MONZA-ITALY 17th – 22nd JULY
Team:
1-Ian Morrison - Alcorcon (Spain)
2-Joe Wheatley - Bury
3-Karl Smith - Herne Bay United
4-Michael Ableson - Middlesborough
5-Andrew Gregory - Sheffield
6-James Taylor - Prato (Italy)
7-Graeme Stewart - Middlesborough
8-Grant Zaccarias - Sheffield
9-Brendan Barker (Captain)- Herne Bay United
10-Ian Smith - Middlesborough
Management:
Coach-Carlos Amaral
Physiotherapist/Fitness-Jayne Street
Manager-Ron Barker
Delegate-Aileen Barker
Mechanic-Steve Taylor
The main objective for this competition was to test young players at this level to widen up the selection for next year’s World Championship in Switzerland and more importantly, give enough experience to make more players available for the 2009 World Championship, in order to replace the ones I know will retire next year from international the scene.
When we started the competition I said to Portuguese and Spanish press that this team was an investment for the 2009 World Championship.
Since the last World Championship in S. Jose, we have made 6 changes with the majority of the players playing for the first time at senior level and they were well supported by the experienced players Captain Brendan Barker, James Taylor, Ian Morrison and Joe Wheatley.
It is our main goal to stay up in Group A for several years; therefore I am intending to use the European Championships to play young players such as juniors in their last year and any players showing big improvement either on the National Leagues or National Training Weekends.
This competition format was set up against the rules with 3 groups of 3 and then 8 will be qualified for quarters-final leaving one team out. This way the goal difference was mainly the way to get the ranking from 1 to 9.
Also, Italy played last game of the group stage after knowing all the scores; therefore the game Italy-Austria was faked as the final score 4-0 to Italy was the only result possible to ensure that they would not play Spain or Portugal in the semi-finals. During this game I was interviewed by Portuguese TV and I showed that I was very upset with this farce as England was penalized ending up 9th team at group stage.
The organization matched the games for the quarters-final as follow: 1st – 8th (Portugal 24 Austria 0), 2nd -7th (Italy 11 Andorra 1), 3rd-5th (Spain 10 Germany 0) and 4th-6th (France 3 Switzerland 4).
Once more the organization ignored the International Rules should be 3rd–6th and 4th–5th.
Although we started every game with the same starting line, Ian Morrison, Brendan, James, Michael and Joe the bench players always responded very well when asked to come on the rink.
At the group stage we played 2 games, versus Spain (0-8) and France (0-5) and both teams played with a lot pressure on us to try score as many goals possible to ensure the best place for the quarters-final. The game with Spain our team showed a lot of character doing a very good restrict man to man. The game with France we improved from previous game and the 4 goals in the first half coming from mistakes. In the second half we dominated creating a lot of opportunities to score.
These two games were a good signal for the next stage 5th to 9th places.
The stage 5th to 9th places included the losers of quarters-final and England, we played and won all 3 games versus Germany (2-1), Andorra (3-2) and Austria (10-4).
We made history for English Roller Hockey winning for the first time 3 games in a row.
We finished 6th place as we did not play France at this stage, the Organization decided to count the game at group stage. So we lost a chance of beating France and finishing 5th place.
