England Indoor Performance Director’s Log – September 2025

This is a periodic update in my role as Indoor Performance Director for Volleyball England. I laid out the high level priorities under which I’m operating in my initial post.

Continuing on from my last update, it’s been a busy period for the England national teams.

U22s in European Championship qualification

Both the England U22 teams played in their first ever Euro qualification tournament in July. The women traveled to Slovakia where they played the hosts as well as Poland. Israel was also in their group, but they had to withdraw due to the conflict happening at that time. This resulted in a forfeit victory for us. Not the way you’d prefer to win, but you never know if those ranking points will make a difference from a seeding perspective down the line. The other two matches were 3-0 losses. Not unexpected given our physical and experience shortcomings. There were some bright patches of play, though.

The men went to Italy where they also had Denmark and Ukraine in their pool. Again, all three matches were losses, but they weren’t without some positives. Most notably, the guys took a set off Ukraine, who won the group. They also had good periods of play against Italy. I think everyone would agree, however, that they didn’t play their best against Denmark in between the two. Maybe that’s because they’ve seen Denmark a number of times over the years in NEVZA U17 and U19 tournaments.

Global Challenge

Also in July, we sent a group of U19 women to Croatia in the Global Challenge. This was the first time ever entering that tournament for an England team, though individual players have competed there in recent years. All in all it was a good experience for everyone who went. We can see it becoming an annual fixture, though we need to see where they eventually fall out with their age groups.

Nordic Cup

In late July/early August the Senior men went to Denmark for the Nordic Cup for the second year in a row. The played Norway and the France U22s alongside the host Danes. Although they were missing probably their top OH, who will play in the 1.Bundesliga this year, they generally had a good tournament.

The team started with a 3-0 loss to Norway, but with the first set going 28-26. If memory serves, they were never that close in any set in last year’s edition. The next evening they took Denmark to five sets, ultimately falling 15-13. Unfortunately, they played France the very next morning on a short turn-around, and never really got it going. Still, the coaching staff was quite pleased with how the team is progressing in how they want to play.

August Juniors camp

Last weekend we held the U17 and U19 zonal championships squad selection camp (see below). It ran over 3 days and was the last event for the foreseeable future at what’s been our national training center, as we’ve moved our center of operations to Loughborough University (also where our office is located). It was bitter-sweet handing in the keys when I left at the end of things on Sunday.

Coming off camp, the coaches put forward their selections. An official panel meets, after which players are informed of the decisions. Then, the teams and coaching staffs are publicly announced.

Off-court work

There are two big projects we have in mind (from an indoor perspective) to get underway this time next year – ideally. One is what we’re calling Talent Zones. Think of them as a regionalized feeder system for the U18s. The other is a residential national academy. That would cover athletes in the last two years of school before university in the UK education system (ages 16-18). We’ve done a bunch of work mapping out what needs to happen over the next 12 months. Now it’s about implementation.

Upcoming

The big thing over the next few months will be the annual U17 and U19 NEVZA Championships in October. This year the U17 tournament will also be a first round zonal qualifier for next Summer’s Euros. The winners will advance straight into the main draw, while 2nd place move on to the second round of qualification in April.

We know the U17s will have a limited field of just Denmark, England, Finland, and Sweden competing for Euro places. The U19 participants have yet to be announced at this writing, but rumors there also suggest a smaller than normal field. We will see.

On the Senior/U22 front, there’s a new development this year intended for their benefit. The VE Competitions team have left about one weekend per month free in the league calendar. This will allow the squads (at least the domestic players) to come together for training. We’ve also collaborated with Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland on having those sorts of open weekends in common across all our competition calendars to allow our teams to play friendlies, do joint trainings, etc.

Looking further out, in my last update I mentioned getting FIVB funding for some national team coach development. We’ve now got a pair of people lined up to do that for us – 1 on the beach side, and 1 indoor. We’re currently working on plans to run a combined event with the two in early June.