Friday

I and Fenda arrived at the venue at around 2:20pm to find two truckloads of ESL Pro Series equipment, but we did not panic as the team were present and already sorting the mass of equipment out. I then saw a tired James Harding and Joe Miller from the 13 or so hour trip from head office in Cologne, Germany. By this team I bumped into Soodi who was sitting down in the reception area, but something did not look right. Soodi then explained that he sprained his foot and looked to be in a lot of pain. After making sure Soodi was fine I then said my hellos to everyone and then I and Fenda headed off to Gamerbase, which was about a five minute walk from the Congress Centre.

We had arranged to drop off some of our event flyers at Gamerbase, which entitled free entry to the event on Saturday. I was really impressed with the layout and setup Gamerbase London had, but one issue we noticed right away was how hot the shop got and it was only half full! Once we did what we had to do in Gamerbase it was setup time at the Congress Centre, we had to wait until 5:15pm before we could actually start to move the hundreds of boxes into the event hall. We had a little wait around, and suddenly Four Kings turned up saying hello to us all. We had a little chat but then the lovely Congress lady informed us that we are now free to begin our setup and to wish us the best of luck with it as she was heading off home, by this time only Fenda, myself and Nico who was the event project manager was at the event as everyone else went back to the hotel to catch up on a few well earned hours of sleep. An hour or so later the three of us managed to get quite a bit of the setup gear in the hall (Lower Ground Floor) and then the whole team turned up and we were in full swing.


The trucks and Pro Series promotion banners

It has got to 12:00 o’clock and setup was still underway with the tournament admins checking all the computers that Counter-Strike: Source and Call of Duty 4 are working correctly. I and Flabbert then headed off to find out hotel for the night where I had planned to do some final press work for tomorrow. We checked in, dropped our bags off and rushed to find somewhere open to get well needed food. We walked in the direction of Kings Cross and found a burger king what had a amazingly long waiting line, we knew at this time nothing else would not be open so we waited for about 20mins and finally got our refreshments. We decided that as we both had stuff to prep for tomorrow and was so tired it would be a good idea to walk back and eat at the same time, so we did so and got back to the hotel around about 12:30 o’clock. I then went to my room to sort some last minute work and headed to bed.


The stage

Saturday

Why on earth would you design a bathroom to have an open floor plan and when you have a shower it goes all over the floor and almost into your bedroom area

I woke up around 7:00am, had a shower but I just could not work out the hotels shower layout. Why on earth would you design a bathroom to have an open floor plan and when you have a shower it goes all over the floor and almost into your bedroom area. After that shocking surprise I headed off to breakfast with Flabbert and Shazz. As I’m not a huge breakfast guy I only went for a cup of tea to wake me up., around 7:30 we headed off to the Congress Centre to start today’s proceedings

I arrived at the venue at 08:10am and the work started. James Harding and I rushed off to Sainsbury’s to buy eight big bottles of water for the strength test later on today, but we was rushed? No we was not, we thought it would be a good idea to test the competition concept while we were in the shop. So it was a battle against me and James, who would you expect to win? Well if I say I did would you believe me? No..... I thought not, after 30seconds or so both me and James were turning red and could not stop laughing and yes James did win, but I claim it was luck!!

"yeah you should ask us whats it for, in case considering a water overdoes" - James Harding

We then headed off to pay for the goods when the cashier gave us a strange look and said "That's a lot of water", to which James replied "yeah you should ask us whats it for, in case considering a water overdoes"

After the laughs we went back to the venue. The lovely James Harding asked for my help on his prep when we got back and as all my work was done until the press got here I was more than happy to help James out. Swiftly after I said yes he reviled what we had to do. Cut up the Green and Orange cards up in squares with him for the guess the result competition James was running on stage. This was hard work believe it or not; the card was quite thick haha.


Me going to stab James Harding

-- Pack Down --

Around 9:00pm we were starting to pack down and get everything in the trucks as they had to leave as soon as possible. The pack down seemed to really go faster than the setup; I guess that was due to the waiting we had to do to get into the hall on Friday. By 11:30pm most of the equipment was away and the techis were dealing with the cables and network gear. So TheRogue, Soodi, crtmN, Shazz, Camillie and me went off to find a fish and chips shop.

A bucket full of water out of nowhere fell directly onto Soodi, which made us laugh for about an hour

Why fish and chips? Well TheRogue had a craving for them so we went with that idea. After walking for 40minutes or so we went past a few restaurants but our mission was to find fish and chips! Remember that Soodi had a really painful foot so had to walk at a slower pace. As we saw our hotel getting nearer Soodi who was at the back shouted “Antony, Antony, Antony” and then a bucket full of water out of nowhere fell directly onto Soodi, which made us laugh for about an hour. We then decided to drop our bags off at the hotel and seek advice on what direction to go.

The advice we got was to go in the direction of Kings Cross and that is what we did as we wanted fish and chips! The longer we walked the more hungry we all were. We approached a Pizza Express and we thought we would ask if they were still serving food, I went into the shop and asked the lovely three girls and got a rude reply “It is late, no we are not!” So we carried on and found McDonald’s, as soon as we went to open the door the member of staff locked it and said we are shut.

But just around the corner TheRogue spotted a Turkish Fish and Chips and Kebab shop, we was all so pleased we could eat at last. After having great fish and chips we all went back to the hotel bar were we had a few and around 2:00am we headed to bed.


The ESL UK models

All in all, it was a great event for us and we would like to thank everyone who turned up and supported ESL UK. I leave you with a photo of our lovely ESL UK models who did a great job at the event. We cant wait for Season II so stay tuned for further announcements.