A Salford esports team are aiming to continue their unbeaten run in the NSE Winter Championship after taking the contest by storm.

The Salford Lions Rocket League roster are on course for an unbeaten winter split in the 2021/22 contest.

The roster made up of Keude (Giovanni Hamilton), BJayB (Bradley Ball) and Jiggi (Joe Higgins), only dropped four games across the entire length of league play – sweeping their opponents for five matches in a row to start their season.

After finishing top of the National League, with a perfect 40 points after four weeks of matches, they qualified for the Championship Bracket seeded first, placing them in the upper bracket.

They began this bracket last week by beating Warwick four games to two in the upper semi-finals, securing themselves a matchup in the upper bracket-final against Portsmouth Paladins for a place in the grand final.

Despite being unbeaten in NSE Rocket League so far this season, Salford Lions did come unstuck in the University Rocketeers Winter Cup #1, where they were knocked out at the semi-finals stage ironically by Portsmouth Paladins.

Salford Lions fall in the UR Winter Cup #1 Main Event to Portsmouth Paladins. Image Credit: Screenshot from Twitch clip: “UR Winter Cup #1 | Portsmouth Paladins vs. Salford Lions | 2,000€ Prizepool | Finals Day! | !casters !bracket”. Link: https://www.twitch.tv/unirocketeers/clip/UnusualBitterNarwhalItsBoshyTime-cZ8lz4dxZ9VBGgHq

Portsmouth later went on to win this tournament, beating German side Düsseldorf Gaming Dragons 4-2 to win the $578.60 first prize. Salford had to settle for sharing the 3rd-4th $277.73 prize with Dutch side Erasmus Esports.

Salford Lions will be out for revenge this evening, with a perfect record in the NSE Winter Championship 2021/22 on the line the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Captain Jiggi said: “We just have a really solid team, a very consistent team.

“The two new players that came into the team [BjayB and Keude] are honestly just insane.

“We’re not really scared of any team, maybe Portsmouth, they’re the only team that could give us a run for our money.”

However, for this specific matchup with them, he remained confident in his team saying: “We played them yesterday [Sunday 5th December] in EUR and ended up beating them 4-1, so if we can just come with the same game plan we should be able to win pretty convincingly I think.”

Finally, he outlined what it would mean to him and his teammates to obtain that perfect record in the winter split.

He said: “I think it would really just cement what we feel which is that we are the best team in the UK and we deserve to be in this spot.”

The full interview can be found below:

Week Two of the championship bracket will be streamed live on UniRocketeers Twitch channel from  7pm, with Salford’s match against Portsmouth scheduled to start at 7.15pm.

Anyone wanting to watch the matches can go to the UniRocketeers Twitch channel via this link: https://www.twitch.tv/unirocketeers.

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