You might know him from coding this website; the man behind all this is Belgium Jeroen "taLa" De Ridder. But Jeroen is also playing with his clan Europe OCTENse, which will be participating in the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge #2 in Enschede.
I won't wait any longer - here are the questions.
---

So, Jeroen tells us some more about yourself, when did you start playing Enemy Territory and some of your ex-clans. And why did you start coding this website?

My name is Jeroen De Ridder, I’m 18 years old, I live in Ghent, Belgium and I’m a student information technology at Ghent University. I started playing ET somewhere at the end of 2004 in a clan called Belgian Boobs, which was pretty much a noobclan with some friends. I played there for about a year. I then moved on to Krauts, where I also played for about a year. After Krauts died, I joined Worm in the clan that has now become OCTENse.

I joined Crossfire somewhere in spring last year. I heard from Rfki that raza was at the time looking for an additional developer to the site, a position I was interested in because of the nature of the freelance webdevelopment work I have been doing for over 3 years now. When TosspoT then acquired Crossfire from raza, I guess I was the logical choice to develop the new site.

You and your team were selected to play an EuroCup qualifier against Insignia Cadre. How did you experience this match, and did you train hard for this match?

We were of course very glad to have received this opportunity, and a bit surprised as well – because honestly I didn’t see it coming, and I don’t think the rest of us did either. I think everyone knows the rest of the story – we played the qualifier, and we lost against Insignia Cadre who were simply superior to us. It doesn’t feel like a loss to me at all. We knew cadre would be a tough opponent, and we knew they deserved to be in the EC much more than us. Besides, we weren’t ready for the EC anyway. We’re much more comfortable playing the OC.

While we’re still talking about EC qualifiers here, I’d like to say best of luck to cadre in the EC, and to ESVKA, who I think deserved the qualifier spot more than we did. They lost the qualifier, but they put up a good fight (a better one than we did), and they just should have been in there. It was good to see them get their qualifier spot.

Since you haven't qualified yourself for the EuroCup you have been moved to the Premier League Group A (Netherlands artificial, Europe Dharma, Europe Reliably.et). What are your expectations for this cup?

I think we’re in for some good matches. We’ve played earlier against both Reliably and artificial, and both have proven to be strong opponents that I expect to put up a good fight. As for Dharma though, I have absolutely no clue who they are, or rather how strong their team is. I guess we’re about to find out.

Maybe you can't answer this question but the community is very curious: "Are there any idea's of creating a new crossfire look, or are t new features?"

Well actually, I should have been taking care of a few improvements and upgrades, but I just haven’t found the time to do so yet, with my exams coming up, the rate at which OCTENse is training and freelance peeking around the corner. I’d need to get to that, but in any case It won’t happen before CPC2.

Yesterday, your team took the open spot at the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge #2 in group B (Europe dignitas, Europe k1ck.eu, Denmark ALIS) , what will be your lan lineup and what are your expectations for this event?

Our lineup will be Belgium Worm, Belgium taLa, Belgium Alvo, Netherlands viax, Netherlands NxM and Germany swine. I think we’re not in the worst group we could have gotten. We’re realistic though. We don’t stand a chance against dignitas (that game I do not look forward to), but we are definitely looking to beat ALIS and possibly k1ck too. But I’m really going just to have fun and meet the people I play with almost every day, I don’t mind about winning games or not.

That being said, I do think it absolutely sucks for cadre that they couldn’t come because we took the spot, and I feel kinda bad for that. I know that they are a better team than us, I know that they can put up much better fights than us, and I know that a lot of people would have rather seen them go instead of us. I want you to know that we never intended to block cadre from going. If I had known that they would reapply, I for one would have let them go instead of us. Now everyone is looking down on us as the “lowbies that should have been cadre”, and that makes me pretty uncomfortable.

Since you’re also coming to the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge, which players do you want to encounter?

I’ve already met a lot of people at CPC1, but of course I’m hoping to meet as much people as I can ! In particular, my teammates Worm and Alvo, my LAN teammates swine, viax and NxM, Nellie who couldn’t quite make it last time, my former Krauts teammates TrgT, FrizeN, muz, ins, NoNick, Junkie, Juize and some belgian players I haven’t met before like zeto, vila, ganon and shewie. Obviously this is not a limited list, there are probably tons of people coming that I want to meet but can’t think of right now

You have just joined up with multigaming OCTENse, and many more teams have been joining up with big multigaming clans. Do you think MGCs are focusing on ET more ?

No, I don’t. I believe ET is dying a slow inevitable death with the upcoming release of ET:QW, but there’s no reason not to have fun playing it while it lasts. MGCs are typically organizations that cover multiple games and ET isn’t exactly the most exciting/rewarding game from a serious MGC’s point of view – especially because our userbase is rather small and it’s a free game, so in general the available money for awards and prizes is rather low.

Some short questions:

Grolsch or Duvel
Duvel

Sauce on or of
On

Belgium Worm or Belgium Alvo
Worm

Crossfire , swertcw or gamestv
I like both GamesTV and Crossfire, but Crossfire would definitly win it.

ESL, ClanBase or WarLeagues
Clanbase

EC or IPS
Eurocup

sgh Open or CPC
CPC

TosspoT or Mashed
TosspoT

"Belgians are stupid" yes or yes?
Very funny, mr. Fakequote :P

Thank you for this short interview, now your 1 minute of fame. Some shoutouts or threats to the teams/players who will be playing CPC.
I don’t do shoutouts x)