September 13th/14th – Belle Vue, Manchester
1 to 4pm on Saturday and 10:30am to 1:30pm on Sunday, both with 12 players.
October 11th/12th – Kenilworth School
11:30am to 2:30pm on Saturday with 17 players, 10:30am to 1:30pm on Sunday with 18 players.
Over the 2 trials, existing players from last season teamed up with a total of 9 additional players new to the FIMBA GB W50s set up. What an excellent showing!
Assistant Coach Matt Stone as well as Coaching Consultant/Team Manager Mal Gander joined us in Manchester for the first trial. The weekend’s training plans were designed to be a competitive mix of drills and game situations to establish players suitability for the squad. We were immediately impressed by the effort players applied throughout as well as the fitness levels on display, clearly indicating that all had been working on their games and fitness programs over the off season.
A few players were unable to attend last weekend’s second trial due to illness however it was very promising to see so many attendees despite the earlier than usual start time. We kept the set up the same as the first trial to allow us to be consistent with our reporting especially with so many players new to our set up. We were so impressed with how the sessions ran and I personally feel that the way the mix of existing and new players were able to gel so quickly on court in various scenarios created one of the best trials I’d been involved in and was a credit to all involved.
Video recording equipment was set up by Matt to capture what turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable and very competitive weekends. Recording the session was purely to aid the coaches to review player performance in more detail, which has proved invaluable as it has given us a third eye so to speak picking up player attributes that we would otherwise have missed.
The attendees have generally provided great and useful feedback for the sessions with most layers expressing a desire to be involved in some way with the W50s set up throughout the season.
We therefore look forward to the weekend of 22nd/23rd November where we shall be running our final trial of the season in Leicester. It is our intention to announce the teams for the GB and wider Training/Masters squads before our final training session of the year in Kenilworth over the weekend of the 13th/14th December. We shall be joined by the W55s for a combined session on the Sunday which we look forward to immensely.
Phil Gander
Head Coach
FIMBA GB Masters CIC W50s