‘The Beast’ wins the 2019 Rocomamas Smashball Series

After over two months of competition, the 2019 Rocomamas Smashball Series champion has been crowned. The FIFA 20 tournament series took in qualifiers at 16 branches in Cape Town and Gauteng. It covered one Gauteng playoff, and two last chance qualifiers before the top players faced off in the finals at the Z-Fest event.

The finals should have featured 14 players in total. Four Gauteng players via the playoffs, six Cape Town players via the qualifiers and four players from the last chance qualifiers. However, even with their flights and accommodation covered by Rocomamas, three of the Gauteng players withdrew in the week leading up to finals. There are of course some questions to be asked around the reason for these withdrawals, but the show had to go on.

GROUPS

And go on it did. The 11 players competing were split between two groups. Completing the group in one of the top two spots secured a semifinal slot in the playoffs. Group A featured the only Gauteng qualifier to make the trip to Cape Town – Orlando Pirates Esports player Muhammad Fa’iz Mahomed. He managed to secure top spot in the group with Goliath Gaming’s Julio ‘The Beast’ Bianchi taking second place. In Group B, the recent Sandton City Gamers Expo champion Masoom Fakie from Bravado Gaming took first place with five wins out of five. Runner-up in the group was another Pirates player, Ryan Bastos.

PLAYOFFS

The final four faced off with a good crowd watching the action unfold. Semifinal one saw the two Pirates players competing against each other, while the second semifinal was a repeat of the Sandton City final.

Fa’iz inched out his Pirates teammate with a 3-2 win in the first semifinal. Unlike the Sandton City final, the second semifinal did not go the way of Masoom on this occasion. ‘The Beast’ took the match with a comfortable 3-0 win to set up a Pirates and Goliath Gaming final.

The final saw Julio prove just how he had earned his nickname, as he comprehensively beat the travelling player 6-0. The impressive victory saw Goliath’s player earn R6,000 in this tournament, taking his earnings in FIFA 20 in two weeks to R16,000.

FINAL STANDINGS

• 1st Place: Julio Bianchi [R6,000]
• 2nd Place: Fa’iz [R4,000]
• 3rd Place: Masoom Fakie [R2,000]
• 4th place: Ryan Bastos