Carlos Amaral final comments:
I am very pleased that we achieved the objective of finishing top 8 in the world. The girls had a great attitude on and off the rink which showed an improvement of their sports mentality. Our team had an average of 17 years old and compared to other teams we were the youngest team in this competition. At this stage the ladies are developing at the same time they are competing and although this puts less pressure on the results, finishing 8th place is the best position ever and will give us more motivation to progress our project for Ladies Seniors. Regarding this competition, our scores in the first half were always close considering 4 out of 5 of our games were against the top 5 teams in the world; we found the second half of each match hard to keep the score down due to fitness and reaction capacity.
I have returned from this competition highly motivated to carry on with the Ladies Seniors 4 years project. I will be talking to the girls about working on a weekly plan to improve fitness and reaction capacity. Working in these areas we will be more competitive with the top countries in the world, our main objective is to close the gap and achieve top 6 in the world.

England 0 France 8
Half time 0-1
Good defence in the first half against a very strong team. The girls were focused and made it difficult for France to beat our zone system. We did not manage to counter attack as many times as we would have liked but this was due to a well organised French team that was very quick to recover their defence. The second half was similar to our other games, the team tired quickly and our reaction capacity was our biggest problem.

Carlos comments:
I knew France would be one of the hardest teams to play as they are very physical and very fit. However the girls had an impressive first half and did not give up all game, the final result reflects the difference that good team preparation makes.

Becca Lawrence comments:
I was looking forward to playing France all tournament. I thought we all played really well and put 100% in. I also really enjoyed playing in my first world championship.

Anna Russell comments:
Our defence made it extremely hard for the French and we fought them off well, however their physical strength and good team preparation before the championship led to the final score.

England 0 Germany 8
Half Time 0-2
A very good performance during the first half against European Champions. The team concentrated well in defence and made very good counter attacks.
During the second half we still made good counter attacks but our lack of fitness, as well as a very mature German team, made a difference. The result does not reflect our performance considering the number of counter attacks we had and we hit the bar/posts 4 times.
Carlos comments:
In our last game the team showed the improvement made during the week. I am very pleased with the improvement of the girls during the week regarding confidence. I am now working on a project to develop this team for the next 4 years. Well done girls for the 8th place, the best position ever for England Ladies.

Beth Cook comments:
First half was good with good defence and lots of chances. Second half did not start so well but managed to pick it up by the end.

Rachel Joy comments:
Good performance in the first half by all. The continuous pressure and Germany’s superior fitness caused us to suffer during the second half but none of us gave up.

Dave Fothergill’s comments:
The girls had a good attitude keeping their heads up all way through the games. We found it hard to be competitive during all of the game due to fitness and reaction time. We need to work on our fitness and I hope all the girls can commit to the fitness programme given by Carlos, to be carried out on weekly basis.

President’s comments:
It was a privilege to be part of the “Team” in Japan. All the ladies gave their all on the rink and behaved impeccably off it.
They were superb ambassadors for English Roller Hockey and should all be very proud of their achievement.