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Loughborough Students playing for England in Europe
Posted on 12/02/2009
Loughborough Students playing for England in Europe
Loughborough Students are flying the flag for England this weekend at the EuroHockey Indoor Club Trophy in Prague (13-15 February).
The students, who qualified to represent England by winning last year’s National Indoor Championships, will face teams from Italy, Sweden and Ukraine in the pool stages of the Trophy competition where promotion to the Championship is up for grabs for the winners.
A 12-strong squad, including Olympian Jon Bleby and a further seven of last year’s National Championship-winning team, has been named. Ireland international John Jackson and GB U21 player Nick Catlin return to the squad after missing the recent National Indoors through injury and international call-ups.
It is the fourth year Loughborough Students have competed in Europe. In their first outing Loughborough clinched promotion into the Trophy, then went on to finish third then fourth in their next two appearances.
Loughborough head coach David Ralph is excited to be back in Europe but warns the competition will be hard.
“The teams are all very close standard-wise so it’s going to be a tough competition,” he said. “We’ve played the Ukrainian team Kolos-Sekvoya Vinnitsa three times before but we haven’t met the others.
“To play in Europe is something different and it’s really exciting. You don’t get that opportunity very often so we’ve got to make the most of it .
“Most of the team have played a bit of indoor hockey this season, but we’ve not had a match since the national finals on 25 January. The other teams will have played competitively right up to the tournament, so it will be hard. It’s a different game, it’s more exciting.”
Loughborough open the competition on Friday against Swedish side Partille (12pm) and later the same day (4pm) they face Italian side HC Bra. Their final group match is against the Ukrainians on Saturday at 11am, with the knockout matches taking place that evening and on Sunday.
For live results log onto www.eurohockey.org