London 2012 groups announced for GB’s wheelchair basketball teams

With less than 220 days to go until the start of the Paralympic Games in London a major step was taken last night when the GB wheelchair basketball teams discovered their opposition for the pool stages of the tournament.

The IWBF Paralympic Draw took place at the Waterside Theatre in Aylesbury, with GB men’s captain Simon Munn and GB women’s player Amy Conroy on hand to assist in making the draw.

The Women’s side GB choose to come up against old rivals the Netherlands and avoided Gold and Silver Paralympic Medallists, USA and Germany, respectively who were drawn together in Pool B.

Women’s Pools

Pool A: Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Brazil, GB

Pool B: China, USA, Germany, France and Mexico/South Africa

In the men’s side of the draw, GB men will come up against Paralympic newcomers Colombia and Paralympic silver medalists Canada.

Men’s Pools

A: Spain, Italy, USA, Turkey, Australia, South Africa

Pool B: Germany, Canada, Colombia, Poland, Japan, GB

GB’s men head coach, Murray Treseder, said after the draw “There is no easy side to the pools, it's very tough, and there are 11 very good teams who have qualified for the Paralympics. We have five opponents who are very good teams and we would never underestimate our opposition. The likes of Turkey, who have been a sticking point for us in recent years and we would never underestimate them. We will take each game as it comes and just concentrate on the first game.”

GB women’s head coach, Garry Peel said, “There’s never an easy game in a Paralympics and whichever pool we went into was never going to be easy. I’m confident we have chosen the right pool and I’m confident about playing the likes of Australia and Canada the main two teams in the pool. We were trying to avoid the USA at the moment because we seem to not be able to be beat them at the moment but you never know in the Paralympics, anything could happen.”

At the start of the evening the draw of the U22 European Championships that will take place at Stoke Mandeville Stadium in July was also made:

Pool A: Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Great Britain

Pool B: Turkey, France, Spain Sweden