British Lions Tour Australia 2013 (full story https://wepf.org/)
The British Lions Pool Squad head out to Perth, Western Australia on the 9th October to compete in a 5 test series against the home nation, returning on Tuesday 22nd.
Only Gavin Lomax experienced the last journey down under in 2011 when the first ever Lions squad had a narrow victory against the Aussies, winning a play-off to decide the series. Since then the British Lions have visited South Africa in 2012 winning the test series by a large margin and now they return to face the might of Australia. Although we have seen teams from Australia attend all of the World Championships which have been held in England since 1993, they have never managed to bring their full squad but in their own backyard, it will be a different proposition.
The Australian National Finals commence on 14th October in Perth which is where the WEPF was founded 21 years ago,and it will be at that very same venue the British Lions will compete in the 2013 test series. This year is also the 30th anniversary of the AEPF National Finals.
The current British Lions squad is one of the strongest teams we have sent abroad to compete, full of top level internationals and managed by Steve Mills who recently led his England team to become World Eightball Pool Champions. Steve has Scotland’s Matt Brannan as his captain for the test series, another player who has experienced the tensions of being a Lion, he was in the successful 2012 South African squad.
Ben Flack, Darrell Bareham and Giuseppe D’Imperio join the squad as current England Internationals whilst Temujin Dixon is recognised as one of the rising band of new stars who are coming into the sport. The seventh squad member will be from Wales who have, as yet, not completed their qualifiers.
The Lions will play five test matches against Australia at their National finals, not an easy task but with the strong squad we are sending, hopefully we will see Matt and Steve hoisting the trophy when the series is complete.
Steve Mills
Manager |
Matt Brannan – Captain
(Scotland) |
Ben Flack
(England) |
Darrell Bareham
(England) |
Gavin Lomax
(England) |
Giuseppe D’Imperio
(England) |
Temujin Dixon
(England) |
Wayne Smith
(Wales) |