Team England Nations Coarse Angling Team have returned to home soil just missing out on a podium place after finishing in fifth place in the 67th FIPSed Nations World Championship, with the podium positions going to France, Italy and Hungary.

Serbia hosted this World Championship over 2nd – 9th September on the DTD canal, Novi Sad, with 32 nations competing.

Mark Downes and Steve Sanders led the team assisted by Darran Bickerton and the team consisted of; Will Raison, Alan Scotthorne, Steve Hemingray, Sean Ashby, Des Shipp and Matt Godfrey.

Despite great practice sessions which saw the England team watched by dozens of other teams spies the DTD canal turned sour as the initially prolific skimmers were replaced by hordes of tiny catfish.

Sections D and E was just a catfish race with the alien species averaging 40 gms, while A, B and C sections averaged a tiny 7.6 gms.

Day one saw England finish with 20 penalties led by team debutee Matt Godfrey, who made the most of England’s only end peg winning with 8.045g.

Mark Downes, Joint England Nations Manager stated “Going into day two saw Sean Ashby replace Alan Scotthorne and again the team put together another 21 penalties to finish in fifth place out of the 32 teams fishing. Matt finished fourth overall beaten into second in his section on day 2 by only 500gms.

France the catfish experts easily dominated the match with 2 x 10 penalties for a solid performance winning the gold medal. All the team put in a lot of hard work and it was disappointing to just miss out on the medals this year. Next year we will be in Italy in September fighting to come back for a podium finish.”

Top 5 team results;
1st France 20 penalties(56,850g)
2nd Italy 26 penalties (55,110g)
3rd Hungary 32 penalties (51,889g)
4th Belgium 38 penalties (50,171g)
5th England 41 penalties (50,265g)

Top 5 individual results;
1st Alan Perko, Croatia
2nd Alexandre Caudin, France
3rd Maxime Duchesne, France
4th Matt Godfrey, England
5th Diego Da Silva, France