The Meteors from the Great Britain Fastpitch League will be off to Italy this weekend for the annual European Men’s Super Cup, to be played at Nettuno, near Rome from 26-
31 August. where they will take on the top men’s fastpitch teams in Europe.
Twenty-one teams have entered the tournament, which will start with four round-robin groups of five or six teams.
Following the round-robins, which will take up the first three days of the tournament, the top three teams from each group will go forward to a twelve-team Super Cup group and the remaining nine teams will play for the ESF II Cup.
Both of these second-round competitions will be played with a double-elimination format, and in the Super Cup group, the winners from each of the first round-robin groups will get an initial bye. It’s a complicated format, but all teams will play at least through Friday.
Pool B
Meteors have been drawn in the only six-team pool in the initial round-robins, Pool B, and teams in Pool B will play one more first-round game than teams in the other pools.
The opposition, with three teams going forward to the Super Cup, will be Spectrum Praha from the Czech Republic, Nieuwegen Diamonds from the Netherlands, Hoboken from Belgium, SC Span from Croatia and Oslo Alligators from Norway.
Meteors will open the tournament at 9.00 am on Monday morning Italian time against a tough opponent – Spectrum Praha – and will play the Hoboken Pioneers from Belgium at 1.00 pm.
Players
Meteors are taking 12 players to the European Super Cup, including a large number of current or former players from the GB Men’s Fastpitch Team:
Amit Aswani
Damon Brown
Mason Bropckway
Neil Davies
Jorge Domingues
Ieuan Gale
Karl Hjelm
Ryan Martin
Josh Peat
Thomas Russell
Josh Stanley
Matt Tomlin
Robbie Robison, Head Coach of the GB Under-18 Women’s Team, will coach the Meteors in Italy.
Daily reports from the Meteors’ games at the Super Cup will be posted on the BSF website.