England Under 20 team is in Bassano-Italy to participate in the World Championship

England Under 20 Team:

1- Sam Cayley (Peterborough)
2- Tom White (Herne Bay)
3- Peter Marshall (Farnham)
4- Sam Kay (Middlesbrough) Captain
5- Rupert Charles (Halifax)
6- Jon Taylor (Kings Lynn)
7- Sergio Hutson (Peterborough)
8- Owen Stewart (Middlesbrough) Vice-Captain
9- Grant Bradfield (Norwich)
10- Jamie Williamson (HBU)

Head Coach – Carlos Amaral
Manager – Val Conroy
Assistant Manager – Martin Conroy

The competition starts today 27th September and will finish on Saturday 3rd October.

17 countries are taking part in this championship with a late entrance from Uruguay. The teams are split in the following 4 groups:
Group A: Spain, Colombia, Germany, India & Uruguay
Group B: Portugal, Switzerland, Angola & Holland
Group C: Argentina, France, USA & Australia
Group D: Chile, Italy, ENGLAND & South Africa

We arrived in Bassano on Friday 25th and we checked in to our hotel around 21:30 hours local time (Italy is 1 hour ahead).
The next morning we received a new calendar with few changes and giving us few hours notice to play our first game on Saturday versus Italy at 20:00 hours instead of Sunday versus Chile at 16:30 hours as stated in official calendar sent to all countries a week ago. Also, the organisers made a mistake putting Uruguay in to group D instead Group A as per CIRH rules.
Therefore we decided to write a protest to present in the delegates meeting on Saturday 17:00 hours, this protest was read in English and Spanish and was accepted by all the delegates as well as CIRH committee. We are now back as we should be and our first game is today Sunday at 16:30 hours against Chile who are currently seeded 4th in the world.

The spirit of the team looks good off the rink and now we are looking forward to the competition although we have a hard group stage playing seeded 4 Chile and 5 Italy as well as South Africa with most of the players are Portuguese.

Carlos Amaral