RENEGADES CLINCH FINAL IEM KATOWICE BERTH

Renegades conquered the IEM Katowice 2020 Oceania Closed Qualifier going through the upper bracket and winning the final against ex-Genuine to secure a spot at the $500,000 event in Poland.

Renegades made their first online qualifier count after bringing on Jordan “Hatz” Bajic, the former ORDER player who has taken over Ollie “DickStacy” Tierney’s spot on the roster. They did so by beating Airborne, Paradox and the aforementioned ORDER in the upper bracket on their way to the grand final.

ex-Genuine on the other hand lost their first upper bracket match to ORDER and had to claw their way back through the lower bracket, taking revenge on Ricardo “Rickeh” Mulholland, Karlo “USTILO” Pivac and company in the lower bracket final to face Renegades in the qualifier’s final match.

The grand final kicked off on ex-Genuine’s map pick, Train. The underdogs, who started a map down due to coming from the lower bracket, were in control since the beginning, winning 9-6 as Terrorists before switching sides. Despite almost throwing a 15-8 lead, letting Renegades bring it all the way to the thirtieth round, ex-Genuine were able to close map one out and even the series, 1-1.

Renegades were sluggish on the defending side of Dust2, giving up the first five rounds on the map, and although they went on to tie it back up, 5-5, spearheaded by Joshua “INS” Potter, they were unable to dominate the half as they ended up by only one, 8-7. Four kills by Jordan “SkulL” Newland tied it up in the second pistol round, but it would not suffice as Renegades kept the pressure on the attack once the economies evened out and took the map 16-12.

Renegades finally threw their weight around on the third map, Inferno. Starting on the CT side, they won the pistol round and took a 6-0 advantage before Chris “Jinxx” Moseley and Daryl “Mayker” May were able to put one on the board for ex-Genuine. Fighting their way back and with 5-7 on the board, Tom “apocdud” Henry took down three players in a 2vs4 afterplant situation to keep the side close, 7-8. Despite ex-Genuine putting up a bit of a fight on the CT side, it was Renegades who ground down their rivals in a 16-12 map to book their ticket to Katowice.

Source : hltv.org