EUC2007, Ireland v Belgium - First victory for Ireland's Woman

2007 was a landmark year for Irish Women's Ultimate, for the first time we had trials and a selected squad. We trained intensively and followed a fitness programme from February to August putting in the hard yards and going out with the belief that we could get results! Liz Schaffalitzky (Captain) and I (Vice-Captain) designed the training programme for the season focusing on playing the basics well, working on our long game and playing to our strengths - a fast running game!

Having attended the previous World and European Championships there was a hugely different attitude and mentality about this Irish Women's Team and the buzz was mighty! We played a very strong Germany in our opening game who beat us 17-5. Next up we played the Belgians.

Having never played the Belgians before we didn't know what to expect, they had not entered a tournament as a national team since 1995. For me this game is a bit of a blur...the win seemed like it was always going to happen as soon as we stepped onto the pitch....we didn't win it in a glamourous way but it was certainly a team performance with our D game really lighting up. We finished the game as victors 17-9. There were no wild celebrations and we quietly carried on, this victory was a long time coming for the Irish Ladies and this was only the beginning of that sweet taste - we went on to beat Latvia, France, Austria and Russia convincingly. However we took our eyes off the prize in our last game for 9th place and lost 16-10 to France. Our performance at these Championships were unprecedented and the loss on the final day drove us on to compete at a high level again the next

I really see EUC11 being a MASSIVE year for the Irish Women's Team and I can't wait to try out to get a chance to pull on the green jersey again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZuEFABNg44