Team England’s Disabled squad finished with a fantastic second place team win in the 21st FIPSed World Disabled Championship from 14th – 15th June on the Scolmatore Channel near Pisa, Italy.
Team England Disabled Team consisted of; Mark Russell, Mark Eves, Roy Wells, Alan Chadbone, Stefan Gent, John Weeden (manager), Dick Clegg (2nd captain) and Ricky Martinelli (delegate).
After three days of intense practice on this very difficult venue which was governed by tides coming in and out, causing high levels of salt to enter the water at various times, which meant the team having to approach this as two different matches in order to master the prospect of fishing what was going to be a challenging Championship.
When the flow went left towards the sea it was a catfish and carp match using tactics very similar that Team England use on home soil. By having the right groundbait mixes, plus sticky maggots and gravel, plus loose fed corn they soon came to terms with it and had cats to 9lb plus and carp up to 13lb. The set ups and tackle including the right elastics for the job, hook size and lines were sorted and total concentration was needed. When the salt tides were in and the flow was incoming it turned into a mullet match, which for Team England was a fish that they never fish for at home, so they had the greater difficulty to find out how to catch them. Mullet proved to be a very difficult species to catch, but the whole team worked very hard and came up with a way to catch enough to compete against the other teams. Alex Clements sorted a groundbait mix that was absolutely perfect which the team used to good effect.
Top 4 team results;
1st Italy 22 penalties (35,963 g)
2nd England 38 penalties (37,124 g)
3rd France 40 penalties (23,291 g)
4th Czech Republic 41 penalties (26,030 g)
Top 4 individual results;
1st Radim Kozlovsky, Czech Republic
2nd Francis Daguise, France
3rd Oscar Ferrari, Italy
4th Giovanni Bottazzi, Italy
John Weeden, England Disabled Manager stated “I don’t think we could have done any better than we did as the Italians were on home turf and fish for mullet all the time. We were over the moon with the silver medal win and I would like to thank everyone involved, the team and all the helpers that went out with the team: Tony Troth, Alex Clements and Colin Wedgebrow for all their hard work. Also thanks to Drennan International, Sensas and Daiwa who helped support the team and to Peter Laughton who generously financially supported the team and helped out at the World Championship.”
“I believe we also go up in the ranking now after two bronze medal wins and a silver in the last three years, so here’s hoping for gold next year.”
The Angling Trust would like to offer their congratulations to the team on such a fantastic achievement in this World Championship.
