Tom Daniels