Friday 18th May

The Team England FF team for this year’s Spring Loch-style Home International on Lough Sheelin consisted of:

Martin Introna (Manager), Bill Rankin (Captain), Paul Angell, Sean Brooks, Steve Collins, Ian Donaldson, David Drake, Stephen Ellerbeck, Martin Greatbach, Kim Green, Mark Howard, Mark MacLeod, Colin Martin, John Stevenson and Mark Withyman.

Early reports are that Ireland won Gold with Keiron Thomas of Wales taking the Brown Bowl with 7 fish.

1st Ireland        34 fish        2076 points

2nd Wales        32 fish         2004 points

3rd Scotland     27 fish         1692 points

4th England      13 fish          788 points

Brown Bowl: Kieron Thomas (Wales)

H. Emyr Lewis Trophy: Frank Kelly (Ireland)

Full Results: iffa2012spring

Video featuring the victorious Irish side

TEFF Boat Manager Martin Introna comments, “Fantastic week despite our result but hey! Well done to all the medal winners! The England team with Captain Bill Rankin worked their socks off and the new caps (all 7 of them) including our reserve performed like seasoned internationals! We knew we needed to average 2 fish per man and were around that figure during our practice days…we did our best but were beaten by some great teams! Well done to home nation Ireland who closely won from a strong Welsh team effort followed by Scotland and England who absolutely worked like troopers and were a credit to TEFF. I’m sure some will rejoice in our position but let me tell you this, once you have sampled this type of fishing in the wonderful country of Ireland, please take time to consider how massively different it is to our heavily stocked reservoirs where in some cases you would bag up using bunch of keys tied to a hook…Ireland is all about the fishing…not the ‘catching’! We all made many new friends and will hopefully keep in touch. Stan Headley and I had a terrific time as newbie managers and learned a lot through our experience. Our guys took a good look at our spoon…I insisted…as it should be a long time before we have the opportunity again…we shall return!

Thanks to Crover Hotel for their fantastic service to our party and to Micheal Callaghan for all the organising and lastly to Lawrence Finney for the framed flies given to the managers, a complete star of a man!

PS, I would like to thank all my mates who are sending all the joke ‘spoon’ texts to me…as expected they are all English apart from one who shall remain nameless (Boo)…Love the banter! I give it so I have to take it ha ha! One thing is for sure, and I am positive I speak for the whole English squad, if we could do it all again knowing we would still come back with the ‘Spoon’…we would swim over!”

Martin adds “Massive thanks John Ball for all his guidance and help for me personally in making this a trip to remember”.