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We chatted with Robby "bLacKpoisoN" Da Loca of Bravado at ESWC 2016.

The ?? ??? ??South Africans lost their first match to LDLC but bounced back to avoid elimination against Overcome. Before they play against LDLC again, we caught up with Robby "bLacKpoisoN" Da Loca to talk about his team, the South African scene and tomorrow’s critical decider match.

How did you prepare for this event? Did you bootcamp and specifically prepare for this tournament?
This Tuesday and Wednesday we bootcamped at LDLC which is really close to the venue of ESWC. We managed to play around 10-12 games over the past two days. We sat down and went over the possible scenarios. In South Africa, we usually played LANs to stay in form. We qualified for this event a few months ago so we've been preparing ourselves in other tournaments.
Your team qualified for WESG Global Finals after coming in second at the Middle East & Africa Regional Finals. What are your thoughts on the regional finals and global finals?
In the regional final, we lost to Space Soldiers. They even said themselves that the score didn't reflect the whole story. Some of our players were a bit nervous, communication wasn't that good. Also, I think because we had already qualified for the Global Finals by reaching the grand final, the motivation wasn't as strong as we usually want it to be.

Bravado will play against LDLC tomorrow

Here at ESWC, you lost your opening match to LDLC. What went wrong in that one?
Individual mistakes cost us the first match. There were slight communication issues and as it was the first game of the day, we were slowly getting into it and warming up. Overall, they played well and although we lost a lot of duels, we tried. We're now looking forward to the best-of-three decider.
You passed Overcome quite comfortably in the best-of-three elimination match. Did this win motivate you guys?
After winning that game convincingly, we felt really comfortable. Communication is now looking good and everyone's pumped up. We did know that they were the underdogs so our confidince and momentum was on point.
How do you feel about the upcoming decider match at ESWC against LDLC?
What we did over the past week was that we looked at the HLTV statistics of our opponents in practice matches. Although the practice games doesn't reveal who the better team is, we took basic lessons from those games. So when we play now against LDLC in a best-of-three rather than a best-of-one we know we can beat them. We’re going to try to keep up the communication and momentum throughout the whole series unlike the first game we played against them.
What is your expectation from ESWC? What do you want to achieve here?
I won't give a specific target but I think we can perform really well in this tournament. If everyone on our team is motivated and we're all warmed up, I think we can beat LDLC.
You won the biggest LAN in South Africa—Evetech Champions League—and proved once again that you are the best team in the region. How did you feel after the victory?
Winning a South African tournament isn't as exciting as winning an international one because South Africa is still improving by the day. But winning the tournament felt good, our communication was good and we all played good.
Before we finish off, can you tell us what the biggest challange in the South African scene is? Is it the computers, ping or anything else?
We keep making up these excuses like "We're too far from the international scene, we need to go overseas and do this and that to improve." I think it's a mental block, if we practise as hard as the other teams, we can match up with them. The scene doesn't have a ton of players but we’re growing. Recently, we had a tournament with over 150 teams which is actually pretty good. We aim to get international exposure and upset good teams in these tournaments.
Anything you want to add before we end the interview?
Thank you to all the South African fans who are supporting us and if there are international fans supporting us, thank you very much.