ITALY 2011

Preparation involved a practice session at Pwhelli – which the sea angler magazine attended. Photos and narrative should be in next issue. Lots of bream and a good team spirit developed.

Travel to Italy:- To Heathrow to stay in hotel before early flight, apart from Franco getting lost and us all nearly ending in the same beds! The rest was ok.

Pisa airport – the start of chaos, 40’C, and 3 rod tubes not arriving – but they were collected by me the next day. Accommodation for us for the week prior to the Competition was in caravans (busman’s holiday for me!) which turned out to be perfect for our needs, simple and comfortable and cheap. A stones throw from the leaning tower of Pisa.

Practice fishing:- bait costs were approx £20 per day to practice. Scad, Mormora and Umbrina were main species caught – not electric but steady with all of the team catching.

Into Event:- Hotel first class, staying with the Jocks and Paddies! However event was absolute chaos and badly organised – the worst I have been to in 20 years. No paperwork, poor translation, constant changes, transport problems (there wasn't’t any!) and nobody really in charge. I could go on a lot more but I have settled a bit since then.

Peg draw done, off we go! Matches 8pm till 12am (later changed to 8.30pm till 12.30am) but not allowed on the beaches until 7pm. Fishing 10 feet (if you were lucky) in front of sun loungers and late evening holidaymaker's, with the stewards who were pegging the beaches ending up in disputes and near punch up with cafe owners.

Fishing was poor to good – it was very peggy. We did ok practice day, but there was no result paperwork to compare any of the days – total disarray!

We progressed steadily with us never being far away from the top 3, with Wayne and Joe shining above ending the last day in 7th and 4th place individually. As a team we went into the last day in 4th equal position on points, but alas no luck as is our story on the last day with 2 of the team leading zones until the dying minutes, to drop to fourths.

However we still managed a credible 5th overall with a well-deserved France winning and best of all we beat the English! Our crowning glory was a resounding performance by Wayne Magilloway to achieve 3rd in the world for a bronze medal, and Joe ended up 10th to retain his no 1 ranking again – we are still a force to be reckoned with!

A few highlights during the event:- for a start we could have been back at our hotel about 1’ish but it was usually around 2 as they had me detour the streets to see the ‘ladies of the night’ who had plenty of clothes (NOT!) to keep them warm! Wayne did try to co-erse me for his position in the team by shutting the boot lid on my head (didn’t work but there really was no need anyway!), and it was definitely a bonus to have Franco there, or we would have never ended up with the right toppings on our pizza’s – he can speaka the lingo!

Roll on next year – Holland, France and England.