Subject: Senior Handball NT

Well - we're halfway through the World Qualifiers and today's win vs Belarus gives us a 3-1 record and places us on top of Group 5 with six points. We're in very good shape as we start the second half and I'm hoping a couple more wins will give us the luxury of lowering our match intensity and saving a bit of energy for the next round.

Worth mentioning as well - we've currently ranked 12th in the world. Impressive if you consider we only have 73 Handball teams.

Teams like Sweden (ranked 11th) have 147 teams and France (ranked 13th) have 344 teams.

Damn, How did we pull that off! (We, as in not me because I did not contribute any players)

We have a pretty solid track record in the World Championship Qualifiers:
S3: 4-1-3 (Qualified)
S4: 6-1-1 (Qualified)
S5: 5-0-3 (Qualified)
S6: 4-0-4 (Did Not Qualify)
S7: 5-1-2 (Qualified)
S8: 3-0-1 (Ongoing)

Looking forward to seeing what we can do with our U21 and U19 teams. I've been scouting all top Cdn talent for 3 seasons so hopefully I haven't missed anyone.

Damn man, your hardcore! Glad to have you running the show though, certainly paying off.

Another win today vs Chile. We're sitting pretty at the top of our group with three games to go

We handled Serbia (#3 Ranked in the World) for an easy win and guaranteed our advancement in the next round. They played VH vs our H. Two games vs Denmark and Belarus left in the qualifiers. Time to save some energy and get some playing time for our back-ups

Guessing the win will place us in the top 10 in World Rankings (we're currently at 11th)

Nice!

Congrats XaviesCrown for an excellent first round and here is to Canada cracking the top 10. Hope you stay there.

Looks like we've locked up first place in Group 5

Pos Team GP W D L GF:GA GD Pts
1 Canada 6 5 0 1 182:151 +31 10
2 Serbia 6 3 0 3 173:178 -5 6
3 Denmark 7 3 0 4 181:193 -12 6
4 Netherlands 7 3 0 4 182:201 -19 6
5 Belarus 6 2 0 4 166:161 +5 4

Serbia might be able to tie us but I believe our Goal Differential will give us the top spot unless we really fall apart in the last two games.

Everyone else is in a dogfight to lock up 2nd and 3rd and advance.

Played Low for our last two games and managed a tie vs Denmark and a close loss vs Belarus. Saving energy was more important than wins as we finished 1st in our group for the Qualifiers.

Our group as been defined for the Finals and it looks like we've got some stiff competition for the 4 spots that advance based on world rankings.

Latvia #8
Russia #3
Brazil #36
Ukraine #18
Bulgaria #11
Canada #13

Last year 3 wins got us into the playoffs. 2 wins was good enough in a few divisions with a little luck.

We kick things off vs Bulgaria on Halloween. wish us luck

luck

Update on the World Championship Finals

Game 1 = We lost to Bulgaria 32-28. Tough lost as they were one of the three teams we'd have to battle for 4th. Hurt that we had them in the 1st half but couldn't finish.
Game 2 = 31-28 win over Brazil. Must win that we made happen. Much closer than comfortable.
Game 3 = 34-28 Lost to Ukraine. Ouch - another team we had to battle for those last two spots. 1-2 record means are chances of advancing seriously jeopardised.
Game 4 = 31-26 win over a solid Russia team. Wow! We're back in Business

So we're 2-2 with one game left against #6 overall Latvia. Win and we're in. Otherwise we need to hope for Bulgaria to beat Brazil or Brazil to beat Bulgaria by 5+ (more if we take a pounding from Latvia).

Fingers crossed for tomorrow's game.

Note: All players get a nightly training bonus for World Championship play. The Finals equate to 5 nights of bonus training. If we can stay alive throughout the playoffs that would be an additional four nights of bonus.

We lost today to Latvia 26-30. Brazil ended up winning which was not ideal. However it looks like they finished with -7 and we finished with -6 so I believe we're off to the playoffs by the thinnest of margins