The Roar
The Roar

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How a newly created esports team took it right up to Australia's best

topguN (left) with Havoc (centre) last season. (Photo: Gfinity Australia)
19th July, 2018
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With the inaugural Gfinity Elite Series season wrapping up last weekend, we had the opportunity to speak with the manager of one of the newly-created teams for the tournament – the Sydney Roar.

Marco Mantarro – an avid Sydney FC fan who sits in the Cove – spoke about how he got a mix of talented professionals and big characters to work together on stage, culminating in a shock playoff appearance in the CS:GO playoffs.

The Roar: Tell us briefly about yourself and your involvement in the Sydney/Australian esports scene prior to Sydney Roar.

Marco: I was really heavily involved in the OPL League of Legends team. I was the manager of Sin Gaming, which is now Mammoth Gaming. Obviously, I was a player. I used to play at a decently high level. Not at the top, but I was nearly at that top level.

But then I got a little bit older. I just considered getting into more of a management role because I still enjoyed the community aspect of things and I didn’t really want to continue playing.

The Roar: When did you first hear about the Gfinity Elite Series? What where you first impressions and how did you end up then running a newly created team for the tournament?

Marco: There were obviously a bit of whispers that I had heard that Gfinity was coming to Australia. There’d been a lot of teasers and stuff like that I was seeing on social media. Luckily I had a couple of friends that were involved in Gfinity, and I really just asked if there was an opportunity for me.

Luckily enough I was given an opportunity to kind of run a team because I work for an Athletico currently, and they saw the good work that I was doing there and they thought that they would give me a shot with one of their in-house teams.

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I’ve always had a specialty in picking up talent quickly and just scouting out things, so I think they gave me an opportunity to see what I would do at such short notice. I think I did a pretty good job in building a pretty good roster in all three titles.

The Roar: It would have been incredibly tough knowing you were going up against four pretty reasonably well-established esports teams. How did you go about getting some talent together to take the plunge?

Marco: So I had a few friends in all different communities, so I reached out to people I knew. I was just like, “Look, we’re up against fully established organisations, I want to put on a show rather than just scouting this talent.” I was looking to recruit talent, but at the same time I also wanted to kind of get big characters for our teams.

So, for example, in Rocket League I got Ghost, who is kind of a streamer and is up and coming [professionally], and in Street Fighter we picked up Dale, who I actually used to play League of Legends with years ago oddly enough.

It was a bit surprising to find out that he was really good in Street Fighter, and he was a bit of a character and quite well known.

The Roar: Most pundits didn’t predict any of your teams to feature in the playoffs, but obviously the CS:GO team did make it after a pretty crazy Week 5. What was that CS:GO tournament like for you and how much of a highlight was it to get into the knockout stage?

Marco: Yeah, so it was a pretty big highlight. Honestly the first week where we demolished Sydney Chiefs 16-2, was a bit of a shock, but I really think that it goes to show that any team that prepares enough can shock on a day and just take out a series, especially in the Elite Series format, as it’s a best of one.

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To qualify for the playoffs; yeah it was amazing. We consistently had to be mixing up our players, so I think over the course of the season we ended up using two of our draft players for the majority of the season. It was pretty tough, honestly. But I’m really proud of the guys and the effort they put in behind the scenes.

The Roar: Just cast your mind back a bit, obviously it’s a while ago now, to Week 5. You looked like you had been eliminated when you lost to Avant, but then made it because Brisbane came out of nowhere to beat Perth. What was that day like if you can remember?

Marco: It’s a funny story actually, so I remember explaining just before Week 5 to the team that there were two different outcomes that could come out in our favor, even if we had lost. We stood a chance, and I explained that to our team, but they must have forgotten or just been really upset with the result after losing, and kind of forgot it.

Rhen some of the players from, I think it was the Chiefs, had explained to us that we still had a chance to qualify and they ended up staying for the game cheering for Brisbane.

A few of our players were just watching the game and supporting the Deceptors – everyone was just full of different emotions. They were in shock, they were very happy, and it was just like, “Wow, this actually happened.”

The Roar: In the other competitions, obviously it was disappointing not to make playoffs in Rocket League or Street Fighter, but were there any highlights in those tournaments that you picked out?

Marco: I saw it in Rocket League because I work for a big esports team team, but we had a chance in pulling through because we actually were putting up good results early on and I thought that they were putting in a great effort week after week even though they weren’t getting the results that they wanted.

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But no matter the results they were getting, they were trying to put in more and more effort and I was seeing that. So I thought we had a chance in Rocket League. It was just sort of a shame that their practice didn’t really translate into game day.

The Roar: Given that you are a Sydney team, how much of wanting to represent the city of Sydney went into your decision making process when picking talent and picking characters?

Marco: Yeah so from the pool of players, my team was one of the last teams to pick players because were going up against rosters that had been established before I even got hired.

I had to really pick it up, because a lot of the teams that, just to save money, were getting Sydney players because the tournament wass obviously based in Sydney.

Instead of just picking up Sydney based players that perhaps weren’t on the same level, I tried to be in branding and kind of support the other Sydney teams so, as you can see in our socials, we were supporting Chiefs when we weren’t playing them or if they weren’t competing with us in certain placings.

So that was the main thing we tried to go for for that Sydney branding. “We hate Melbourne”, “Let’s go Chiefs and Roar.”

The Roar: What is the esports scene in Sydney like at the moment, and what do you think the next steps are? What could be improved?

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The Roar: I think, we’ve obviously heard IEM come two years in a row now, which has been absolutely massive – probably the biggest event in Australia. With Gfinity coming in there’ll be more consistency and a tournament for people to go in each week on the weekends and consistently support their team. So I think that’s great.

Moving forward I would like to see just more titles, things like Rainbow Six, Fortnite, PUBG, just all these different titles with bigger events. That’s what I want to see.

I just want to see bigger events, more people showing up to events. That’s how, essentially, we’ll get more events if people commit to actually showing up to events such as Gfinity and other competitions.

It’s one to have good online viewership, it’s another thing to have a crowd going. Because if you see overseas there’s a massive crowd for every single event, people are chanting and stuff like that, and that really speaks to me.

I have a sport background and I love when the fans really get behind their team rather than just typing away into a chat, it just brings it to a different level.

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