fran leighton - water polo
| DOB: |
30th March 1982 |
| BORN: |
Rotherham |
For a full profile, please CLICK HERE.
Fran trains at the Manchester Aquatic centre and cites her finest sporting moment as winning a Commonwealth bronze medal in Manchester 2002 and has been representing Great Britain since 1996, starting her international career in the junior team.
photo gallery
january 2008 blog
The European qualification tournament in Hamburg was the key focus for the GB ladies, which saw us drawn in a very strong group with the Ukraine, Germany and Greece. The Greeks proved to be slightly too strong, but we played well providing us with a good platform on which to move forward for the rest of the tournament. The Ukraine were overpowered by a great GB performance leaving the decider – GB v Germany.
GB played a fantastic second half to the game yet were let down by an opening quarter where our slow start meant we were a number of goals behind. Although this loss was hard to swallow there were plenty of great performances and positives to come from this trip.
Back to domestic competition, it was the final weekend of the national league which saw Liverpool claim the national title. Sheffield with a young team won both their games that weekend finishing a creditable second narrowly missing out on a 5th title.
november & december 2007 blog
The first half of November we saw a continuation of heavy winter training with the GB squad. With the European championships just around the corner I was working hard at my shooting and the team was identify and practising the tactics that would see us play well in 2008.
November saw the ‘split’ of the women’s division one national league. With my team Sheffield through in the top half in second spot. The finals were scheduled for January so alongside GB training the Sheffield girls had one eye on some good results at the league finals.
December was a very busy polo month – with two club trips to play in the European club championships, our second trip to Hungary drew to an end a successful European campaign. With great wins in Porto we faced a tough series of games in Hungary against the best club sides in Europe. A great learning experience for the team as a whole.
Training right through the Christmas period we faced the French national squad in a series of friendlies where both coaches were keen to test tactics and squads. With the European championships fast approaching it was a great opportunity to fine tune skills and further match fitness.
Taking just a single day for New Year away from training we looked to a highly competitive month ahead.
october 2007 blog
October has been a great month. I am now almost back into full training, just missing one session a week now and managing to train fully in all the other sessions! So a massive thanks to all the staff at the EIS in Manchester who have worked with me for the last year to try and get me back in the pool.
The main emphasis is now on preparation for the European qualification in January. With this in mind we took a squad to Hungary to train against the Hungarian Senior & Junior National squads. This was a tough camp playing 8 games in 5 days and then returning home to play another 3 games in 2 days for our club teams. Hungary gave us the chance to work on match play which is hard to find back in the UK.
The Hungarian seniors are the former world champions so all matches played against the seniors were tough games for us, but gave us vital practice against a top team which is hard to find in the UK.
The games against the juniors were close and gave us a chance to practice our tactics and win a few matches.
On the club side of things City of Sheffield are current leaders of the Division 1 going into the last weekend before the league splits into two. This weekend we have our last game against the City of Liverpool. This will be a close game and could go either way. We are also off to compete in the European Club Championships in Portugal later this month.
It was great to be invited to Swimtastic again which took place last weekend to see the achievements and success made at grass root level.
september 2007 blog
The main focus from last month has been trying to regain my fitness levels after having so much time out due to injury.
It has been great to get back into training again and finally be able to train with the team as well. Training had to be progressive so for the first week I trained once a day, the second week alternate days training one session and then the next two sessions, then back to one again, the third and final week was back to two sessions a day. I am hoping that before Christmas I will be back into full training as at the moment I don't take part in the third session a day.
After the success of the team at the Europeans we are now looking to forward to the qualification tournament in January which will take place in Germany from the 2nd of January where we will face Ukraine, Germany and Greece.
We will be working hard over the next few months to improve our game play ready for this tournament in the New Year. In October our club season starts again which will be a great opportunity for me try and regain my match fitness ready for European selection around Christmas and to work with a lot of new junior players who have just made the move to our Sheffield A team for the new season.
july 2007 blog
Finally I am back in the pool training after having 16 weeks out of the water after my latest knee operation! I have now started my knee rehab with the physio’s and S&C guys from the EIS so I am in good hands as we develop my long term programme.
It has been a tough few months as the GB Senior Women’s team have been competing around Europe and obviously I have not been able to play.
The team travelled to Hungary, Slovakia, France and the Czech Republic in their build up to the European B Championships which took place last month in Prague, Czech Republic. The team kept me up to date with their success as they travelled around Europe. They won the tournament in Slovakia beating the Slovakian Senior team, Junior Dutch team, Turkey and the Slovakian Junior team. This was a great pre European tournament and it was used to get the team ready for the main competition just a few weeks later.
The girls got to Prague full of confidence after the successful competition in Slovakia. The girls won 5 out of their 6 matches only loosing to the French in the final game. It was a fantastic achievement, finishing second in the European B Championships.
This means we now qualify for the European A qualification Championships in January where we have the opportunity to play against two of the bottom two teams from the A’s. I believe we will be facing Germany, Greece and Ukraine.
The next month will be used to continue my knee rehab and hopefully come September be into full training and ready to start the domestic season with my club side….. fingers crossed any way!
march 2007 blog
The GB senior women and men head to New Zealand for the Southern Cross Water Polo Championships.
This tournament was held as a warm up tournament for those teams competing in the World Championships in Melbourne at the end of March.
In the tournament (only the second with our new Hungarian coach) we had a poor match against the Dutch and we were all disappointed with the result.
A positive was the ability of our team to pick ourselves up after the match and play a great game against the Germans tying at half time, then the Germans, whose strength showed through took the win.
Our final match was against the Kiwis where we went 5-1 down came back to take the lead 5-6 at the end of the second, the end of the third quarter was 8-8, however we lost 10-11 in the final few minutes of the game.
It was a great tournament especially as we had 5 new players in the team with a new coach. Hopefully this is now a platform for us to work and improve from ready for the European B’s in June.
I had a knee operation so I am in rehab and having physio at the moment so fingers crossed I am fit for the training camps and tournaments we have coming up over the summer months
I also attended the draw for the European Championships, which took place at the British Swimming Championships in Manchester. Great Britain will play in the Czech Republic in June and in our group we face France, Turkey and Slovakia.
february 2007 blog
I am currently in New Zealand and won't be back until the 20th March.
I guess for my February update would be that my club (Sheffield) won the British Championships for the third time. I think footage might be on channel M for those who can access this!
I am now competing in the Southern Cross Water Polo Tournament in New Zealand so I will up date on this next month.
january 2007 blog
We competed in Portuguese International Tournament playing against against Portugal, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden.
We finished second, which was a fantastic achievement as we have recently has a newly appointed coach, who aided the National Performance Director in his first week in post. We have a new team and have not competed together since April 2006!
My main aim for 2007 is the European B Championships which will take place in Prague in June - we want to finish in the top four.
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