It was another early exit for Team Secret as it fell to Japan’s Onside Gaming, 0-2, in the VCT Pacific Stage 2 Play-ins. The team thus ended up at the bottom of the standings once again with a 13th-16th-place finish.
The revamped squad entered the second half of the Valorant esports season with high hopes after retaining Filipino standouts Kelly “kellyS” Sedillo and Jhian “Zeus” Vega, while adding Indonesian player Jonathan “natz” Adiputra and Singaporean Tidus “STYRON” Goh under new head coach Peter “Spin” Bradford.
The squad scored a breakthrough victory by stunning South Korea’s KRX and appeared to be on the rise. The momentum could not be sustained, however, as the team suffered back-to-back-to-back losses to T1, Paper Rex and DFM to fall into the play-ins in its bid to reach the Stage 2 playoffs.
Opening its play-in campaign, Team Secret showed signs of life as it swept Xipto Esports, 2-0, but was once again sent to the lower bracket, this time by South Korea’s Nongshim RedForce.
With tournament life on the line, Team Secret could not afford any mistakes against Onside Gaming. The team, however, failed to capitalize on its map pick of Ascent and, although Split went down to the wire, it was Onside Gaming that delivered the final blow to another disappointing season for Team Secret.
After the loss, Bradford admitted that taking over the roster midway through the season and implementing major changes were always going to be a difficult task.
“I’ll be honest, when I took the job, I knew it was going to be difficult. You’re making sweeping changes to the structure of the team deep into the season. It’s never going to be easy to do that,” said Bradford in the post-match press conference.
Despite arriving with optimism, the Team Secret coach revealed that mentality issues within the squad proved to be one of the biggest obstacles throughout the campaign.
“There’s been a lot of mentality issues throughout the whole organization, to be honest. There’s been an attitude of give up and go next. I’ve mentioned this before in interviews and I’ve been battling against that since the beginning,” said Bradford.
The British coach believed the team’s repeated setbacks only reinforced a lack of confidence within the roster.
“I honestly believe that as a five, as a six, me included, there just wasn’t enough belief that we could actually do this. As soon as we started being faced with some evidence that, ‘oh no, we actually suck,’ the heads drop and we give up,” said Bradford.
He stressed that Team Secret’s shortcomings were not due to a lack of firepower, pointing to the performances of his players throughout the season.
“Look at Zeus. The guy’s unbelievable. We played against Nongshim, he drops like 30 frags and we can’t close out a game. It’s just sad,” said Bradford.
“Every player in our team is capable of doing those things. It’s just the fundamental team play that’s lacking,” he added.
The remaining Filipinos in the tournament – Adrian “invy” Reyes of Paper Rex and Global Esports teammates Xavier “xavi8k” Juan and Patrick “PatMen” Mendoza – await their opponents after qualifying directly for the playoffs, which begin on August 26.