Between 29th March and 1st April our Great Britain’s Women squad competed in Malmo, Sweden at the Malmo Lady Inter Cup 2018 against 9 nations who have qualified for this year’s World Championships. GB were in a group with current Paralympic Champions Turkey, USA who claimed bronze at Rio 2016, Canada who are ranked 7th in the world and Sweden who are the host nation for the upcoming World Championships.
With a slightly different squad to the one that competed at last year’s European A Championships, the team demonstrated some world class performances and competed at a high level although being the only nation in the competition not to have qualified for the World Championships.
In the round robin stage, GB put in a brave performance against Turkey but were over powered by their attacking force and lost 11-3. Next up was the host nation Sweden who GB beat at last year’s European Championships. This year was no different with GB narrowly edging out Sweden 4-3. The second day of competition saw GB take on Canada first and a very strong second half performance resulted in GB winning 9-5 after being 5-5 at half time. The final match in the round robin stage was against USA, with the team that wins progressing to the semi finals. Although GB took the lead and leading at Half Time, USA fought back to draw the match resulting in USA progressing on goal difference.
GB finished 3rd in their group which meant a match against London 2012 gold medallist Japan for 5th / 6th position awaited them. Although GB demonstrated a strong performance the final score was 4-0 to Japan. GB finished 6th overall in the tournament which is a fantastic achievement against teams who will be competing for the first opportunity to qualify for Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games at the World Championships in June.
The following players were selected for this competition:
Georgie Bullen (Fen Tigers)
Laura Perry (Fen Tigers)
Sarah Leiter (Cambridge Dons)
Antonia Bunyan (Northern Allstars)
Karina Lang (Winchester)
