PRX alecks: “Win or lose — my emotions are just relief or sorrow”

The train has come to a stop; Paper Rex’s miracle run has ended two wins shy of a Pacific title, though the team’s five consecutive wins were enough to earn them a place at Masters Toronto. Their elimination came at the hands of Rex Regum Qeon in a gruelling five-map series. We spoke to head coach Alexandre “alecks Sallé for an interview after the loss.

Hotspawn: First of all, what were your immediate thoughts to today’s loss to RRQ?

alecks: I think we should have closed it out. Not to knock on RRQ or anything. I think we had opportunities, we didn’t take them, so they deserve to win, but we probably should have done better in the rounds that we unfortunately fumbled. And I think we also ran out of gas on the last map.

I think there was a lot of emotional energy expended throughout our run. And when we finally- at the end of it- I mean, we’re very tired. I’m just happy that it’s over, actually.

How proud of the team are you to have turned things around and gone on that run at all?

I think they showed that they have the mental resilience to compete at the highest level. They also took care of each other very well. You know, as a coach, there’s nothing more I could ask for. I think they gave that all.

You’ve got the Asian Champions League next in a few days, is there a temptation to rotate players, or just generally try not to show too much?

I don’t think it’s so important to have VODs out or anything. We don’t have that much time to change anything anyway. We’re just going to go in and do our best. I think it’s good to be in China, we are quite well taken care of there. We wanna go there, have fun, meet some old friends, compete a little bit, see what we can do, explore Shanghai, take a break. Pretty much it. We have with EWC qualifiers as well as I understand, so a lot to do.

Is there a sense of relief to have qualified for Toronto, given that PRX’s run of attending global events had been broken earlier in the year?

For sure. 

Usually — win or lose — my emotions are just sorrow or relief. It’s not like I’m super happy or anything. For me, I feel that I have a very talented group of players and when we don’t make these kinds of events, we don’t make good runs and stuff, I feel like I let a lot of people down — the team, the organisation, the fans, you know. I tend to blame myself a lot.

But yeah, we made it. I am, for the moment, very pleased. It’s one of the hardest runs we’ve done, I think. And I think everyone is proud of us and we should be proud of ourselves.

In an interview with Pedro Romero, you mentioned that the team had now returned to its former identity, while Jinggg had said that the side has played not to lose. What do you think might’ve caused the slump at the start of the season?

The weight of expectation is actually heavy. So as much as we have expectations from fans and from a lot of people, I think our own expectations of ourselves are very, very, very, very great. And sometimes we don’t live up to the image in our own minds, and because of that, we try extra hard and sometimes that doesn’t actually lead to the results that we want.

Going back to the start of the season, firstly I think we told ourselves that we do not want to ever miss the Neon meta again, which is basically like an over-buffed agent that we couldn’t do anything about.

So when Tejo came out, I think we had seven days, and we had so many maps and we weren’t sure whether we should we should change everything to incorporate Tejo or not. So we only did it for Fracture. After that we lost and, sadly enough, we lost to Tejo. We just didn’t know how to play against Tejo on Pearl — against DFM, 13-1, and we sort of gave up in that game. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen us give up, so it was a little bit disappointing.

We forced ourselves to come back a little bit earlier, we took a very, very short break, came back to Korea, told ourselves we’re never going to miss this again. We put Tejo on everything, Waylay came out. It was like; “Oh look, let’s try and force, let’s try and make sure that we don’t miss this as well”. So we changed everything, played with Waylay/Tejo/Breach, did our absolute hardest to stuff people to roles that they weren’t comfortable. We sort of screwed up two games, and the third game we had PatMen switched in so that we could make ourselves more comfortable in our certain roles.

I think I read online, someone said sometimes it’s not really anyone’s fault, you know, you just have to have fresh perspectives. And it’s not really like anyone’s a bad player holding us down or anything. I think mindfreak was unfortunately the person that had to step back for a bit because we needed a fresh perspective.

I’m going in circles, but basically that’s what happened last season. You know, we reset and we changed to what we were comfortable with and we just said we’re going to try our best and here we are.

Do you think it could be helpful that you haven’t been reliant on playing Tejo, given that it’s been nuked out of the meta for the Toronto patch?

I don’t think it makes any difference. For example, if Tejo is in the meta, then all we need to do is learn how to play against Tejo, you know? But for all you know, maybe our current playstyle is actually good against people that play against Tejo. You could say that it is because we have played pretty well against teams that have Tejo, except for today.

I feel like we didn’t really lose any rounds because of post-plants, we actually got hammered by Jemkin and some silly mistakes rather than having Tejo, definitely for Pearl.

In Toronto, without Tejo, we’re going to have to learn how to play against different things. We’re going to have to play against double smokes. We’re going to have to play against Sentinels again. For example, people weren’t using Sentinels on Lotus, they’re playing double smokes, and that maybe is something that double Duelist comp can play better against because we can just dive in and there’s nothing to stop us. There will be a lot of changes. So I don’t think it gives us any huge advantage or anything.

I saw you and Ewok jokingly didn’t first bump before the game, a nod to the FrosT/termi drama. While it doesn’t seem to have been the cause of their issues, the main discourse online revolved around scrim sharing in the league. What were your thoughts on that debate?

What is that can of worms you have opened?

Frst of all, it probably happens. I have no concrete proof. My guess is it happens to some extent. The degree of scrim sharing is something people should be talking about. If a team is sharing another team’s VODs completely, and this is possible, then that is something that shouldn’t happen. That’s basically like putting a spy camera in the training room. I think that shouldn’t happen.

But you cannot stop, or rather it’s very hard to police some guy playing with his friend in another team and the guy’s like; “Oh, they run this comp, you know. They’re pretty good on this map. Don’t play that map”. You know, it’s very hard to police things that happen in private. So I think it matters to what degree this is happening. On my end, I hope to believe the best in people. I take my own precautions, and I don’t really want to accuse anyone of scrim sharing. I want to know that when I played the game, I lost because the other team is better.

With regards to FrosT and termi, I am friends with both guys, I think they probably need to hash it out somehow. And honestly, there is too many people getting involved and people are saying it’s about xenophobia, it’s gone out of hand. In the end, I think if they sit down and they spoke about it, I’m very sure they’ll be reasonable.