A mass player exodus from Nerve, the long time top Counterstrike team from western Canada, forced one of the more stable CAL invite teams to completely rebuild their roster. The loss of longtime players, Scott "*|flip|" Olsen, Matt “Neville” Neville, and Devin "nv" sahota as well as Ian “Royale” Royale and Pierre "0nslaught" Girard, formerly of Clan Crisis, has left team nerve with three players. Hyb, icesalmon, and sinyster are all that is left of the second place finishers at WCG 2002. They have plans to rebuild and add two to three more players before the start of the CAL invite season.

Following their success and surprising performance at Everlan, nerve was dealt a series of blows that impacted them as a team. The closure of their sponsor, Nerve Center, a poor showing at WCG Canada, and a mediocre CAL invite season lead the team to greater inactivity and started the cycle of events which created this diaspora. Western Canadian teams do not only have to deal with the difficulties of acquiring sponsorship but also their high pings which make consistent online play a struggle, which plagues teams from their region.

After WCG Canada, both 0nslaught and nv went inactive. Royale’s success with Check-Six at TFL, led to his departure and Neville’s joining x6 along with him. The latest players to part ways with nerve, flip and brzk, apparently left for similar reasons as the others, inactivity and desire for sponsorship, and 0nslaught and nv’s departure is analogous to rats(albeit inactive ones) scurrying from a sinking ship.

However, nerve plans to continue playing in CAL and has not thrown in the towel quite yet. This should be an interesting test of the new manager rule, and how CAL handles these cases of extreme team makeovers. Best of luck to Nerve in the weeks that follow and to all the players that have found new homes.

Update
Nerve has filled its roster with silk(zEx), gosu(TEC & e-police), and Chosen(D!E & GamerCo). This gives the former Canadian team a more southern orientation and is filled with some notable and ,dare I say, infamous names. Best of luck again.