Serb national team delighted with west Cumbria welcome
By Martin Morgan
Last updated at 12:28, Thursday, 15 October 2009
The Serbian RL team have hailed their warm west Cumbrian welcome as they prepare for their European Cup opener in Ireland on Sunday.
Whitehaven and Serbian international Soni Radovanovic, front, at St Bees with Serbian team officials Jovan Vujosevic, Nebbojsa Sretenovic and Ged Stokes, head coach of Serbia and Whitehaven
The Serbs, coached by Haven boss Ged Stokes, have used St Bees as a training base this week. And team manager Nebojsa Spetenovic has been delighted with the reception from rugby-loving locals.
He said: “It’s great here, very quiet and very good for our preparations. The people are also very nice, and obviously big fans of rugby league. Anyone connected with it is their friend.”
Serbia will be massive underdogs against Ireland, who boast leading Super League and Championship stars, though that does not concern Spetenovic.
“We have no big illusions about winning the cup,” he added, in near-perfect English. “We are now in a learning phase.
“When we started out we played high-profile nations, such as Lebanon, with all their NRL stars, and France.
“But for about five years we haven’t played teams with NRL and Super League players, and we’ve just tried to progress and see how much we need to improve.
“Ireland are composed of a lot of big names, so we’ll see what we can do.”
Haven have revealed they plan to re-sign Serbian forward Soni Radovanovic for next season, after they manage to cut through the red tape that surrounds his return.
“Soni’s raw talent was identified through Ged’s Serbian links, after doing well in their national competition,” said Gary Hewer, who is doubling up as head of performance for Haven and Serbia.
“He came over here, initially on trial, which led to a contract, and he had three senior outings this year.
“And we believe he’s shown enough to be offered a new deal. With a thorough pre-season, he can be very much part of our plans for 2010. He’s still only a young lad, and there’s a lot of development in him.
“Give him time and he will be a handful. Next season he will be housed with one of our coaches, who has a young lad of a similar age. Soni needs a support package around him.”
Knowing West Cumbria this time of the year it definatly would not be warm weather training.
