After a drawn-out loss to Cloud9 in the third week of the NA LCS, Clutch Gaming's Jungler LirA sat and talked with Esports Heaven about the weekend, who he wishes he could play, improving for the future, working on following his team, and earning the respect of his fans.

Editor's Note: Due to quality, this interview was transcribed from audio to text.

This interview was conducted last Sunday directly after their game against Cloud9.

Albert: Hi guys, this is Albert from EsportsHeaven here with Clutch Gaming’s Jungler, LirA and Toby Kwon, the general manager, to help translate. You had a bit of an up and down game today. You were staying in the game against them, peeling and whatnot, but it did come down to some late game teamfighting where eventually Cloud9 won out. What do you think you could have done better as a team this game in order to win?

LirA: For the early game, I died really early and at the time it felt like our team lost a lot of tempo off that. Obviously the mistakes happen during the real on-stage game. I should have focused more on the early game and how to snowball more off the early game, not doing mistakes or anything. For matchups next week, I will do more work and make sure no mistakes are done early and try to make a proper play, snowballing off that play into the rest of the game.

Albert: Going back to last split, you were one of the top Junglers in North America as well as probably the West. You had really strong and aggressive pathing and really strong play overall. This split, you are playing a lot more tanky champions as they are the focus of the meta. If you could play any junglers right now, who would they be?

LirA: So I would love to play Kha’Zix and Nidalee, those are the two champions I would really like to play.

Albert: Last split you were more of a leader and teacher to your team, assuming that role but do not have that role now. Do you want to go back to teaching your team in addition to your Jungle role? Or do you think your team has more of a direction to go in so that you can focus on jungling alone?

LirA: So last year I was more focused on leading the team, kind of telling the players what to do, and then and we kinda did pick ban more on me, more focused on the jungle side. This year we had a new team and a new focus there too; I’m taking more of a seat back and more of a follow up to the team, but I kind of realized I make a lot of mistake on that too. I want to really make no mistakes and try to see what I can do the team, what I can do for the other four players, playing more for the team. Now we are still building up the team synergy, I think we need more time to build up synergy so that we can do much better for future games.

Albert: On that point, where do you see Clutch Gaming at the end of the split?

LirA: So obviously, we will still kind of build more of the team through the game strategy side, the focus is more about getting to playoffs. Getting to the top would kind of stress me out because I don’t want to be the first place in the split; we have a lot of stuff to work on. I would love to make first place, we have a lot to work on to get there together.

Albert: Do you have any last things to say to your [LirA] fans, Clutch Gaming fans?

LirA: So, I mean I was the kind of player where even if my team is losing, I can play very well and look good for my own individual performance. It seems like this year a lot of things aren’t working out for me. For my fans, I’m sorry and I will do my best to play much better and earn your respect, I’ll make sure you are proud of me. I don’t want to disappoint you all, I want to perform the best I can for all of you.

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Cover Image courtesy of LoLesports Flickr.