Great Britain’s Women’s U19 and U17 squads have discovered their group opponents for this summer’s Women’s 19 and Women’s 17 EHF Championships.
The draw event for the second-tier competitions took place at the European Handball Federation (EHF) headquarters in Vienna, Austria on Wednesday.
Women’s U19
The Women’s 19 EHF Championship 2021 will see 23 teams compete in the two parallel and equal value tournaments in Skopje, North Macedonia and Chieti/Pescara, Italy on 10-18 July.
Great Britain’s U19 side are one of 10 teams who will play in North Macedonia and find themselves in preliminary group A alongside Iceland, Belarus, Poland, and Finland.
The other five teams in Skopje are Netherlands, North Macedonia, Faroe Islands, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, who will play in preliminary group B.
“This is a great opportunity for the players to test themselves and learn,” said Bill Baillie, Head Coach, U19 GB Women to britishhandball.com. “All the players and coaching staff look forward to competing at this level with every game bringing us a different challenge.
“Iceland and Poland will be favourites to top the group and both will be a tough challenge - we have some previous experience against Iceland, but our primary focus will be on Belarus and Finland.
“We will prepare as well as we can under the current circumstances due to COVID-19 which has seen all of our planned camps as well as the players club seasons cancelled,” added Baillie, who will announce his final squad of 16 in May.
“Despite this, building on our silver medal at the Leça Tournament in Porto last February (2020), we will be creative with our preparation and plan to have camps twice a month in the lead up to the event with a holding camp in either Croatia or Serbia just before.”
For more information visit the EHF website https://www.eurohandball.com/en/news/en/reigning-champions-hungary-face-norway-in-women-s-19-ehf-euro/
Women’s U17
The Women’s 17 EHF Championship 2021 will see 22 teams compete in the two parallel and equal value tournaments in Tbilisi, Georgia and Klaipeda, Lithuania on 7-15 August.
Great Britain’s U17 side are one of 11 teams competing in Lithuania and were drawn into group A alongside hosts Lithuania as well as Spain, North Macedonia, Finland, and Kosovo.
The other five teams in Klaipeda are Iceland, Poland, Belarus, Turkey, and Latvia who will play in preliminary group B.
“The players, coaching staff and I are looking forward to the challenge of playing some very strong handball nations,” said Matt Durber, Head Coach, U17 GB Women to britishhandball.com.
“Despite the major disruption to our preparation plans due to COVID-19, the players have been working hard keeping fit as well as working through a series of online tasks such as analysis work and tactical preparations.
“We held our first on court training session earlier this month at Loughborough University, and although we have a long way to go, it was great to get started.
“Hopefully, our preparations will start to gain some momentum and we can go into the competition off the back of a good few months of training.”
For more information visit the EHF website. https://www.eurohandball.com/en/news/en/hosts-montenegro-take-on-denmark-at-women-s-17-ehf-euro/
