Tomorrow the Great Britain Men’s and Women’s squads will be jetting off to Pajulahti in Finland for the 2017 IBSA Goalball European Championships. They will be up against some of the best players and teams in the world, fighting to qualify for the 2018 IBSA Goalball World Championships (which is guaranteed with a top 3 finish). The competition will be taking place from the 18th to the 22nd September.  This comes after both teams gained promotion to Euro As after the Women finish in first place and the Men in second at the Euro B Championships in Porto, Portugal last October.

 

The Women’s squad remains unchanged from the dominant and undefeated team that won the European B Championships last year. In the Men’s squad, there is one addition to the team who also won promotion last year having finished as runners up, with the return of London 2012 Paralympian Michael Sharkey. To find out more about the squads click here.

 

Both of the teams are very excited about playing against some of the best teams not just in European Goalball but World Goalball and, in the words of GB’s Kali Holder “giving them a good challenge”.

 

We would like everyone to get behind the GB teams and send them their messages of support. We will be providing regular updates via Twitter and Facebook. There will also be a live stream available for all games which can be found on the Event Website, we post this on our Facebook page before each GB game.

 

The GB Men are in Pool A with Turkey, Czech Republic, Germany and Ukraine. The GB Women are in Pool X with Turkey, Israel, Sweden, and Germany. Here are their pool games with the time of the games in GMT:

 

Monday 18th

8.40: GB Women vs Israel

12.10: GB Men vs Ukraine

13.20: GB Women vs Germany

16.50: GB Men vs Turkey

 

Tuesday 19th

8.40: GB Women vs Sweden

12.10: GB Men vs Germany

15.40: Great Women vs Turkey

16.50: GB Men vs Czech Republic

 

Click here for the full schedule.

 

Let’s get behind our teams and show our support! Don’t forget to use the hashtag #ImBehindGBGoalball