Englands U15’s win Bronze at World Championships
Team England under 15’s won the Bronze medal in a memorable debut in the FIPS-ed World Youth Championships in Ireland, while England’s Sensas U20’s and Drennan U25’s narrowly missed out on bronze medals of their own as both teams finished in agonising fourth place.
Ireland hosted the 2017 FIPS-ed World Youth Championships over the weekend of the 12th and 13th August. The event was held at Inniscarra Lake in Cork and for the first time in recent memory, Team England were competing in all three categories as Joe Roberts led the newly formed under 15 team while Steve Sanders and Mark Downes led the Sensas U20’s and Drennan u25’s respectively.
10 nations were represented in the U15 category and it was England’s debut in the competition and the squad lacked any experience of international fishing however, every member of the squad had progressed through the Angling Trust’s England Talent Pathway programme which had given them access to high quality coaching, focused around international style fishing.
The species caught were predominantly roach and perch in some very deep water varying from 1.5 metres to 7 metres which made the fishing varied from peg to peg. The teams had to fish the slider on a lot of the pegs which three of the squad had never fished before, this made their final result all the more impressive! France led after day one with a total of seven points while England’s inexperienced team had a fantastic day and ended in second place, scoring 15 points while Hungary and Poland both ended the first day with 19 points. England entered the second day full of optimism however, a bad draw in B1 which was only 3-4 feet deep, was cause for concern and it proved to be costly for England as the team ended up with 19 points, enough to tie for second place with Poland, however the Bronze was awarded following count back on weight. The French team again performed brilliantly, adding just five points to their total of seven on day one giving them the Gold medal with 12 points.
The England U15 squad consisted of Josh Newman, William McCranor, Billy Kirk, Ryan Kennison and Joshua Paling. Joe Roberts, England U15’s Manager said “I am delighted with the result and winning bronze. All five of the team have progressed through our Talent Programme and have gone on to win a medal on the world stage and this is testament to their skill, hard work and dedication to their sport. The youngsters and their parents who came to support them were all fantastic and it was a pleasure to work with them all. I’d like to thank Mick Gibbs and Jason Kirk for their support to myself and the team. We are actively looking for a sponsor for the team and we hope we can go to Italy in 2017 and go one or even two better in the medal stakes. If there are any companies out there looking to support our elite young anglers then please get in touch with us.”
