With men’s indoor regionals this weekend, we’ve got some previews for you! Here Sasha Squires and Tanny Karimi talk about the huge Yorkshire and East Midlands region.
With the last men’s regionals just over two years ago, ambitions to perform well this weekend will be prominent. Many of this year’s experienced players will have been freshers the last time they played so it will be interesting to see how they have developed during COVID and whether seedings remain accurate. There are five nationals spots available, three to Div 1 and two to Div 2 so there will be a number of first teams who miss out.
Showing consistency across all divisions, Loughborough 1 and Sheffield 1 hold top positions in the table and it is predicted they will continue to perform highly in the men’s division as they did in the mixed division. Impressively, Loughborough have managed to field five teams this year so it will be exciting to see the development of their less experienced teams across the weekend. We’ve even heard rumours that there are bets circulating around whether Loughborough’s fifth team will beat their forth team.
Leicester 1 are currently seeded third after an excellent performance in 2019, but with many of that team having now graduated, will they be able to hold their seed and perform as well as they did in the last open regionals?
Nottingham Trent exceeded expectations at mixed regionals so there will be pressure for them to perform highly this weekend. With the addition of some ladies to their team, their tactics may vary to other teams which could provide them with an advantage over other teams.
In the middle, we have York who have a history of narrowly missing out on nationals so we can imagine they will be playing extra hard in order to secure a spot at nationals. York have also entered two teams so it will be interesting to compare the performance of their first team to their second team, and maybe even see a play-off between the two!
Unfortunately, COVID has meant that quite a few teams are not playing this year including Sheffield Hallam, Bradford, Hull and De Montford. However, we have seen the addition of Leeds Beckett so it will be exciting to see how they perform as a new team across the weekend and whether they up their seed.
We are really excited to see how all the teams connect and develop and whether there will be any surprises in game play across the weekend!
Prediction
- Sheffield
- Loughborough
- Leeds
- Nottingham
- Loughborough 2
- York
- Leicester
- Huddersfield