GL HARPOON: "If I could play every day on stage, I’d feel like Faker"

Against all odds, Galions are currently sitting at the top of the LFL, unbeaten in their first six games of the Summer Split. This sudden surge in the regular season comes just months after the team collapsed in the Spring playoffs against Vitality.Bee, finishing in a disappointing 6th–7th place.

During the offseason, Jean “Jezu” Massol — the team’s ADC for the past three years — unexpectedly announced his retirement from League of Legends. His spot was taken by Franciszek “HARPOON” Gryszkiewicz, a 20-year-old Polish talent who had just completed two splits in LFL 2. He joined Galions alongside his head coach, Nikola “xani” Zrinjski, with whom he’s been working for the past year and a half. Together, they’ve made a spectacular entrance into the LFL, and HARPOON reflects with us on his explosive debut at only 20 years old.

Franciszek "HARPOON" Gryszkiewicz: "Maybe I’ll start from the beginning. When I got an offer from Galions to join, I thought: "There’s no way this team is not mental boomed." They’re so good they should stomp the league. Some of those players should already be in LEC. I knew it before even joining. So either it was going to be really easy for me to just play and win games, or really draining mentally, because there was no way they were that good without something going wrong.

From what I’ve felt, since xani and I came here, there’s been fresh air in the team. Not to discredit Jezu and Hairost (Aymerick Sergeant), but it feels new. From the very first scrim, it was a pleasure to play with them. So I don’t think it’s surprising that we’re in this position right now — probably needing just one or two best-of-threes to reach top 2 and the EMEA main stage.

Maybe for people it was surprising when we changed ADC, because Jezu is a big figure in the French community. But when I joined, I already felt ready for LFL, maybe even for LEC. The wins have come pretty easily so far.

HARPOON: I had just finished the LFL2 season. A few days after the final, I heard rumors, and then maybe one or two weeks later, the decision came. It was a weird feeling — I worked all split to win LFL2, we lost the final 3-1 to Valiant, and immediately I had to focus on something new without time to reset. It was chaotic in the process, but the decision to join Galions was easy. Still, I didn’t think I was way better than Jezu. He’s a good player. Of course, I believe I’m better than most ADCs, otherwise, what’s the point of competing? But I didn’t think the gap between LFL2 and LFL was that big. So at first, it was strange that they wanted to make this change. But in the end, it was a great opportunity: if I keep performing well, we could win LFL, win EMEA Masters, or at least go very far in both.

HARPOON: For sure, when a new situation comes, it’s always good not to be put in a completely new environment. In the end, I’m still with the same coach. I know how the reviews work. Of course, he changed his work ethic a bit because it’s LFL and not LFL2, so we’re talking about different things. There are some new aspects for me as well, but overall, the flow feels the same as in previous splits. Especially after my really short and chaotic offseason, it was good to have something stay the same. I wouldn’t say that if I came here alone, I would perform worse, but for sure he’s a helpful person. I don’t know how much he impacted the Galions team before I joined, but overall, he’s a really great coach.

HARPOON: If you had asked me this a year ago, I would’ve said there’s no difference and I had no problems. But after the 2024 Spring split with Zero Tenacity at EMEA Masters — when we won Ultraliga but had a really bad run at Masters — I wasn’t on bootcamp anymore. For more than a year, I played fully remote.

Now, I have also moved out of my parents’ place in Poland, so it was a new life for me. After three months of thinking the rest of the year would be remote, suddenly, in the middle of the season, I had to go to Paris and spend the full Summer split there. Also, with the EMEA schedule, it could be a very long stay. It wasn’t easy, but I would’ve been dumb not to do it. Right now, I just want to be the greatest, so unless it really affects my personal life, it doesn’t bother me.

The only real problem is solo queue. At home, it’s easier for me to play. Here, I perform better in scrims and officials because of the vibe and the lower ping, but it’s still hard to find a rhythm and to take proper breaks. Sometimes it feels like I’m constantly doing the same thing without taking a break. And it ended up with me dropping like 700 LP one or two months after I came here. But I’m working on it: finding the right flow, taking mental resets during the day after scrims. Compared to the very beginning when I first came here, I’m already feeling much better.

HARPOON: No, I love it. I remember the Ultraliga 2024 Spring finals: big crowd, loud chants, bad headsets, so you could hear everything. If you had been in Warsaw back then, you’d say that with the same number of KC fans, the noise would’ve been just as loud. It was huge. A lot of people were invested, since there hadn’t been offline tournaments for two or three years. Everyone wanted to come, and I loved it. In that final, I had something like 55 kills and just one death. We stomped them 3-0. I felt like I was playing at my peak in that moment. It was chaotic, but I loved it. I performed at my peak there. If I could play every day on stage, I’d feel like Faker (Lee Sang-hyeok).

HARPOON: Winning it all, LFL and EMEA Masters. I’m signed with Galions for next year, but you never know what happens in esports. I feel like this year is a kind of redemption arc for me. For many people, especially in the French community, I’m still new and not that well-known. But for me, it’s the first year in esports where I haven’t had an “unlucky” season. The first year, I didn’t get screwed even once. It feels like the card god is with me, and all I need to do is perform well, which I am, and I want to keep improving. I’m really glad about how this year has gone so far, even though it isn’t over yet. Beyond winning LFL and EMEA Masters, my goal is to prove that I’m a really good ADC and to show people that.

HARPOON: Maybe before the split, he didn’t really know me. But after the game, he’ll constantly think about me."