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On Wednesday, March 15th, 2017, ThrowdownTV announced their collaboration with Psyonix and RLCS to host the Rocket League Oceania RLCS Open Qualifiers.
With the announcement came a multitude of newly-found support, including a $20,000 prize pool and the chance for the Top 2 contending teams to compete at the Rocket League World Championships.
In just two weeks time from this announcement, Rocket League players of Oceania would receive the update they were all waiting for – brackets were live, seeded, and ready to go – all in due preparation for the 1-day Open Qualifiers.
The Open Qualifiers kicked off spectacularly – with 106 completing their registrations and finding the necessary members to compete, the tournament was split quickly into four pools, for management purposes. These pools consisted of roughly 26 teams, randomly seeded – from there, the top 16 teams would continue onto a top 64 bracket – whittling away the teams until there were only eight teams remaining.
These top eight teams would undoubtedly be the best the Oceanic region has to offer – both in skill and in determination for players, as they now face the weekly struggle of ThrowdownTV’s RLCS League Play.
Coming into the day, we saw the teams whittle down extremely quickly. The strongest teams took their place at the top, knocking down anybody who stood in their path. While many players had their assumptions on who would be filling those top eight spots, every single team went into the competition with admirable determination, grit, and hope.
As the number of competing teams were slimmed down smaller and smaller with every passing completed match, we saw small upsets begin to form – here and there, the underdogs were taking advantage of the small, imperfect cracks of slightly stronger teams and taking them down. However, despite the strength of the underdog teams, the strongest teams of Oceania disposed of them extremely quickly.
It wasn’t until later in the day where we saw the first major upset of the tournament – Corvidae versus JAM Gaming.
With JAM coming into the ThrowdownTV RLCS OCE Qualifiers considered one of the top four teams to look out for, their loss to Corvidae was a strong, confusing mixture of immense praise for the underdog Corvidae side – as well as unsettlement in the competitive Oceanic Rocket League community.
Their loss meant that Corvidae solidified their spot in the League Play tournament, and pushed JAM down into the loser’s bracket – just one more loss away from missing out on RLCS.
There’s no doubt that the day was completely packed full of incredible displays of Rocket League skill, with close games coming up left, right and center throughout both the winner and loser brackets – most notably, the incredible reverse sweep that Sand Castle pulled off against the formidable Trident esports team, who seemed more collectively in-form and on-point than they had in their recent weeks.
Despite these extremely close games, however, nothing could have possibly stood out over the final game of the Open Qualifiers tournament – Masterminds versus Trident esports.
With Trident esports coming into the tournament in form and convincingly strong, it was already surprising to see Sand Castle recover from their 2-0 deficit and overcome Trident – who seemed to be struggling to close out games. What would ensue with the Masterminds versus Trident esports game would be far more surprising.
Masterminds were a team who had seen better days, still struggling with the leaving of up-and-coming powerhouse Kia – but they were slowly beginning to look more formed, more on-point and clearly much more focused. With the line-up coming into the tournament being the new core roster of Nerd, Kamii and Requiem – a core roster who had huge amounts of experience with competitive Rocket League – Masterminds actually looked focused and feisty enough to take out a spot in the League Play, but the odds were weighed against them.
The Trident esports team were playing well together, just struggling to finish up games without dropping their defence.
The series saw an insane level of play from both teams, who had been playing the game the entirety of the day to get to this point. Both teams were tired, out of energy, and lacking focus – but Masterminds saw cracks in the Trident esports defence, and capitalized whenever they could.
The series went into an incredible five-game total series, with the fifth game being the clear-cut decider on who would be progressing onto RLCS League Play. At the end of the day, Masterminds’ ‘Requiem’ finished the final game’s overtime with a perfectly-placed shot from above the goal, which Tridents’ ‘Dreameh’ just wasn’t quick enough to defend the shot, ending the game with Masterminds taking the victory and progressing onto League Play.
With the Masterminds versus Trident eSports games finishing, we see the top eight teams progressing into RLCS League Play become outlined; these teams being 1More, Corvidae, Alpha Sydney, Masterminds, JAM Gaming, Scylla esports, Sand Castle and Legacy esports.
These teams will be competing for the next few weeks against each other, all aiming for one of the top two contending spots, and henceforth, a chance at Rocket League World Championships.
With the Open Qualifiers being a tournament full of nail-biting games, most of which displayed amazing levels of skill, it’s safe to say that the upcoming League Play will likely house its own fair share of upsets and eventful moments for all players involved.
If the League Play is going to be anything like the Open Qualifiers, which it may very well be, we may see one of the underdogs of the top eight securing a spot at the Rocket League World Championships – an event which would be utterly incredible to witness.