by Bob Fromer

Vienna, Austria: July 30 -- Twenty-four hours of rain that only stopped at mid-afternoon today forced the cancellation of the final two games that the GB Junior (Under-19) Women's Fastpitch Team was due to play in the European Junior Championships here today, against Romania and Austria.

Tournament organisers, headed by Britain's Mike Jennings as Tournament Commissioner, have been battling with waterlogged fields and the need to prioitise the top half of the tournament, where the medals and places for next year's Junior World Championships in South Africa will be decided.

So the GB Team, with a 4-2 record overall, was declared winner of the losers' bracket round-robin and finished the tournament in ninth place, a ranking four places better than in the last European Junior Championship in 2008.

Bad Luck

Nevertheless, this was a bitterly unlucky tournament for the British team.

Thanks to a difficult draw and then a punishing opening day schedule, four wins against two losses, one of those losses by a single run to a team that will probably finish in the top four, was enough to condemn GB to the bottom half of the tournament, where no one here thought they belonged.

Having the final two games cancelled just added insult to injury, since the one thing this GB team needs, like GB fastpitch teams at every level, is to play competitive games. Lack of them is one of the main reasons that GB teams always take a while to find their feet in tournaments. But the experimental format in this tournament meant there was no time to do so, and losses to the Czech Republic and Spain on Day 1 were enough to put GB out of the main tournament with five days still to go.

Having the final two games cancelled was also desperately anti-climactic for the five players here who will age out of the GB Under-19 group after this event: Ali Parkerson, Steph Pearce, Kelly and Linda Randall and JJ Rushworth.

European Softball Federation Executive Board members have been saying all week that their new format needs to be reviewed, in part so that it doesn't disadvantage precisely those countries, like Great Britain, that are improving their programmes and trying to climb up the rankings.

But the truth is that the format is well suited to the majority of teams -- those perennially at the top or perennially at the bottom -- so whether anything will be done to keep GB from risking the same fate in 2012 remains to be seen.

For the Record

GB's results in the tournament were as follows:

Opening Round-Robin

Czech Republic 15, GB 0

Spain 6, GB 5

GB 6, Croatia 3

Losers' Bracket Round Robin

GB 2, Belgium 1

GB 11, Israel 1

GB 13, Serbia 2

Meanwhile....

Meanwhile, in the top half of the tournament, the opening round-robin produced the following second-round groups:

Group E

Netherlands

France

Czech Republic

Russia

Group F

Italy

Slovakia

Spain

Germany

Games to determine which four of those eight teams will get to the semi-finals began on Wednesday but were brought to a halt by yesterday's downpour, and only resumed at 4.00 pm today.

There have been some interesting results so far (Spain defeated Germany but then lost to Slovakia and Germany defeated Italy), and the semi-finalists right now are a bit hard to predict.

Watch this space....