Yesterday saw the final matches in the European U17s championships. GB U17s had the easier demi final and duely despatched the Latvian U17s 17:8. In the other semi final, Sweden took on Finland and despite losing to them 17-11 earlier in the week, Sweden were vastly improved and took the match 15-12.
GB started the final well, taking a 2-0 lead due mainly to layout D attempts on every Swedish pass. Sweden remained calm though and the drops and throw aways that they had earlier in the week had now vanished, and every turnover we got, GB had to work so hard for. Our O was now faltering with the big hucks no longer coming off, and our line passes often being too weak. Sweden pulled away and never looked back. A very spirited performance by GB, but the bottom line was, Sweden improved immensely as the week went on, and we didn't. This is something Sweden manage to do year after year. They train up a bunch of 15/16 year olds very quickly who just keep on improving each time they play (I don't remember them dropping the disc once in the final despite some very fast throws). What's more encouraging for us is that half our team are young enough for Southampton next year, with some of the team young enough for up to 3 more years. In the girls division, GB took on Latvia in the junior womens final but couldn't reproduce the form on Thursday when they narrowly lost 11-6 to them. This time, Latvia pulled away to win 17-3 on a very sub-standard pitch. GB2 had a final match against Estonia U17s and despite beating them 17-3 the day before, they somehow lost by quite a large margin (17-10?). Two of their players had had to fly home before the game and with a couple of injuries, they just ran out of legs, even with a number of the GB Girls team helping out (who actually outplayed most of GB2 in that game). Anyway, down to the important stuff. GB2 won spirit in the Junior Open division, and GB U17s won spirit in the U17s division! We even managed to get Sweden to perform our victory dance during the presentations. I often wonder if opposing teams (like Sweden and Finland) resent the British exuberance at tournaments like this, but clearly they do like it. Overall, a great experience for our juniors, and great promise for the future. U17s divisions (Open and Girls) are definitely up and running with all the countries there agreeing to make U17s Europeans an annual event. It may have to be held in Eastern European countries most years to enable the likes of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, etc. to compete, but they all have junior teams and we need to be there to encourage these countries. Kevin PS If you have any 15 year olds playing in your Open teams, please get in touch so we don't just meet them 2 weeks before the European tournament and end up desperately trying to get them into the squad. -- ___________________________________________________ Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/ __________________________________________________ BritDisc mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ranulf.net/mailman/listinfo/britdisc Staying informed - http://www.ukultimate.com/informed.asp
