intosport.com – the blog

It was all pretty straight forward stuff for our netballers at the weekend when the England U17 and U19 sides dominated the play at their individual European Championship tournaments.

The U17 girls journeyed to Belfast to take on Ireland, Wales and Scotland in the hope of living up to the tag of favourites and retaining their title. The girls got off to a difficult but good start when they defeated Wales in a fierce contest 39-37 but that would be the end of the difficulties as they went on to show their class in the remaining matches beating Scotland and Ireland 64-15 and 63-20 respectively. It was a great performance from England; to top if off their captain Yasmin Parsons was voted ‘Player of the Tournament’ by her team mates and fellow competitors.

It was all very emphatic from the U19 team as well as they made light work of the competition in their tournament in Loughborough. They had an extra match to play on their way to the championship as, as well as playing Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, the team from Malta had also made it to the finals.

It was the Maltese who were first to be pushed aside by England as they hit their stride early and recorded an 88-11 opening win. Next up was Northern Ireland but the result was in the same ruthless fashion as England marched on to an 81-12 victory. It seemed there was no stopping the English girls as they reclaimed there title, finishing off the tournament with wins against Scotland 71-19 and Wales 60-17.

Congratulations then to both sets of players as they showed great ability and professionalism in their performances alike. Such quality in youth bodes well for the future of England netball.

Filed under: Internationals, netball by tomt
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Did that really just happen?

Before the weekend, the idea of losing a Davis Cup match to a country that possesses just three world ranked players was unthinkable. Surely British Davis Cup couldn’t stoop lower. But it did, Great Britain succumbed to a fifth successive Davies Cup defeat. And if you think I’m being over-dramatic, to give it some perspective, it’s something that hasn’t happened for more than 100 years.

It came down to the final set, in the final game, but Dan Evans wasn’t able to hold his nerve. He lost 6-7 7-5 6-0 2-6 6-4 to Laurynas Grigelis a player ranked 269 places below Evans at 521. The defeat means Britain now face a play-off match in July against Turkey to avoid slipping down to the lowest possible level in world tennis.

For everyone involved in British tennis it’s a horrible situation to be in and a huge contrast to the successes of Andy Murray’s run at the Australian Open a couple of months ago. Despite Murray’s brilliance, it seems tennis in Britain is having real problems converting its budget, and personnel effort, into success on the court.

Hopefully now the only way is up and this run of defeats will be the low point of the improvement that we are all desperate to see over the coming years. With arguably the world’s best tennis tournament and a wealth of history in the sport Great Britain should be a lot higher than it currently is and hopefully the future will see us back up where we belong.

The only way is up. Assuming that is, we can overcome the nerves of a relegation dogfight against Turkey.

Filed under: Tennis by tomt
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Some of the intosport.com team travelled north to Liverpool last night to lend our support to the England Netball team in the first of their three February test matches against Australia.

Now, we’d have been forgiven for not expecting a winning result from the England team – it’s been almost 30 years since they managed to overcome the Australians in a competitive test match – but after 4 high intensity quarters of action, the England girls came out on top 41-40. Some massive performances from many England players – Sara Bayman in the centre, and Mentor and Mikloma dominated the defensive D. The final few minutes were very nerve wracking with England letting a 4 goal advantage slip back to a single goal in the last minute. The deserved victory came not a second too soon and Liverpool’s Echo Arena erupted at the result – 29 years of defeats finally ended!

Tomorrow we roll onto the Trent FM Arena in Nottingham and all the pressure on the Aussies to make amens for last night’s defeat – it should be a tasty encounter! If you live nearby then get yourself down there and give the girls your support!

Filed under: General by cmiles
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Earlier this week I was having my lunch break in front of my computer and, as I often do, going through the various news and sport pages on the BBC website and something caught my eye quite suddenly, ‘Teacher aims to Swim the Atlantic in Global Triathlon’. I thought, ‘That can’t be right’ so I clicked on the article and was amazed that that was exactly what the article meant, no mistake nor misunderstanding, this man called Dan Martin was planning to swim across the Atlantic Ocean during an attempt at a global triathlon.

As I read on two questions arose in my mind, how is he planning on doing it and is he mentally all there? After I read the article over the next couple of days Dan started popping up all over the place and I found his adventure all the more intriguing. So I got in touch to find out more about his audacious challenge. You can read my interview shortly in Sport Talk at intosport.com.

Filed under: General by tomt
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Really disappointed! A massive shame! If only Roger Federer was human maybe then it would be a level playing field. It was a tough watch but unfortunately as I’m sure we all saw at the crucial times Andy Murray just didn’t have enough or maybe Roger just had too much. A straight sets victory for the Swiss 6-3 6-4 7-6 is a bit harsh on our boy but nothing can really detract from the sheer brilliance of, I feel, unarguably the greatest player to ever pick up a racket.

There were just a few times though when it looked like Murray could work his way into the match especially in the third when he squandered a series of set points however being as he was already two sets down maybe that the was the blind optimist in me crying out! There is something about watching a player you support lose to Roger Federer that creates the most confusing and desperate conflict of emotions within one’s self. On the one hand you squirm with frustration at your player doing everything right but just not being able to close out the points and eventually throwing in an error to which you place much more emphasis and blame than is needed but then on the other hand you seem to have all that frustration temporarily extinguished when play from another planet comes out from the Swiss and you through arms up and say “too good…..just too good”.

It was both heartbreaking and inspiring to hear Andy’s words of anguish during his post match speech, something at times I feel can be a bit cruel to the players. I mean after just having your hopes and dreams dashed again would you really want to stand up in front of thousands of people and a worldwide TV audience of millions more and describe how you were feeling and pass on thanks to everyone? No you’d want to crawl into a hole for a month and cry! And cry Andy did as he summed up his feelings and the mentality of a beaten finalist with the simple but meaningful words of “I’m done…..sorry”.

Filed under: General by tomt
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