Macclesfield News - written by local people

And the winner is... WILMSLOW LC (ENG - N)

THE 2008 ELF CLUB CHAMPIONS - WILMSLOW (photo by john irwin) Wilmslow Lacrosse Club beat Jizni Mesto in a wet and wild final 15:12 and takes the first ever European Lacrosse Federation Men's Lacrosse Champions Cup home to the North of England. Congratulations! Hampsted beat Hamburg 9:3 in the game for 3rd place. Everyone had a lot of fun, and we hope the Cup is now firmly planted in the European Lacrosse calendar. We look already forward to next year! [Fabienne Erbacher]         ELF Men's Lacrosse Champions Cup ~ PIX ONLINE pix by meike and ken... fullsize upon request ken@hamburgwarriors.com thanks again to all for a great event and congrats to the champs WILMSLOW!! .... Links zu dieser News: pix day 1 : http://www.hamburgwarriors.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=380 pix day 2: http://www.hamburgwarriors.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=381 elf_champcup08_001.jpg elf_champcup08_002.jpg elf_champcup08_003.jpg elf_champcup08_004.jpg elf_champcup08_005.jpg elf_champcup08_006.jpg elf_champcup08_007.jpg elf_champcup08_008.jpg elf_champcup08_009.jpg elf_champcup08_010.jpg elf_champcup08_011.jpg elf_champcup08_012.jpg   Get the first scoop on Euro Cup's Round Robin Games! The first game on Saturday started at nine, which retained Rotterdam Jaguars from reaching Wilmslow’s alertness that early in the morning. Rotterdam lightened up the mood in their Light-Blue jerseys under the grey sky, but Wilmslow’s stick skills outperformed the Dutch, who proved rather one-sided lacking lefties. Nevertheless, Clive Perrin, secretary of Wilmslow Lacrosse Club concluded “it was a competitive game”, which ended 22:1 for his team. On a higher scale of competitiveness was the following game of the Hamburg Warriors (in Gold) against Hampstead. With many new and young players on the Golden team, the Attack could not show enough penetrating power. Although the Defense lacked communication in the beginning, they confidently handled a 3-men-down situation toward the end of the game and rode well. But Hampstead’s experienced Attack moved the ball too quickly for the defense to adjust, and the game ended 9:3 for England. Kyle Hawkins, Head Coach of the Warriors, promised “We can play better and we will”. A match that would be repeated in the finals on Sunday was Jizni Mesto vs. Wilmslow. The Czechs shot hard and defended aggressively. The English team ran like Tasmanian devils and fed like nesting eagles. Their shots were mostly low, where the Czech goalie happened to be strong. Jizni Mesto’s Jakob Novacek scored 4 goals. Pepa Ondracek shot the 7:6 goal behind the back but the game tied three minutes later by Wilmslow's Mark Reynolds. Although Jizni Mesto had less possession, they made fewer stick handling mistakes. All in all, the young English team was rushing the offensive game too much, resulting in many missed passes and a poor shot selection, and missed opportunites that lead to a tie where the team felt they could have clearly won it. Rotterdam were again dominated by an English team in their second game. With Captains Mike Noonen, who played in the NCAA final four in 1994 with Johns Hopkins, and James Mitchell, who won the NCAA in 1994, 1996 and 1997 with Princeton, Hampstead had lined up two extremely experienced players paying tribute to the high profile team with many Canadian and English national team players on the roster. Rotterdam, who played very fair games the whole day, was beat 15:2. Jakob Albrecht, Hamburg's second goalie, played the next game against Wilmslow. He held an ample amount of Wilmslow's trickiest shots, but Mark Reynolds and Jonathan Aspinall hit the back of the net often enough. Benjamin Wunderlich and Michael Mante in the Warriors defense carried out some great clears but overall the defense was again not adjusting to the pace of the English Attack. David Mallmann and Glenn Sanman scored goals for Hamburg and the match ended 11:2. Another goalie entertained everyone in the fifth game, when a bewildered Jaguars keeper found a ball in his pants from a spectacular save. Jiri Mikulka scored four goals for Jizni Mesto. Rotterdam's Rutger van Benekum played very good one-on-one defense while Adam Death from Canada scored two goals for the Wild Cats. They finished 14:3.