Spain 8 England 0

The England team arrived in Monza on Sunday 16 July. In the evening there was an Olympic-style opening ceremony with episodes from Italian history enacted on skates and excellent displays of free-skating, formation skating, speed and cycling!

Our team is Ian Morrison, Joe Wheatley, Brendan Barker, James Taylor, Karl Smith, Michael Ableson, Andrew Gregory, Grant Zaccaria, Graeme Stewart and Ian Smith.Brendan is captain. Carlos Amaral is the coach and Jayne Street the physio.

The PalaCandy is large and very hot – hotter than anything we have experienced since Mexico in 1996. The playing area is slightly small at 39m in length and the rink has curved ends similar to ice hockey so not possible to hide in the corners. There is a massive central scoreboard with information displays and an impressive display screen for films and action replays which was used to excellent effect. Teams have been instructed to take the floor 5 minutes before time for a prompt start to facilitate TV coverage being taken by Italy, Spain, Portugal and France.

England had the opening match against Spain on Monday evening at 5pm. Our team has many players competing at this level for the first time. We therefore opted for as much experience as possible to open the match with Ian Morrison in goal, James, Brendan, Joe and Michael.

The way the programme is organised the top teams must go for as many goals as possible to establish position for the quarter finals and Spain came at us from the start with their strongest line up – Panadero, Bargallo, Teixido and Gil. England had the first attacks but then Spain piled on the pressure. Spain played to shut Brendan and James down as soon as they had the ball. The first Spain goal came after 7 minutes. Soon afterwards Pedro Gil scored with a combination of skill and instinct that should not be possible for anyone on the planet. By half-time Spain were 5 – 0 up.

The same pattern in the second half but with Spain using more of their squad. We rotated our players as well and it was great to see the new players producing a strong performance. In the third quarter of the second half our line up was Michael, Graeme, Andrew and Karl which meant we had Brendan, James, Joe and Grant refreshed for the last 5 minutes in which we applied pressure but without goals for either team. Final result 8-0 to Spain with a very creditable performance from all the players and an outstanding job by Ian in goal (as the action replays showed).

Tonight we play France who have recalled some old faithfuls including Fabian Savreux to goal-keeping duties.

Ron Barker, Manager