Great Britain Under 23 team to compete in Youth World Cup
The Great Britain Under 23 Squad have arrived in the Dutch
town of Apeldoorn for the 2006 Monuta Youth World Cup Tournament,
hoping to improve on their seventh-place finish in 2005.
Great Britain have been placed in pool B and their first
match will be against traditional rivals Germany at 11:20am
(local time) on Friday 3rd February. They will then play two
more matches the same day, at 2:40pm against Belgium and at
4pm against a Dutch selection named “Team Monuta”
after the tournament sponsors. Play-off matches will then
follow on Saturday 4th February to determine the team’s
final position. The tournament’s other pool contains
two more Dutch national teams, the Netherlands East district
U23 team and the Netherlands U21 team, plus the national U23
teams of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Portugal.
In 2006, the main focus of the Great Britain youth international
teams is to secure qualification for the 2008 International
Korfball Federation (IKF) World Youth Championships, which
will be held in Kaohsiung in Chinese Taipei. This can only
be achieved by a high enough finish in the 2006 European U21
championships, which will be held in Loule, Algarve, Portugal,
from 5-11 November. The World Youth Championships are held
every four years and affect a country’s world ranking,
but there are fewer qualification places for available European
countries than there are at the senior level. Great Britain
unfortunately narrowly fell foul of this in qualification
for the 2004 championships, ending up as the highest-ranked
European team not to qualify, so a detailed training schedule
has been put in place for U21 players to ensure that this
does not happen again.
With this in mind, the Youth World Cup squad is made up primarily
of players who would be too old to compete in the European
U21 Championships, the BKA having decided that this would
suit overall player development better than fielding the entire
U21 team against the older opposition. The majority of the
squad are currently playing regularly in the British National
League Premier Division and will hope that this experience
will stand them in good stead for the tournament. The following
players have been selected:
Byron Attwell (Mitcham)
David Brooks (Trojans)
Davesh Patel (Bec)
Chris Spice (Trojans)
Dean Woods (Mitcham)
Tony Woodvine (Kwiek)
Dan Woolmer (Kwiek)
Sinead Cafferkey (Trojans)
Aimee Evans (Mitcham)
Sarah-Jane Hubbard (Invicta)
Heather Ikwuemesi (Mitcham)
Lia Matthews (Trojans)
Lucy Silletto (Nottingham)
Rebecca Woolmer (Kwiek)
Coach: Colin Boys
Manager: Gary Brooks
Assistant Coach: Steve Johnson
Fitness Coach: Christine Brooks
Results (in English) can be found at the tournament website,
http://www.oost.knkv.nl/youthworldcup/Engels/index.html
|
