Great Britain to compete in European Championships over
Easter
The Great Britain korfball team will be competing in the
European Korfball Championships in Budapest, Hungary, from
April 16th-22nd, hoping for a strong performance as the next
generation of British players and GB’s Belgian coach
Dirk Sercu gain further experience on the international stage.
GB have been drawn in an initial pool with the Netherlands,
Russia and Germany. The other pool contains Belgium, Czech
Republic, Catalonia (Spain) and hosts Hungary. The event also
acts as a qualifier for the 2007 World Championships (Brno,
Czech Republic), although the chances of any of these eight
teams not being present in Brno will be extremely low, with
only the last-placed team in these championships having to
face a playoff against another European country. By the time
of the World Championships, some of the extremely promising
current GB U16 squad will be classed as old enough to compete
at senior level, but Budapest has come too early for them.
GB will open their campaign on Sunday April 16th (at 20:00
local time) with the toughest match of all against world champions
and hot favourites The Netherlands, and so will need to decide
whether to give the strongest team a chance to gel as a unit
in this match or whether to rest players in advance of the
other two group matches when the team will have a realistic
chance of winning.
The first one of these matches will be on Monday April 17th
(at 18:15) against up-and-coming korfball nation Russia, who
are a relatively unknown quantity at senior international
level, having only started competing on the international
scene a few years ago. However, the Russians have now nurtured
an extremely promising group of youngsters all the way through
to senior level, having claimed some notable successes in
junior international competitions, so GB will have to be at
their best to not come unstuck in this match.
The final group match is on Tuesday April 18th (18:15) against
traditional rivals Germany, who have consistently fielded
a team of a very similar standard to GB, with matches between
the sides regularly finishing with only one or two goals between
the teams. In the last meeting, at the World Games in Duisberg
in July 2005, GB were on the wrong side of one of these scorelines,
going down 13-12 after clawing back a five-goal deficit in
the second half, so will hope for revenge.
In order to qualify for the semi-finals, GB will need to
defeat both Russia and Germany. The third and fourth-placed
teams in the two groups will also play off for fifth to eighth
place.
Great Britain squad:
Ross Bower (Mitcham)
David Brooks (Trojans)
Tamara Burnell (Bec)
Aimee Evans (Mitcham)
Steve Green (Mitcham)
Carly Holness (Mitcham)
Rob Mann (Nottingham)
Karen Sparrow (Mitcham)
Dave Synott (Mitcham)
Nsemeke Ukpong (Bec)
Sam Wells (Mitcham)
Rob Williams (Invicta)
Dean Woods (Mitcham)
Ella Wright (Mitcham)
|
