England 5 USA 2 (Half Time 3-0)

A consistent performance in the last game saw us finish 11th out of 17 teams, which was an improvement from last year’s World Championships where we finished 13th.

England’s first half performance was one the best in this competition. The players followed all their instructions received during our tactical meeting. Our defence was great on man to man pressuring all 4 players on our half rink and our ball circulation in attack was very good. We scored 3 goals, but it could have been a lot more.

In the second half the team again showed tiredness and our game was not as brilliant as in the first half, but we still controlled the game. Now was the time to start rotating the team and although we conceded 2 goals, we still created a lot of opportunities but only managed to score 2 more goals.

Goal Scorers: Owen Stewart (3 goals), Jon Taylor & Sam Kay

Considering all the problems we had during our preparation for these Championships, where players could not commit for different reasons I always believed that the team is more important than individuals. We progressed with the players who showed the commitment to play for England and we managed to have a motivated team to travel to Italy. The players showed a good team spirit off the rink and then they performed very well during the games which helped England gaining more respect from other countries.

Finally would like to emphasise that our team won 3 games and lost 3 games of which 2 were against the teams that finished 3rd and 4th in this competition.

Final Positions

1- Spain

2- Portugal

3- Chile

4- Italy

5- Germany

6- Argentina

7- France

8- Switzerland

9- Colombia

10- Angola

11- England

12- USA

13- Uruguay

14- Holland

15- South Africa

16- India

17- Australia