EC Team Preview – European Crusaders
AFL Europe Championships Team Preview – European Crusaders
Every three years the AFL Europe Championships take place for teams to assert their dominance and claim bragging rights against their European counterparts, as well as gain valuable 18-a-side match practice in the lead up to the International Cup the following year.
In the lead up to this year’s AFL Europe Championships in London we’ll be focusing on each team and previewing their chances of taking out the top prize.
In the final of our women’s team previews we are getting to know the European Crusaders a bit better.
What’s happened since International Cup 2014?
We formed the European Crusaders for this full format tournament; most girls on this team have never played for the Crusaders before.
Who’s in for AFL Europe Championships in 2016?
Crusaders is a team consisting of girls from more than a handful of different countries, hereunder France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Denmark. As many of the countries in Europe are not able to put together a full format team, we got the opportunity to play as a joint team thanks to AFL Europe. Our team consists of players who have never played before and players who have been playing for several years. We have an awesome team with many good girls with different strengths with different strengths we will try to utilize.
Crusaders have never played together before but is looking forward to play and have fun together as a team, hopefully showing the other women’s teams that we are to be reckoned with.
Denmark Valkyries Team Manager Cyril Marsault has been recruited to coach the Crusaders during the tournament. He will get a helping hand from Maria Falkesgaard who will be a playing team manager for the Crusaders.
AFL Europe Championships focus
The crusaders have never played together as a team before, but all girls have a great sense of teamspirit. We have girls of very different skill levels and therefore we would love improve during the tournament, however we now that we might have a huge challenge here. The strengths of the team are that all the girls are very committed to playing a full format tournament and that all the girls’ love playing footy. The weaknesses of the Crusaders is that we are very low in numbers and that we have never played together before.
Who has the X-Factor?
We have players from both the French and Danish national teams and they are always bringing their best play for tournaments. Furthermore, we have a strong list of British, Kiwi and Australian girls who shows promising notes on field. As this team is pure superstar quality, we do not highlight any one player but the team as a whole. However, we are looking forward to seeing Samara Warren play her first footy game and think this former soccer player will be a nice addition to the team.
Coaches thoughts – Cyril Marsault
”The Crusaders will enter the competition with less expectation to them than to the national teams. The focus on fun rather than performance, and the patchwork from different countries, might come as a disadvantage, but choosing to compete with such a team shows great motivation and courage from the players, which might just be the recipe to unexpected success on the field.”
Squad
- Maria Falkesgaard
- Amanda Teglhus
- Maibritt Jansen
- Claudia Kwok
- Alexandra Daley
- Lucy Henderson
- Coline Duquet
- Mathilde Combes
- Claire Pérez
- Lynne Wooldridge
- Rachel Gouldingay
- Rebecca Dickson
- Hayley ’The Noodle’ Canton
- Samara Warren
- Claire Messent
- Emma Lundaahl
