In the summer of 2016, when the Rocket League Championship Series held its first world finals under the lights of Avalon Hollywood, the bracket mixed established esports organizations with team run brands that had built their names inside the early Rocket League scene. The Flying Dutchmen arrived in Los Angeles as one of the few true independents, a Dutch lineup built on a homegrown tactical system rather than an organizational budget. They left with a fourth place finish in the world, a handful of upsets, and one of the most distinctive tactical identities of the early Rocket League era.
Origins In Dutch Rocket League
The Flying Dutchmen project took shape in early 2016, as the competitive scene braced for the inaugural RLCS season. Dutch player Jasper “Vogan” van Riet had already spent time in Europe’s competitive orbit with teams like Team Shazoo and Noble Esports, but when he tried to assemble a roster built from established RLCS level stars, he found that most of the obvious options were already taken. Instead of dropping out of the scene, he pivoted.
In an October 2016 essay, “Rocket League Tactics: The Flying Dutchmen’s System,” Vogan describes how he turned to players he knew from the ranked ladder and smaller tournaments. He settled on Dogukan “Dogu” Yilmaz, a Dutch player who had been competing on fringe top twenty European teams, and Connor “Jessie” Lansink, better known to fans at the time under his old one versus one ladder alias. The trio tested itself in weekly Gfinity events, including a run where they swept a struggling KA-POW roster three games to none and reached the semifinals. That performance convinced Vogan that the lineup had more headroom than he first expected. What had begun as a stopgap team to keep his skills sharp in case a bigger opportunity arose became a core he decided to fully commit to.
They registered under a name that matched their nationality and playstyle. The Flying Dutchmen, often abbreviated as TFD, entered 2016 as an independent Dutch team, with a primary roster of Vogan, Dogu, and Jessie and an additional Dutch substitute, Paul “PauliepaulNL” Brandsma. The Rocket League Esports wiki records March 27, 2016, as the date the team was formally formed and lists The Flying Dutchmen as a Netherlands based independent organization that would disband later that same year.
Building A System
From the beginning, The Flying Dutchmen distinguished themselves less by individual superstardom and more by how they approached the game as a unit. In his tactical essay, Vogan explains that the team did not simply adopt the loose rotational habits that many early squads used. Instead, he constructed a detailed framework that governed how each player should move, challenge, and rotate in almost every situation.
At its base, the system started with strict three player rotation on offense. In early scrims, the team experimented with a simple rule: when player one touched the ball and could no longer follow, player two took over, then player three, and so on. This conservative model gave the roster what Vogan considered a stable defensive shape but left their attack predictable. Over time, the team layered exceptions onto that basic rule, keeping a structured rotation when they had possession but allowing flexible, aggressive challenges when defending. Vogan summarized the guiding idea as “no rotation in defense, full rotation in offense.”
When The Flying Dutchmen did not have the ball, they were expected to contest almost every pass, dribble, or clear, with the third man holding a deeper line to protect against shots over the top. When they did have the ball, they wanted an orderly attacking pattern in which the second player would almost always be responsible for finishing chances that the first and third created. They even played without in game voice communication, talking only between games, so that each player had to read situations and apply the system on the fly.
Those rules produced unusual stat lines. Because he was most often the second man in rotation, Dogu ended up taking a disproportionate share of shots and goals, which sometimes led observers to misread his role as that of a hard carrying star rather than a finisher embedded in a rigid structure. Jessie, whose solo duel background gave him strong mechanics, and Vogan, whose clears and backboard passes initiated many attacks, were often responsible for the build up that enabled those finishes.
The system also produced one of the defining images of TFD’s RLCS run. In European league play, Dogu piled up saves, reflecting how often TFD relied on disciplined back line positioning and last second stops to survive extended pressure.
RLCS Season 1 Qualifier 1
When Psyonix and Twitch announced the Rocket League Championship Series, The Flying Dutchmen were one of dozens of European teams that signed up for the open bracket. In the first European open qualifier in May 2016, they fought through a crowded double elimination field and earned one of the eight qualifying spots for Group Stage 1, alongside powerhouses like We Dem Girlz and FlipSid3 Tactics. One of the key moments of that first qualifier came when The Flying Dutchmen upset We Dem Girlz in a best of three series to clinch their place in the group stage. In his tactical write up, Vogan points to that match as both validation of the system and a moment that shifted his expectations for the team from simply reaching the league to potentially finishing near the middle of the pack.
The first European group stage ran online over two weeks, with eight teams playing a round robin of best of five series. The Rocket League Esports wiki records The Flying Dutchmen finishing fifth with a 16 and 19 game record, behind We Dem Girlz, FlipSid3 Tactics, Mock it EU, and KA POW. Psyonix’s own recap of the event, “RLCS S1Q1 Online Finals This Weekend,” listed The Flying Dutchmen among the “group stage runners up” in Europe, teams that placed fifth through eighth, missed the first online finals, but accumulated crucial RLCS points that would carry over into the second qualifier.
For The Flying Dutchmen, those points and the lessons from Group Stage 1 set the stage for a second attempt. Vogan describes using the break to tune the system, including adjustments to how the third man contested clears and how the first player broke rotation in the corners to add more creative playmaking options.
Qualifier 2 And The Fight For A LAN Spot
The second European open qualifier in June 2016 followed a similar structure and once again, The Flying Dutchmen made it through. Bracket records on start.gg show the Dutch trio listed as one of eight teams qualifying from the open bracket into Group Stage 2, alongside Supersonic Avengers, Mock it EU, FlipSid3 Tactics, and others.
If Group Stage 1 had been a pleasant surprise, Group Stage 2 was a brutal test of margin. ESPN’s wrap up of the European league notes that Supersonic Avengers and The Flying Dutchmen went into the final matchday competing for the last playoff qualifying slot. Supersonic Avengers secured their place by beating TFD three games to two in a decisive group stage series, while The Flying Dutchmen fell to the bottom half of the table. Even so, the Dutch lineup remained competitive. The same article and a Hungarian recap of the league both highlight The Flying Dutchmen as a team that “just missed” the finals despite notable performances. They took two games off top seed We Dem Girlz but dropped points in losses to lesser favored opponents like Aeriality and Shoot N Goal. Across the league campaign, Dogu’s heavy save workload underscored how often TFD relied on emergency defense to survive.
Across both qualifiers, The Flying Dutchmen consistently hovered near the cutoff line without breaking through to an online final. Yet the RLCS used cumulative points rather than a single bracket to determine which European teams would go to the live international finals. The combination of their finishes in Group Stage 1 and Group Stage 2 ultimately proved just enough. When the world finals field was announced for Avalon Hollywood, The Flying Dutchmen were listed as Europe’s fourth seed and one of the only fully independent teams on the docket.
Avalon Hollywood And The Kings Of Urban Upset
The Season 1 RLCS Finals took place on August 6 and 7, 2016, at Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles. Eight teams, four from North America and four from Europe, met in a double elimination bracket with a total prize pool of fifty five thousand dollars.
As Europe’s fourth seed, The Flying Dutchmen opened their LAN campaign against the number one seed from North America, Kings of Urban. On paper, it looked like a mismatch. Kings of Urban had dominated the North American league behind Jacob, Fireburner, and SadJunior, while The Flying Dutchmen had spent most of the European season fighting just to stay in contention. Instead, the Dutch underdogs produced one of the first international upsets in Rocket League history. The RLCS finals bracket records The Flying Dutchmen beating Kings of Urban three games to one in the upper bracket quarterfinals, sending the North American top seed immediately into the lower bracket.
In the winners semifinal, The Flying Dutchmen ran into eventual champions iBUYPOWER Cosmic. That series illustrated both the strengths and the limits of their system. Against the aggressive, creative offense of 0ver Zer0, Kronovi, and Lachinio, TFD’s counter attacking structure and disciplined back line could not generate enough pressure or opportunities. The series ended in a three games to zero sweep in favor of iBUYPOWER Cosmic.
Dropped into the lower bracket, The Flying Dutchmen responded with another tight performance. Their next match pitted them against Genesis, another North American organization that had reached LAN through steady league play rather than dominant firepower. In that best of five, The Flying Dutchmen outlasted Genesis three games to two, guaranteeing themselves a top four finish at the inaugural world finals.
Their final match at Avalon came in lower round three against FlipSid3 Tactics, the European powerhouse that would go on to reach the grand final. FlipSid3 swept the Dutch team three games to zero, ending The Flying Dutchmen’s run in fourth place with three thousand eight hundred fifty dollars in prize money.
In his post tournament analysis, Vogan was blunt about what the LAN had revealed. The system had carried them to a result that appeared impressive from the outside, but inside the roster he saw “huge flaws” in how they played, particularly in the two matches where they were swept. In his view, the counter attacking style they relied upon had little room left to grow and would struggle to keep pace with a European field that had already raised its level heading into Season 2.
Disbandment And Player Paths
Within weeks of the Avalon event, The Flying Dutchmen project came to an end. The Rocket League Esports wiki timeline lists August 11, 2016, as the date when PauliepaulNL left the roster, followed by the departure of Vogan, Jessie, and Dogu and the official disbandment of the team on August 18.
The social media footprint the team left behind underscored both their identity and their brevity. The official @TFD_RL account on X describes itself in the present tense as a “disbanded Dutch Rocket League team” that finished fourth in the world in RLCS Season 1, framing the Avalon result as the defining achievement of the brand.
The players moved on to other projects in a rapidly shifting European scene. Vogan briefly joined Astrum and then Complex, while also focusing more on content and analysis. Dogu and Jessie continued to appear in tournaments and on rosters through the early seasons of competitive Rocket League, though neither would again stand on an RLCS world finals stage.
Years later, the name itself resurfaced. In the RLCS 2021–22 Fall split, a modern European open qualifier featured a different lineup entering under the banner “The Flying Dutchmen,” a nod to the original team’s national identity and history. That roster had no direct organizational connection to the 2016 trio, but its very existence points to how the brand had lingered in community memory as shorthand for Dutch Rocket League.
Legacy In The RLCS Era
Measured purely by trophies and longevity, The Flying Dutchmen were a brief presence. The team existed for roughly five months, never won a major title, and disbanded before RLCS Season 2 began. The broader history of competitive Rocket League, however, gives them a more enduring place.
First, they embodied a particular model of early RLCS success. In a field that increasingly centered around large organizations, The Flying Dutchmen showed that an independent, player run project could not only reach but compete at the first world finals. Cumulative points from consistent top five finishes across European qualifiers and league play, combined with their performances at Avalon Hollywood, turned a homegrown Dutch lineup into a globally visible team.
Second, through Vogan’s tactical essay and analysis content, they left one of the earliest deep written records of a professional Rocket League team’s internal system. His detailed descriptions of roles, rotations, and decision trees circulated through forums and subreddits, giving aspiring players and coaches a window into how an RLCS level team thought about the game during its first era. That document, cited and discussed in places like the Rocket League subreddit and later retrospectives, continues to be a reference point for anyone studying the evolution of competitive tactics.
Finally, their run at Avalon Hollywood produced some of the earliest international storylines that still surface whenever the history of the esport is discussed. The upset over Kings of Urban, the hard fought series against Genesis, and the eventual losses to the champions and finalists provided a compact arc of underdogs, system versus talent, and the fine margins that define tournament play. In that sense, The Flying Dutchmen’s contribution to Rocket League history rests less on the lifespan of the organization and more on the example they set. For a few months in 2016, a Dutch trio using a rigorously constructed system took on the best the world had to offer and proved that a player driven project could carve out its own place at the top of the RLCS era.