Melbourne teams log on to world of eSports
IT’S not all just fun and games in the world of eSports — this is serious business. And a warehouse apartment in Collingwood is a hidden control centre.
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IT takes an army to get these professional athletes primed for performance. The backing of an owner, a coach, team manager, strength and conditioning expert, a dietitian and a mindfulness coach.
But these players don’t perform on a sporting field, track or court — they do it sitting in a chair in front of a computer screen.
Welcome to the world of eSports, where professional computer gamers, mostly aged 25 and under, compete for spectators. Often in packed stadiums worldwide.
It’s not a new thing in Melbourne, but this year has seen the emergence of the first professional teams, with three franchises competing in the Oceanic pro-league League of Legends.
The state government announced this month that Victoria would host the inaugural Melbourne eSports Open in September — the biggest eSport event in Australia.
Gerard Murphy, a founding director of leadership development consultancy Leading Teams, which now runs consulting business Performance by Design with AFL great Paul Roos, has etched out a successful international career creating and building culture at elite sporting clubs.
He has worked extensively throughout the AFL, implemented and facilitated a leadership program for the Geelong Football Club in its 2007 premiership year and has made an impact internationally with pro soccer clubs and the England Olympic team, rugby league and rugby union teams.
Now he’s building a team of his own — Order eSports, the first of its type in Melbourne.
Murphy was on a family holiday in the US in January last year when he read a newspaper article about a stadium full of kids playing eSports. He attended a conference in Australia nine months later and by chance ran into a guy who told him there was a team for sale.
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“I said to my wife, ‘I think I want to get into eSports’ and she thought I’d gone mad,” Murphy says. “I spent about four weeks doing my research and came to understand it was a lot, lot bigger than I initially thought.
“We discovered there were no teams in Melbourne and that blew me away, I just didn’t understand why Melbourne, the sporting capital of the world, didn’t have a team.”
So, Murphy bought a team out of Sydney, rebranded it and brought it to Melbourne. His meticulous research saw him land eSports expert Jake Taberi as his general manager and lure former Melbourne boy Simon Papamarkos home from Sydney to captain the team.
“I got permission to speak to Simon. We had a coffee and I asked him if he was interested in joining the team and said if he was, he could pick the four other members because I wanted to build a team that could challenge,’’ Murphy says. “We ended up with the five guys we wanted and they’re an excellent team.”
The players inked contracts, with similar conditions to that of AFL footballers, plus WorkCover and superannuation benefits.
Murphy’s son Josh helped design the brand and he called on meditation and mindfulness coach Tami Roos, wife of Paul, and contacts across the industry, including Western Bulldogs dietitian Claire Saundry, to provide expertise to the Order players for their maiden campaign.
Next, members of this new team needed a roof over their heads.
On Saturday mornings, Murphy and teenage son Reuben would travel from their home in Torquay to inspect rental properties. He eventually landed a trendy, three-storey warehouse apartment in Collingwood, fitted it out and transformed the top floor into a state-of-the-art training facility.
Team branding and posters listing key messages adorn the walls of the training hub with the words United, Organised, Disciplined and Honest. A whiteboard is full of notes outlining team strategy. Five desks are decked out with equipment to provide match simulation.
Order is divided into teams that compete in different competitions in the studio during the season. The grand final is played in front of a live crowd, as Melbourne eSports Open will be in September.
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
Disaster struck when internet access couldn’t be installed until three-quarters of the way through the team’s first half — known as a split — of the season.
Murphy describes the setback as diabolic.
Order is now competing in the second split of the season and competitiveness is the focus, says Murphy, who still flies to Adelaide each Monday to work with Port Adelaide Football Club. Order has moved to third spot on the ladder ahead of a showdown with fellow Melbourne outfit Mammoth today.
“The two things for me that were really important were to have competitive teams and a strong brand,” he says. “The athletes built the brand and created the name and look and feel of the organisation. We really wanted them to own that.
“Creating culture is what I love and that’s what attracted me to it and it hasn’t disappointed. It’s been amazing.
“People here don’t really understand eSports yet because it’s brand new, but they will. It will be huge.”
Murphy wants a stand-alone organisation not affiliated with an AFL or NRL club and world domination is the end goal.
“We’d love Order to be an internationally recognised eSports brand, like Cloud 9 or some of the huge international gaming organisations that are household names, perhaps not here yet but they will be soon,” he says.
PAPAMARKOS took his career to a new level joining Order, after five years with a team in Sydney.
“It was fun trying to create a team together and having that added ownership and responsibility,” he says. “Even though Gerard was new to eSports, he has an incredible vision and is at the top of his field.
“I picked people who had a reputation on other teams for doing exceptionally well or were at the forefront of their team. I brought a teammate across with me, two from another team and one from another.
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“I didn’t realise how much work it would be. Captaincy on the other team wasn’t a role where I had to do a lot, but with Order I’m 24 and everyone else is 20 and younger.”
The players proudly sport nicknames. Papamarkos is Swiffer, Samuel Broadley is called Spookz, Victor Huang goes by FBI, Jake Sharwood is known as Rogue and James Shute is Tally. Artwork of each player hangs above their desk. Living together has added a whole new dynamic to the team.
“For most of us, it’s our first time living out of home,’’ Papamarkos says. “Living together creates a level of professionalism which means we can focus on the here and now and that way we get the most out of every training session, which we’ve seen translate into performance.
“But we also need to be able to separate work from home. If you’re frustrated someone left out a dirty plate, it was initially hard not to bring that into the work space and that can affect the team.”
Order plays on weekends, in Sydney, then starts its week of training with a game review.
“Monday to Friday we’re out of bed at 9, upstairs at 9.30 and review the weekend until around 11am. We then practise until 2pm, take an hour break then train until 6.30.
“You’re expected to maintain your individual training outside of that, so that’s another two to three hours each night. We had a nutritionist come in and show us how to prepare healthy meals which will sustain our concentration and energy for long periods of time.
“Burnout is a very real thing that has to be managed closely. Throughout my tenure playing, I’ve burnt out a couple of times and for me it was when I dedicated too much time and didn’t have any balance.
“There’s also been a lot of examples of players around the world who have had to retire prematurely through injury, so it’s important to keep up stretching exercises.”
ACROSS town at Tullamarine, Essendon Football Club is the second AFL club, behind the Adelaide Crows, to acquire an eSports licence.
The Bombers’ head of commercial partnerships and eSports, Tyler Emsden, says once the club did its due diligence, making the move into gaming was a no-brainer.
“The Essendon Football Club has long been a leader in innovation and diversity,” he says. “It’s something the great (former coach) Kevin Sheedy started 25 years ago, which led to Anzac Day and the Dreamtime and Country games, taking the club nationally and making sure everyone knows the Essendon brand and this is an extension of that.
“Having an eSports team gives us an opportunity to innovate and diversify in a new space where a lot of people are playing and a lot of people that traditional sport doesn’t speak to very well but eSports does really well.”
Nathan Matthews-Mallia, 23, runs the eSports team at the Bombers. He was an owner of the Abyss organisation, which Essendon purchased, and stayed on to run it out of the club’s state-of-the-art facility.
Growing up, Matthews-Mallia was a fanatical Hawthorn supporter, but after trying his hand at eSports as a player five years ago, he changed focus.
“It’s definitely a lot harder than people think, it’s not just people playing video games, it takes quite a lot of skill,’’ Matthews-Mallia says.
“I thought, ‘I’m not good enough to play, so I’ll make my own team’.
“At the time, eSports was still in its infancy in Australia, and if you had have asked me where it was going in the next four years, there’s no way I would’ve thought I’d be working for the Essendon Football Club.
“For me, it was a passion project. I loved managing people and that was the closest way I could be part of the whole experience. Sponsors and prizemoney started coming in and it became a big business.”
Then, last year the Bombers came knocking.
“At the time, we weren’t exactly sure where it would go, but when we got official confirmation and the headlines started coming, I was absolutely thrilled.
“My mum was like, ‘My son is now working for Essendon’ and could see it in real terms. It was a real tangible thing she could explain to her friends and it gave me a bit of cred.”
Once the deal was the done and the roster of five players complete, the players moved to Melbourne. The club puts the team and Matthews-Mallia up in a house in Parkville and they travel to the club together each morning.
“We’ve got our own area called the Flight Deck, where we have our computers and the players train,’’ Matthews-Mallia says.
“We also have access to the strength and conditioning coach Justin Crow, who does exercises and routines with the players because, believe it or not, injury is a real risk, especially career-ending wrist injuries. We also have access to neuroscientists, which helps get the extra 5-10 per cent out of the athletes.”
But with increased professionalism comes added pressure.
“It was a big transition for our players, a lot of pressure externally, not internally from the club, but from having no facilities to world-class facilities meant players felt pressure to succeed,’’ Matthews-Mallia says.
“We had recruits from Finland and France, so they had to deal with new culture, English as a second language then the Essendon deal, which added a lot of pressure. But after completing the first split, we are looking for improvement in the second.”
The team shares the same name, branding and logo as the Essendon footballers and Matthews-Mallia says it’s a united club.
“We did our season launch in January and a few of the AFL guys, Cale Hooker, Orazio Fantasia and Tom Bellchambers, came and played some games against our players and there was a huge skill discrepancy, like if we tried playing footy,” he says.
“At the club, the footballers will come past and see how we’re going and, to their credit, have really welcomed us.
“One of our players was a born-and-bred Essendon fan who grew up wanting to play footy for the club and is now representing the Bombers in a different game and that’s pretty cool.”
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