Six members of the Leicester Tigers Wheelchair Rugby team helped Great Britain win gold at the 2019 Four Nations Wheelchair Rugby Invitational last month – and Tigers head coach Darren Matthews wants more success.
Matthews, alongside Tigers colleague Rob Tarr, has been involved in the Team GB set-up for a number of years supporting head coach Paul Shaw. Tigers team mechanic Jonathan Roach also joined up with the squad for the Four Nations.
Tigers Gavin Walker, Jamie Stead and Nick Cummins all represented GB last month claiming a gold medal following their 49-47 win over host nation USA.
Attention now turns to the 2019 International Wheelchair Rugby Federation European Championships in Denmark between August 3 and 12, and Darren is keen to keep up momentum on the international stage.
“It’s an incredible achievement and something I’m really proud to be a part of,” he says. “We are a squad that expects to win against these teams and together we have developed a culture and an identity that wants to be world class, and now we are seeing the results off this hard work.
Darren’s Tigers squad picked up back-to-back Division One league titles this season and the hard work continues as the boys prepare to take on France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and hosts Denmark.
“We are straight back into a training camp so it’s back to work preparing for the European championships. We are a big target now so we need to go and enforce our dominance in Europe.”
“We need to keep up this performance and standard. At this level, games are always going to be very tight, the games we lost all went into extra time and that’s how we expect every game to go.
“Injuries are always a worry but we trust the depth of our squad. We proved that by our rotation and belief in our players, and showed real relentlessness in our style of play.”
Supported by club partner Häfele, find out more about LTWR by clicking below.
