Tournament Report by Rob Liscoe

England Elite were the winners of the closely contested 2nd Ladies Home International held at Cardiff on Saturday 1st December at the Welsh Institute of Sport in Cardiff.

Matches were keenly contested by all the teams and produced some surprise results. The eventual victors could have been any of three teams right up until the last couple of games of the tournament, and even then it was a very close thing with goal difference being used to decide the eventual winners with a play-off only narrowly avoided.

Special congratulations are due to all of the U18 teams who demonstrated an enormous amount of strength, skill, and maturity in mixing it with the more senior teams and giving them a good run for their money. On a couple of occasions during the tournament we began to think we might have overdone it a tad on the handicap system we were trialling but by the end we were convinced we had it about right after all.

England Elite eventually triumphed for the second year but I suspect that there might be a little stiffer competition for them next year. Well done too to the England Squad who went away with the new Victor Ludorum trophy.

It has to be noted that England Masters conceded no goals all day - pretty impressive! (The 6 goals 'against' them were all handicap deficit). Any chance that Scotland and Wales will be able to field Masters teams to fill the gaps in 2002?

On top of the excellent competition we had BBC Wales filming above and below the water for a slot on the regional weekend sports roundup due to be broadcast on Sunday evening. I've yet to see the footage but hopefully one of the five people who said they would tape it will have managed to get the right channel!

My thanks go to Neil Dixon and all the referrees for a job well done, to Newport OC for the gulleys, to Colin Deller and Eryl Adams for timekeeping, to Keith Dunkinson for the award giving, to Fiona Buttrey for the BBC, to Pam Spencer and Wayne Jenkins at WIS for making life easy, and to all the coaches and players for being there.