Gallery Nine ... Day 2, and it's all over till next year....

All the results are in and the disappointments can start to be pushed to the back, for the winners it'll be something to savour until next years defence of their title... for us it's been another hectic and frought event, gathering all the information, especially pictures, for your pleasure. We trust you have enjoyed the pictorial coverage and remember... you don't get anything like this, ANYWHERE else in the world... we hope to continue provide coverage similar to this for many years to come... assuming I can keep my sanity!

Left & above: The man of the moment, Guido Nullens, who acheived something no other angler has... two championship titles in the same period. He's joined by two other Belgians who swept the board with an outstanding display seldom witnessed...

... and the team of the moment, Belgium, who put together a package which crushed France over two days. This is the fifth time Belgium have won the European Championship since its inception and team manager, Roland Marcq (holding cup on right) can be justifiably proud of his countrymen's achievement. Note: Roland was somewhat dismissive of his teams chances going into the last days match... talk about trying to put you off the scent!

Above: Silver medallists France looked to be coasting after day one, but ran aground against the great tactical plans of Belgium. Despite that, they did enough to keep the silver position... I doubt whether that will be enough to console those who'd expected more from this classy home side?

Above: The Bronze medallists, England... what can you say about a side that comes back from the dead to take a medal? Everyone's favourite going into these championships, including Belgium, England completely got it wrong on day one and finished down the field in 8th position. They got their heads together on Saturday evening and re-worked the game plan to jump over the backs of five teams to take bronze... that's why they are feared and respected throughout Europe... they have the individuality to improve the collective... and their double-headed management team are something else!

We spoke to the two Mark's who gave us some forthright explanations:
Mark Addy was the first to outline the basic English strategy, “the week had started well with all the all team catching between 8lb and 19lb of skimmers, bream and catfish, along with the odd mullet, something our sea anglers target rather than the match guys. Although the weather proved changeable we’d found that the fish were comfortable feeding in about 3.5 to 4 metres of water, which in general was between 15 to 35 metres out, dependent on where you drew. Most pegs didn’t carry anywhere near that depth at the maximum pole range of 11.5 metres, so any team attack would revolve heavily around slider and Bolognese rods. Our groundbait mix would prove crucial in order to maximise the potential of the venues bream and silver fish population, which the team felt was the key. It was felt that to target the mullet, which ran past the 2 kilo mark, would be fraught with problems, as they were notoriously mobile and could turn up literally anywhere. These would be dealt with on an ad-hoc basis, so any angler seeing signs of one around him would make as much noise as possible with hard balls of groundbait and would then hopefully tempt them into their pegs. Unfortunately it seemed our approach brought us the small fish required, but not the points-winning bream which we found in short supply.”

Mark Downes then went on to summerise the whole performance saying, “our initial feed and top-ups were wrong, as they allowed too many small fish, especially the ‘cats’, to overpower the swim. So for the final day we needed to re-think our strategy and we decided to change our first main feed to a heavier mix, without cloud, but with plenty of particles like joker, caster and chopped worm for the bigger fish. We would then top up regularly with the same. While this worked well for the first two hours we found the plan went wrong in the last hour when we should have cut back on all the particles, which is what the cats seem to home in on. We should have just topped up with a plain heavy mix for the bigger fish. Having said that, it would still not have got us further than bronze.” “Considering our position after the first day I believe the performance our lads gave to gain bronze was incredible. It’s a totally different ballgame whenever we travel abroad… we don’t have alien species like catfish and mullet at home, yet we’re expected to win every time.” He gave praise to two of the recent additions to the squad, Darren Cox and Steve Hemmingray, saying “I’d like to give special mention to both Darren and Steve. Darren joined us last year but didn’t get to fish until today when he finished 6th in section, a superb performance from him and once again Steve shone.”

The England groundbait mixes:
Main feed day one: Terre de Riviere, Gros Gardon, Fine Carp
Top up day one: Terre de Somme, Lake, bit of Terre de Riviere.
Particles: Litre joker, litre casters, 1/2 litre chopped worms.

Main feed & top-ups day two: Terre de Riviere, Gros Gardon, River.
Particles: Same as day one.

Some inpromptu moments....

Above: England's joint manager, Mark Addy, (holding small trophy) makes an approach to Belgian team coach Roland Marcq to see is he's up for doing a trophy swap. Obviously Rolands' having none of it, so Mark throws in Steve Gardner as a sweetner! We can't confirm yet whether the deal went through or not... we'll let you know after the WC!

Above: Three content Belgians, Frans Schoubben who was on running duty, Eric Di Venti and coach Roland Marcq.

Left: Four happy Belgians... the three individual winners with their coach. Eric Di Venti was obviously looking as though he needed a glass of strong Belgian beer!

Newsflash....

Smithers pulls big time!

Below: The top three teams gather together.

Below: and finally, two late entries........