The Chavs, a promising top team in Europe and recent winners of the XTRA Cup, have brought on Kirby as their new coach.

Kirby has previously worked as a coach with Pale Golden Rod, the team who surprised viewers with an immediate 2-0 upset of eUnited in their first match since returning from Korea. He is also known for producing interviews and analytical videos, breaking down concepts or specific games, on his YouTube channel.

We recently profiled The Chavs, talking to their tank ChrisTFer after their dominant LAN victory at XTRA Cup. Since then, the team has competed in two notable tournaments: they topped their group in the StriveWire Monthly Brawl, beating b0nkers and SOLAR, before losing a tight quarterfinals game to eventual champions eUnited; they then competed in the North American tournament Enter The Arena, taking down Ronin and Evolve before losing to Hammers Esports.

When asked about his motivation for coaching and his responsibilities within The Chavs, Kirby said:

Coaching is something I've been doing for quite some time now. In Overwatch, it's only been a few months, but before that were 7 years of coaching a local sports team. In both cases (American Football and now OW), it started simply because of my interest for those games as a player, and more specifically their technical and strategic aspects. I'm a pretty competitive person but I'm well aware of my limitations as a player, so coaching is just my way of participating in a competitive project.

Overall, a coach's job is to identify problems and try to fix them, in all aspects of the team & game: how to practice; how to communicate ingame; how to think and exchange ideas outside of the game; etc.

I wouldn't say I'm fully in control of everything yet, as it's only been a few weeks since I've started working with The Chavs, but they've responded really well to everything we've put in place thus far.

I don't think anyone who is simply an analytical guide is really a coach. For whatever reason, it seems that the line between analyst and coach is unclear for a lot of people in esports. IMO those are 2 different roles, both useful, but different in nature nonetheless.

The Chavs are a team on the cusp of being recognised as a tier-one talent in Europe, but so far have not been able to demonstrate their ability by beating teams such as NiP, Misfits, and eUnited. “To be honest, I think we already are a Tier1 team in EU,” replied Kirby when asked about the level of The Chavs, “we unfortunately haven’t had many opportunities to prove it. Our focus right now is on showing everyone that we do belong in the conversation.”

“After that, Overwatch is a game that constantly evolves based on the patch changes. So in order to climb and stay at the top,” he continued, “it requires a lot of experimentation and adaptation to find what works. Part of my role is to help in that process.”

Before Kirby joined The Chavs as coach, he interviewed their tank ChrisTFer at the XTRA Cup. During the interview ChrisTFer revealed that the team, despite not being signed to an organisation, had received financial backing to send them to the LAN. The Chavs have not yet announced a partnership with any organisation, and remain the best unsigned team in Europe currently.

The Chavs roster is now:

  • Mads "Fischer" Jehg (DPS)
  • Piotr "Sev" Hutyra (Flex)
  • Erik "Snizzlenose" Hedåker (Flex)
  • Christopher "ChrisTFer" Graham (Tank)
  • Jonas "Shazardous" Suovaara (Support)
  • Tamás "tomzeY" Bordás (Support)
  • Yann "Kirby" Luu (Coach)