Irukandji

So we're all back stateside after a pretty long return trip from Sweden after competing in Dreamhack Winter 2009. We had to take a 1.5 hour taxi to Gothenburg, Sweden before our connection flight through Frankfurt, Germany. Overall, it wasn't too bad for most of us East-Coasters, but I'm sure Tom's trip was a bit more brutal as he had a 4-hour Flight after he got back into the United States.

Overall, even though we're a bit disappointed with our performance vs. mTw, we're satisfied with 3rd place at Dreamhack, but think we realize we have a lot more work to do if we want to truly become a top international team. For myself and most of the others, it was nice to be able to play a wide range of European teams for the first time to find out where we stand in the thick of things. I'd say based on results we're a little better than "good" European teams, but not quite up there with the giants (i.e. fnatic, mTw, SK, AGAiN, etc.). It was pretty neat being able to compete against so many different countries as we were able to beat teams from Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, and France (a nice change for me as I had only beaten a Danish team before).

Our primary focus right now is fixing the mistakes that the event showed in our game and hopefully doing better the next time around. We aren't really that happy with 3rd Place as we didn't take down the biggest opponent we faced and I think we will only truly be happy when we play to our potential. I really felt like we didn't show up at all vs mTw and they punished us pretty badly because of that.

I guess that's all for now. Just want to throw a big thanks out to all the kind fans who were posting encouraging words on our site, Gotfrag, or HLTV.org as it was really nice to be able to read the comments after matches were over. Fans (hate calling people fans as that denotes inferiority which isn't true) don't really realize it, but all gamers, from coL to SK to mTw, are reading the forums and it can give players a real boost to read someone building you up instead of tearing you down.

Last thing would be to thank our sponsors for sending us to Sweden as it was a great opportunity and I think we have 2-3 videos still to upload which, at least in the case of one, are absolutely hilarious. Hej da!