The Dublin Riggers run by former St. Francis Xavier Xcelsiors player Sean Gibson has selected Nick Theabeau (STFX) and Jared Esson (ACA) to travel with the team to Prague this weekend. The opportunity arose a few months back to present these players with an opportunity to travel overseas and join the club. “Nick and Jared were key players this year for their respective teams in the inaugural season of the MUFLL, and working with Smitty to find the right guys should pay dividends. I expect them both to contribute well and be a big part of our effort in Radotin”, Coach Gibson said.
The Riggers also in there first year will be looking at improving on their third place finish in October in Rotterdam where they met Radotin two times and will be grouped with again in the preliminary round. The team had good success in Rotterdam, bringing home the third place trophy and having six players selected including the ‘green’ team captain Sean Gibson and All Star MVP Joe Caulfield.
“Nick and Jared were key players this year for their respective teams in the inaugural season of the MUFLL, and working with Smitty to find the right guys should pay dividends. I expect them both to contribute well and be a big part of our effort in Radotin”, Coach Gibson said.
“The tournament format combined with travel and who is in our group will make things very difficult but, I expect most of the guys from Ireland are used to these kind of tournaments and I think the addition of the guys from the US and Canada will greatly increase our chances of coming out of our group in the first two spots. However, to really get used to the pitch here they need to have cleats that fit the lacrosse fields.”, adds Gibson.
To qualify from there group the Riggers will need to win one of the two games from there and depending on their results could end up playing last years runners up Jizni Mesto who annually competes for top spot with rivals Radotin in the Czech NBLL.
“This is a good showcase for us Irish boys, we don’t get to play much box here in Europe as it hasn’t developed to the extend of the field game yet but, with tournaments like this every year it would be hard to imagine it staying on the back burner for very long. Hopefully as the sport of lacrosse in general grows throughout Europe more and more of these tournaments will begin to pop up and give us more opportunity to bring players from Ireland, Canada, and the US over to play. I was hoping for more of an Irish contingent this year but, with the World Games coming up in July most will be saving for that event. But, I am very excited for this team and could see us doing very well.”, Gibson said.
The Riggers will open the Jimi Dlouhy Cup playing little known Sparta Praha Friday at 1230 (CET). Then following the opening ceremonies will be playing the tournament favourites Radotin at 2030 to determine the rankings for the second round of the tournament. You can get more details about the tournament from the Radotin website at www.lcc-radotin.cz.
Once the tournament is completed Nick and Jared will be joining the Dublin Lacrosse Club for a couple of field training sessions before heading back to Canada. For more information about Lacrosse in Ireland or Dublin check out the Dublin Lacrosse website