Euros preparation starts in Australia for Men's Open team

England Touch are taking their World Cup preparation overseas by entering a Men’s Open team to compete in the New South Wales Touch Association (NSWTA) State Cup in Port Macquarie next week.

NSWTA State Cup is one of Australia’s premier Touch competitions with over 200 teams competing. The England team will be competing in the Men’s Open A division which presents a great opportunity for the team to compete against some of the best touch players in Australia.

Coach Ben Smith is looking forward to the opportunity it presents.

“We won’t be gifted wins over in Australia and therefore our game play, skills, fitness and character are going to be thoroughly tested," he said. "It is such a terrific opportunity for us to learn and I’m very thankful to England Touch, the Federation of International Touch, Touch Football Australia, and NSWTA for supporting our entry into the tournament. The lessons we’ll learn from competing against such high-quality opposition will help us accelerate our development ahead of European Championships next year and the World Cup in 2019.”

The squad will get together on the Sunshine Coast near Brisbane in Queensland on this coming Sunday evening, ahead of three days of training and trial games against Redlands Touch and the QLD Broncos before travelling down the east coast to Port Macquarie. The tournament itself starts on Friday, December 1st and takes place over three days. England are drawn in Pool B of the Men’s Open A division where they will play seven 30-minute pool games over the first two days of the tournament, aiming to qualify for a finals series on the Sunday.

The Men’s Open Squad for NSW State Cup are all English born, with six of them coming through from our junior ranks, which is great testament to the development work we are doing at the youth level.

SQUAD

1 Vaughn Meredith

2 Will Serocold

3 Alex Scott

4 Clark Hobson

5 Dom Tripp

6 Jordan Melling

7 Toby Phillips

8 Jake Melling

9 Jon Weston-Stanley

10 Dan Mayall

11 Max Howard