Big assignment for Grange in Europe

Grange men travel to Terrassa for the EuroHockey League Ranking Cup this weekend with excitement as they face some of Europe’s top teams.

A baptism of fire as they take on crack Belgian outfit Waterloo Ducks in the opening round. The Belgian league is one of the most competitive in Europe and the Ducks are aspiring to take the title.

Win or lose Grange`s next opponents will be either Mannheimer (Germany) or Hampstead & Westminster (England).

The final classification game on Monday will be against either Post SV (Austria), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Three Rock Rovers (Ireland) or Club Egara (Spain).

We caught up with Grange manager Martin Shepherdson who gave his evaluation of the opposition.

“Waterloo Ducks are one of the top teams in Belgium and virtually full-time players which makes our job incredibly difficult, but we will give it our best shot. In the next match we will play either Mannheim (Germany) or Hampstead and Westminster (England) – again, two very top teams.

“We understand the difficulty of competing at this level and are looking forward to it.”

Grange have not played in Europe since 2019 due to Covid, and so this could be a real test for their younger players in particular. Then Grange played two games in Barcelona but they lost out to both Three Rock Rovers and Royal Beerschot (Belgium) and did not progress any further.

So Martin Shepherdson remarked: “Realistically we know we are up against some of the best teams in Europe so we hope to do ourselves justice and play to the best of our ability. We know the experience will be great for both our experienced players and our younger players.”

However, Martin Shepherdson did confirm that Grange had a full squad available for the Terrassa trip.

On the question of preparation for this venture into Europe the Grange manager said: “We would always like more preparation, but the split league has helped as we have played quite a few tough games recently. We have been playing well in spells in our recent games and have to lift the intensity and play that way for longer periods. We believe we can do that and be as competitive as we can be.”

Grange lie second in the table behind Western, but they are unbeaten in the Premiership since the restart after the winter break, and drew with Western in an eight goal thriller – so the domestic form is good.

They also have the league`s top striker in Fraser Heigh, and it will be interesting to see if the Grange youngster can display his lethal skills in front of goal on the European stage.

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