Great Britain U17 Men’s squad selected for European Championships qualifiers

Great Britain’s U17 Men’s water polo squad has been selected ahead of the European Championships qualification round in March.

A squad of 15 has been chosen to travel to Malta to compete in four games in as many days, from 16-19 March.

A total of 20 teams will participate across four groups, with two sides from each group advancing to the 2023 European Championships finals which will be held in Manisa, Turkey this August.

Those who qualify will join the eight teams who have already booked their finals place due to being the top eight ranked sides at the 2021 championships.

Great Britain have been drawn in Group D alongside Slovakia, Latvia, Poland and Malta with all of the groups matches being played across the four days.

To kick off their campaign, Great Britain will face Slovakia on Thursday 16 March before taking on both Latvia and Poland two days later.

They will then complete the group phase with a match against hosts Malta on Sunday 19 March.

‘A developing squad’

In preparation, the team have been in Romania to take part in a five day high-intensity training camp which was hosted by Team GB’s London 2012 Olympic Games coach, Cristian Lordache.

Both the competition and the training camp will give the young squad a valuable experience after missing out on a number of competitions in recent years due to the pandemic.

Swim England water polo programme lead, Craig Figes, credited the dedicated team and coaching staff ahead of the competition.

He said: “The squad has worked really hard over a relatively short period of time under the expert tutelage of Tim Dunsbee and his team.

“I know that selecting a team for this competition from the wider squad was extremely difficult for the coaching staff, which is a credit to all the players and how much they have developed.

“This age group missed some key milestones in their development due to Covid and although they face tough opposition in their qualification group, we know they will do their absolute best to try and qualify for the finals in August.”