LONDON Spitfire’s Overwatch League stage one playoff hopes are hanging by a thread after a disastrous loss to the Shanghai Dragons.
The Dragons, who did win a single match of the 40 they played in Season 1, beat Spitfire 3-2 thanks to some heroic defensive performances and some truly catastrophic errors by the London team.
Robert Paul with Blizzard Entertainment
The match was London’s season so far in caricature form, with some great plays interspersed with rank stupidity.
Spitfire cruised to an easy 2-0 win on first map Nepal, with the Dragons looking much more like the winless 2018 operation than the much-improved 2019 version.
King’s Row, the map that London won the inaugural season title on, showed that the Dragons really had improved though, with an utterly dominant performance led by Gamsu, a recent transfer from the Boston Uprising.
An equally solid performance from Spitfire, though, saw them take a 2-1 lead and pole position to secure the victory that would have catapulted them into playoff contention.
Robert Paul with Blizzard Entertainment
Then Route 66 happened.
London seemed to be holding very strong at the start, repeatedly destroying the Shanghai team as they attempted to reach the objective.
What they didn’t notice, however, was that they were only repeatedly destroying five of Shanghai’s six team members — the fifth had snuck behind the lines and was merrily sitting on the payload and keeping the objective moving towards the goal completely unhindered.
By the time they noticed the sneak it was far too late, and the shellshocked team just couldn’t pull themselves together.
The tiebreaker map went to a final point after the teams traded blows, and Spitfire even found themselves in the box seat having recovered their composure in the dying moments.
London looked to have wrapped it up as their progress ticked to 99 per cent on the final objective before being thrown off by Gamsu a second from victory.
Robert Paul with Blizzard Entertainment
A disastrous final fight saw Spitfire fail to regroup after being split up and picked off one-by-one, letting the Dragons in to record a famous victory.
At 3-3 after six of stage one’s seven matches Spitfire are not out of contention of the lucrative playoffs — but sitting at 11th place and needing a top-eight finish they have a mountain to climb.
A 4-0 victory over the Seoul Dynasty at 20.30 p.m. UK time next Saturday is almost essential, with other results needing to fall in their favour during the rest of the final weekend too.
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