Royal Never Give Up Poppy: “We are more familiar with Iceland”

Last Updated on: 14th October 2021, 06:55 pm

Coming off of their MSI win, Royal Never Give Up has looked to continue their winning streak at international competition. One of the people helping RNG with their efforts is their assistant coach Poppy, also known as Chang Po-Hao.

Formerly known as Exciting as a player for teams such as Heat Wave and Team Afro from the League of Legends Master Series, a league that was replaced by the Pacific Championship Series. He became a coach after his playing days in March of 2018 and joined RNG as their assistant coach as of December 2020.

After their win against Fnatic on the second day of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship Group Stage, I had the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions about how the team performed, confidence after winning their last international competition, and the meta that we have seen so far at Worlds this year.

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That was a back and forth game with Fnatic, where they didn’t seem to want to lie down but RNG always seemed to fight back, what was it like to watch that game from the sideline?

I really hold the notion for our players that maybe we can have an even better performance in this matchup because we made some mistakes that maybe we can avoid. I was really on a roller coaster when I was watching the game.

This is the second international appearance for RNG after winning MSI, has that win given the team more confidence coming into this tournament?

Definitely, I would say yes. I think compared to the other teams, we are more familiar with the Iceland environment, as well as the food and everything else. Except for the in-game content, we are more familiar with the out-of-game content.

Xiaohu has a unique champion pool compared to the other top laners at Worlds, does this give a draft advantage to RNG?

Yeah, definitely. As everyone knows, because Xiaohu has his own champion pool, some mid champions can also be played. This allows for some unique situations that happen for Xiaohu.

Has the priority on Yuumi, a champion that was barely seen in Play-Ins, been a surprise to you?

I don’t think so, because in all of the scrims we have played, maybe we have seen those situations already.

READ MORE: 2021 League of Legends World Championship Day 8 recap

Thank you again to Royal Never Give Up and their assistant coach Poppy for giving the time to answer some of my questions. Royal Never Give Up plays again on Sunday, October 14th, as they play their second-round robin, and make their attempt to make it out of the Group Stage. Their first game is at 5 AM PST/8 AM EST/ 1 PM BST and can be watched at LoLEsports.com.