We sat down with Vitality's Performance Manager, Jack Birtwhistle, for a lengthy chat about the work that goes into keeping players focused and building the structure behind an era-defining team. Vitality still consistently made the playoffs of events and even won IEM Cologne, but the team couldn't reconcile differences in vision between itself and Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi. "I'll be honest, for me, my biggest challenge during that time was we didn't have enough humility as a team," Birtwhistle says. "It's not that the players didn't work hard, they absolutely did, but from a staff point of view, that's something we could have been clearer on and probably didn't pick up on. [...] The coaches have always coached the players and the players have always done the work, right?