ESL Australia has revealed that the ESL Australia & New Zealand Championships will be back in 2017 with three seasons for the Oceanic region. The current Tainted Minds lineup won the first two editions of the championships in 2016 during their former Athletico days. Unfortunately, they will not be back for the third season to retain their crown due to being a part of the ZEN League. The same ruling goes for the other Australian ZEN teams (Chiefs, Immunity and Dark Sided). The third season of the ESL AU&NZ Championship will include a seven-week online league of eight teams, where all participants will compete against each other on Monday and Thursday nights local time - striving for a spot in the LAN Finals and a chance for $10,000 AUD (~$7.6k) in cash prizes. Six teams have been invited to the league, as followed:
The remaining two spots will be decided through an invite-only closed qualifier of eight other Oceanic teams, which the organiser will reveal later this week. The online qualifier will commence from February 18-19, utilising a best-of-three double-elimination format.   Corvidae  Tom 'BlackouT' RichmondDaniel 'rbz' UrbaniDaniel 'DANZ' WhitfieldAshton 'RequieM' MacaulayMitch 'm1tch' Hastings  Legacy OCE #111 Kyran 'dizzyLife' CrombieDale 'deoxiDE' CartaJoshua 'spiKez' QualischefskiMarcus 'gotz' FontiMatthew 'mattcd' Lenard  Cypher #122 Aaron 'ajk' GirtonAndy 'Noobster' ZhangMontheara 'prakM' PrakPhilip 'Kronos' SouthertonEdward 'eLUSIVE' Kong  Alpha Sydney Anthony 'Ar3syK' ChristouJames 'sibe' MartinSteve 'busta' BrewerJohn 'dimojR' DimitropoulosMitchell 'mswag' Pritchard  Immunity #57 James 'James' QuinnMohammed 'MoeycQ' TizaniCallum 'BURNRUOk' HendersonSean 'Gratisfaction' Kaiwai Erdenetsogt 'erkaSt' Gantulga  AVANT #106 Simon 'Sico' WilliamsDylan 'kyoto' BrownEgor 'LONSDALE' BaranovChris 'yellow' McGillivrayJordan 'Hatz' Bajic  Chiefs #72 Michael 'Lightstep' HallTyler 'tucks' ReillyAlistair 'aliStair' JohnstonJoshua 'INS' PotterLiam 'malta' Schembri  Dark Sided #120 Sebastian 'BASS' Bou-SamraSam 'flickz' JonesMatthew 'Texta' O'RourkeMitchell 'Sync' DaleWillem 'badger' Clarke  Exile5 #155 Jordan 'krudeN' HillLaken 'Kaotik' DutcherSteve 'InJect' HonanGeorgio 'sK' PoumpoulidisAlex 'white' Lisowski  Tainted Minds #35 Travis 'wizard' RichardsonConnor 'chuch' MorganStuart 'sonic' RaynerJesse 'InfrequeNt' BarkerJay 'Liazz' Tregillgas |
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