England’s best heading to Nottingham for 2021 Nationals

After a very competitive Elite and Development National Touch Series concluded in Oxford, attention now shifts to Nottingham and the 2021 Nationals, which will be staged over the next three weekends.

Six regions will be represented in the Men’s and Women’s Opens, with five in the Mixed Open, and over the course of six 40-minute matches in the space of two days we will find out who will be leading the way at representative level.

It has been two years since the last Nationals, which were dominated by the South-East, with the Sharks winning the Men’s and Mixed titles and the Taipans winning the Women’s.

The South-East Sharks had also won the 2018 Men’s and Women’s trophies – with South-West Saxons the Mixed – but heading into the 2021 tournaments the North-West are looking well placed to challenge and potentially regain the Men’s and Mixed titles they won in 2017.

Wigan Touch Warriors won the Elite NTS, with NQ Rebels coming second, and Manchester Chargers and Manchester-based PFT Touch were both in the top four of the Development NTS. Crewe and Nantwich Blaze are also well represented in the selections, not least those players who won Golds with England in the 2019 Junior Touch Championships.

None of the other regions should be discounted, either, with the Midlands teams likely to be dominated by Cambridge and Nottingham, who have gone from strength-to-strength over the last few years and produced a host of England internationals themselves.

Saturday’s games tap off from 10am, with three rounds of each tournament taking play until around 5:30. The Sunday action starts at 8:30am, with the finals starting at 2:30pm with the Mixed Open, then the Men’s Open at 3:30pm and the Women’s Open at 4:30pm.

CLICK HERE to see the full schedule.

Field 1 will be live streamed throughout the weekend, which you can watch via the home page of this website!