"No One Knows the Truth But Everyone Will Have an Opinion" — Hidon After The Loss Against MKOI
Photo Credit: Riot Games
The week could hardly have gone worse for Team Heretics. Sheo stepped down from the starting roster mid-split, replaced by Daglas from the academy. A 0-2 loss to MKOI leaves them with 0.1% odds of reaching playoffs — effectively out of the race. Hidon sat down with RFT.GG right after, and took a lot of responsibility for TH's bad season so far.
Game one was very passive. Game two showed more life at least in the early game. How are you feeling?
Not great. Losing is never nice, and it's been a rough week. For game one — I don't think we were fully aware of the importance of early game jungle in this meta. The game is faster than it used to be and we should have adapted and picked Pantheon on two. We tried to give Daglas some comfort picks but it didn't work out. For game two, the adaptation was to add more early power and change things around bot. But we should have reset after the Herald fight — we died on Herald, they took it, broke mid tower straight away, and our tempo was completely destroyed. There were some good showings though, and I'm happy with some things the boys showed. But after that Herald fight we just needed to insta-reset and we didn't.
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There were some leaks this week about what happened with Sheo. I know you probably can't tell the full story, but I want to hear your version.
No one knows the truth but everyone is going to have an opinion. I'm happy to tank the sh*t — it's part of my job.
Things go good, I look good. Things go bad, I look bad. It's my responsibility to shoulder whatever comes my way. But yeah, no one knows the truth. And everyone will have an opinion.
Do you think Sheo maybe lost motivation after two years at the bottom of the standings with TH?
I'm not going to comment on that too much. It's very easy for me to say the wrong thing here and there is no right answer. Just put this on me and whatever happens, happens.
How has Way's integration been going? I heard the communication was difficult because Ice had to translate in game.
Way is a really funny guy. Our scrim culture hasn't been the greatest — there are things we did wrong that we really have to reflect on as a staff in terms of setting the standard.
Losing a lot in scrims has got to him a bit. He comes from a winning team in MISA where they won everything, and the level is not the same in the LEC.
When you lose in scrims you can easily start questioning and second guessing things. It's the same when you're losing in official matches — when you lose everything, you don't have a shield to hold yourself up with.
We did some undisciplined things in terms of letting players get away with stuff they shouldn't in practice. We've made some adaptations from the staff side and we're going to have to think and reflect a lot going into Summer.
I do believe a lot of our systems are good, but they're not working right now. We just have to fine tune them and make adjustments.
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Isn't it going to be even harder now with four players coming straight from the ERLs to the LEC?
The good thing is that there's no real baggage. If we work really hard from the staff side, we can make progression — we basically start with a clean slate and build from there. Obviously when you have very experienced players, they come with a package, with their way of viewing things, and sometimes they're not very coachable. It's person to person. But of course the lack of experience will hurt us in critical moments. That's a reality.
Are you satisfied with the direction this project has taken since your arrival?
I knew coming into the organisation that it was going to take time. We have to make adjustments and we have to make mistakes. As long as they're good intentioned, hopefully we're moving forward.
Is there good intention in the team?
There's always good intention. We believe we're doing the right thing. Arkhe and I are dealing with some problems that we're solving as fast as we can.
I made some mistakes and we're paying the price for it. That's a reality.
Absolutely. I cannot run away from the responsibility, nor do I want to. It's where we are now and it's my responsibility. You're not coming into a team and just winning everything. I always want to create the illusion — when things are going right — that fans should believe in something. I don't want to go into playoffs and just get knocked out. I want people to believe something can happen, like in the LEC Versus. But yeah, I have to shoulder that responsibility. It's just the nature of my job.
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There are rumours of an ADC change next split. Do you genuinely believe this roster has what it takes to compete for Worlds — because even an ADC swap wouldn't make that much of a difference on its own, would it?
Changes are changes.
They're not the main reason why you make things happen. It's how you work as a team, your culture, your environment.
We made some big mistakes — I made big mistakes — and it has cost us in terms of the environment.
But we're going to work the whole Spring and Summer off-season to fix that. I'm not planning on taking a long break because I want to play for Worlds. I don't want to just come and exist. If I do everything in my power to make that happen and I tried my best, then at least I can go home happy.
You just told me you wouldn't make changes to perform better...
No I said that changes are not the reason why you perform better. You're seeing many teams — GIANTX is a good example — keeping the team together and doing quite well, considering the names maybe you would say. And as I said, I'm not going to comment on the jungle situation.
You're at 0.1% chance of making playoffs. How do you manage your players in this situation without letting them lose hope?
There's no point in giving up. Even if we're not in a position for playoffs, I'll still try to put in the work — because what we do now is also a building block for the future, regardless of what happens.
We use this time to work and get in a better position. The pressure is off, and that's actually part of why there was some life in game two for the first time in a while.
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That said — some of those things are really frustrating as a coach. Swaps, we've been working on it in scrims, we still get cut off by them. Same thing in game two — we've been talking about swapping too early, we swap too early anyway, and the game looks weird. You talk about it, you communicate about it, you still make the mistake, and you just end up a bit frustrated. But that's part of the job.
