Statement

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Digtal Warfare was approached back on March 22nd by Ashley: - Facebook conversation saved Words highlight below are Ashley own writing none edited.


Ashley
basically i am manager of a team that will compete next split in ESL UK Premiership, I am trialling members still and currently looking for an org to back with sponsors and a budget to salary players on, the palyers im trialling are all formerly ESL UK players and all well known in the scene also aswell as being very talented players, i was just wondering what the scope is that the org can offer teams


what is it the org can offer us in terms of backing??? because with the players and staff we have there is not doubt we will go to lan finals so org exposure would be huge not to mention i work in marketing so i can make you stand out a lot Lucendi Rubix its just a case of having the right offer from yourselves

Ashley
I have managed smaller teams around mid high dia and actualyl palyed myself, but nothing to this stature, however i'm very familliar with a lot of the people in the UK Scene so my contacts are prtty endless in terms of players and scrim aprtners

For a starting ORG which just got setup in January this started to sound appealing. I mean who wouldn’t show interest in this as your starting out. Sales pitch at the end of the day.

Moving forward slightly on this - names where mentioned for reference - i will not disclose who and what team but let’s just say good reference. I was provided with bad feedback at which point I lost interest but I allowed Ashley to carry on with his sales pitch.
Ashley
the palyers im running right now are all top 2 in their respective roles in thsi scene in my opinion and in my coaches opinion
the coach himself has been in NACS and has been pro for around 7 years and has a huge knowledge and contact base in the scene, way more than i have and can contribute a lot
coaching wise he has already started developing the team, in fact we have had more and more difficult scrims and we have still had no test against us, we have even played panathenikos and 2-0d them pre 20 in both games
what we are looking for from you is backing in terms of sponsors, jerseys and what not should we make finals and then the contracts and salaries
now there are obviously different levels of players as individuals on the team
but me and reece believe that we are to treat each equally to avoid friction and any real saltyness between teammates
so we would put them all on the same salary to avoid anyody clashing with us or eachotehr



Ashley
to do that we would look to start them at £100 a month which goes on all 5 members of the team, the coach would go on £250 as that is what he was at on his last team and i wish to match that to keep him here
so a month i would look at a budget of around £800 a month
£250 for the coach and £500 for the palyers and then £50 to be ste aside by youreslves to go towards LAN Expenses


To which my response was very much - 
I will talk this over jakey and let you know whats going on
Ashley
That's great, i'd also liek to chat about LAN coverage too

Jake
Ok I just spoke with Nathan, everything you're wanting to do is fantastic and what you can offer us sounds great, but Digital Warfare really can't afford to pay wages as such right now and afford to bring them all to lan. I just had to pay for my team to come. Though we probably are turning something big down we can't afford you guys just yet

I was mid game by this point as I lost interest and Jake provided him with my feedback. Sorry but I actually found my game in gold to be more important than weighing up my options.

- Thank you Jake - 
Declined offer. If you look at the costings broken down from hotels + transport + rentals + tickets + Player jerseys & extra help they might need, including food and drinks as well why not they will want this as well. £3.000 within one month as the event was going to start within early April..... 
Of course if I had more time to shop around for deals maybe lower costings but that close to the event and time to prepare no not a chance.
Within a few days his name had changed on twitter to Cog-slip. I am starting to understand the word Slip now from all of this "slippery by name" 
Moving forwards in time. Insomnia event:
Next up is Digwar... now the Digwar incident is a long story... But basically what happened was I coached their second team a little at i60. At first I really enjoyed it, again I don't really have a bad word personally to any of them, but I lost interest since I felt like I wasn't really being listened to.

Ashley somehow managed to get his way into the event without even having a BYOC ticket - not sure how or why as his team was not even due to take part. He made himself known to me by asking to coach the main team "Shadow" at which point it was a flat no. This team already had a paid for coach assigned to them for the period of time they was going to be playing. 

He latched onto the second team "Fire" after he saw they had no coach. He insisted on being there coach for the tournament and he would help them progress however the team did not want him around and choose to really ignore his presence hence why he feels they did not listen to him.... However with that said he still insisted on taking one of my players jerseys and walking around with it the entire event taking selfies and tweets with it - your with cognate and your advertising another team for free is questionable but thank you for the free publicity on this one. 


Coming into the finals on stage at i60 with the main team, I had built a good relationship with their players and actually knew one of them prior to this, and I felt since they had no coach I could benefit them. Several times they said: "Yeah that's awesome thanks etc."

And they never gave me any real opportunity. I felt pretty disrespected in that regard when I see Jake (Digital Warfare manager) on stage with them in what seemed to be him trying to make himself look good.
After discovering he was not needed for the other team he stuck around for when the "Shadow" team made it to the stage who lost to ENC on their first game, he demanded to go up on stage and help coach them ready for their 2nd game while "Jakey" their team manager was reviewing stats and footage from the game. I approached Jakey on stage and informed him how pushy he is being towards helping you and that I am going to say no before he asks you directly. This was the end of that discussion he sat back down and persisted to tweet and selfie.

None of my players on "Shadow" knew who you are and the purpose of you being there, there was no relationship made or started with any of them. You attempted to create one with my lower bracket team and failed to do so. 
After the finals I consolidated one of the players because the owner kind of seemed like he was mothering and almost patronising towards the end - and eventually cheered the player up.
Congratulating my team on their achievement for how they did regardless for loosing is not mothering or patronizing them, if you feel I needed to scream at them for loosing then please try that yourself. It will achieve nothing then people leaving as you will be known as "that guy" who is too toxic to work with, or just achieving the reputation right now that you have managed to land yourself in.
Then before going home, I spoke to another player and asked for his plans after this, and if he's contracted or open to offers. He said he wasn't contracted and down to speak, so I followed up on it.
After that, I kind of got a lot of hate from them and they went on to call me a snake... Now I don't know if others agree, but from my point of view if you do not contract your players they along with other teams have every right to speak to the player and make them an offer.
So I cannot stress this enough to new orgs, teams or managers, but CONTRACT YOUR DAMN PLAYERS. It is literally impossible for them to get 'poached'.
Ashley managed to get himself banned from our team speak server within the first few moments of talking to the co-owner my brother, about how he wanted to sack off all the management replace it with new ones and update the roaster on both teams and take a salary for with the totals again working out to be 3k and this was just based off the fact he was looking at my “gold-plat” team?. Now I was in the middle of packing up to go home at this point so I was informed when I got home what had happened, I do not understand how or why anyone would do that unless they are looking to just steal money for something even they know would just not work and this is why he is banned from our servers. 
After this happened he approached community members and my lower bracket team to offer them positions for Cog…… I just know they declined him very quickly. At this point he managed to secure himself the name "snake" for well-being slippery - I personally never heard from him as he removed me but I was informed daily on how he wanted everyone of my members for another team he was working on... 


In terms of Contracts - Yes they were all free souls, they could be approached by anyone and freely talk with whoever they wished. We in fact pushed them to keep their options open, as how well they did opens doors. One player was already signed with another team ready for after the event and we still have a great relationship with him. However they just did not want you or your reputation in their lives hence the reason they had to be direct with you as you struggle to understand the words – no.

Closing statement

Nerd released a statement last night on the matter which I suggest everyone reads. This clearly highlights key points from the matter, Good read. However I won’t let the matter go while he is still allowed to work with teams he will cause nothing but childish drama and rifts between teams for no reason.
We at Digital Warfare wish “Nerd” all the best in the upcoming tournament for UK masters - please feel free to contact us anytime to talk.

We also at Digital Warfare would like to wish Ashley the very best going forwards with his career choices in life they might not be with us but we are sure they will fit well within certain areas of the business world,


Nathan Connolly

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