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State Cup round-up, Queensland edition
England’s Men’s and Women’s Open teams had the first of their back-to-back State Cup weekends on the Gold Coast.
The Men had seven round-robin matches, and while there were losses to the Australian teams there was the satisfaction of having an 8-4 win over Japan to savour. Meanwhile the Women, who lost their international match to Japan 5-3 along with the clashes with the Australian teams, finished their campaign with a 4-4 draw with Brothers.
“We lost to Brothers in our first game so to tie it up in our last game shows our development over the last three days,” said Women’s Open captain, Emily Rona-Roper. “It’s been a steep learning curve but really positive as well.
“We’re lucky that we’ve got another week out here and another comp, and there’s lots of learning and development from Gold Coast to take into next week. We’re all excited to take the learnings and keep developing. New South Wales play a bit of a different brand of Touch to what we’ve experienced in Queensland so it’ll be interesting to see how we go.
“But as we know it’s about next year when the World Cup comes to Nottingham!”
Men’s Open captain, Dom Tripp, also says that the team is taking away plenty of pointers from the Gold Coast.
“We came here with the goal to grow and become a better team, and we’ve definitely done that,” he commented. “We’ve built game on game, and while there have been a few ups and downs in there we’re confident that we can take the lessons, particularly because we’ve got eight new boys who didn’t play at Euros in the squad.
“We’re in a good space going into next week. We want more of the same; we’re not getting hung up on the outcomes on the game, but on what we can learn as we build towards the World Cup next year.”
The two teams head south down the Pacific coast to Port Macquarie for next weekend’s New South Wales State Cup, where they will be joined by the Women’s 35 team.
Next summer sees England host the Touch World Cup for the first time. 2024 will be the tenth Touch World Cup, and early indications are that it will be considerably larger than the previous event in Putrajaya, Malaysia, in 2019.
The University of Nottingham’s Highfields Sports Complex will host teams from across the globe, entrenching the venue’s place as the home of international Touch in England, following the 2018 and 2022 European Touch Championships and 2023 Atlantic Youth Touch Cup.
Partnership opportunities are now available, both for the event as well as England’s national teams. Email Chris Simon via chris.simon@englandtouch.org.uk for more information.