Owen “smooya” Butterfield is a 20-year-old British professional CSGO AWP player. He was benched by the team he plays for, BIG, which made the opportunity for him to be loaned out to Renegades.
In the first stage of ESL Pro League Americas, smooya will be playing for the team he was loaned to. The reason for this is that the team’s original AWPer, Sean “Gratisfaction” Kaiwai, will not be able to attend the event due to problems with visa.
Smooya was benched by BIG all the way back in February. When he was interviewed, he admitted that he isn’t happy with the current state of the team. He isn’t enjoying himself anymore and that influences him rather hard, as he thinks he stopped improving in his role, too.
The visa situation is not great news for team Renegades at all. Gratisfaction is a very influential player, particularly after managing to reach the semi-finals at StarSeries i-League Season 7. Not only this, but the team’s performance generally relies heavily on mutual organization and good knowledge of your teammates’ moves. Someone stepping in two minutes to midnight makes a whole lot of new issues.
Gratisfaction is with his team from October 2018, after changing over from Grayhound. With his new team, he averaged a 1.01 LAN rating and reached the playoffs at every big event they attended this year.
Renegades’ roster in the event will be:
Justin “jks” Savage
Aaron “AZR” Ward
Jay “Liazz” Tregillgas
Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad
Owen “smooya” Butterfield
As Smooya loaned to Renegades was an alternative solution, we can only speculate what will happen on the event. We wish the best of luck for the team, and better luck next time with the papers and bureaucracy!
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