Watsonians women in Europe this weekend

Watsonians head for France for the EuroHockey Indoor Club Trophy tournament to see if they can go one better than last year when they narrowly missed out on promotion to the top flight.

Then the Scottish champions needed to beat Polish side Brzeziny by three goals or more to secure promotion, they won 2-0, but the Poles gained the bonus point and that was enough to frustrate the Scots.

So can Watsonians do it this time? This is what coach Keith Smith had to say, “Last year’s event in Porto was so tight – one goal more in either of our promotion pool matches would have tipped the balance in our favour in terms of goal difference, but it wasn’t to be. Obviously we’d like to improve on that this time round, especially knowing we’re playing for our own place next year, but we’re under no illusions about the challenge that faces us.”

To start with the Scots have to come in the top two in their group in order to gain entry to the promotion pool. Standing in the way are host side Iris Hockey Lambertsart (France) and Gaziantep Doruk SK (Turkey) on Friday and then Railway Union (Ireland) on Saturday morning.

So what does Keith think of the challenge overall? “With the addition of ATHC and hosts Lambersart, the Trophy will likely be even more competitive this year, and it’s hard to predict who will place where in each pool. All we can really do is try and focus on our own game, and if we can deliver the same levels of performance that we did last year, we’ll give ourselves a good chance.”

On a positive note, Watsonians travel to France on the back of a successful domestic campaign in which they retained their indoor title in some style.   In the final they demolished rivals Clydesdale Western 8-1 with Tabitha Peck getting a hat-trick and Milly Berndes-Cade scoring a couple.    And all that was done without their international players who were concentrating on the crucial World Cup Qualifier in India.

Keith remarked: “It was a bit of an odd league campaign – we played some great stuff at times, but lacked a bit of consistency to really build a sense of momentum. Thankfully it came together nicely in the final against Clydesdale Western, and hopefully we’ll carry the confidence from that performance into the tournament in Lille.”

So Keith Smith will rely on the players who won this season`s Scottish championship to bring success in Europe.

 

Recent posts:

Back to all news
Back to top