Stircrazy wrote:

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Lots to look forward to

Evans / Skupski 1-6 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (8-6) Mahut / Roger-Vasselin

The draw for the Final Eight takes place on Tuesday, but, by winning Group B, it means Great Britain will play the runners up of either Group A or Group C.

So that's either an Italy side which could include the world number seven Jannik Sinner and the world number 18 Lorenzo Musetti or a Serbia team featuring a certain 24-time Grand Slam champion in Novak Djokovic.

Massive matches to look forward to, whoever GB is paired with in the event in Malaga, Spain from 21-26 November.

 

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 I see why it can't be Oz but why can't it be Finland?

Coup Droit wrote:

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Evans and Neal blown away in their interviews, obviously

And Leon too, calling it 'bonkers'

But I liked his key bit of captaincy:

I ran over to the DJ at one point and told him to put on some banging tunes at every end change, he said. We needed a bit of help and thats normal.

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 Brilliant interviews. When asked about being exhausted after three fraught matches and a cliff hanger finish, Naomi suggested "we all had to sit through it", to which Smith replied "at least you had somebody to talk to.." Fab stuff.

Smudge226 wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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telstar wrote:

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Stircrazy wrote:

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Lots to look forward to

Evans / Skupski 1-6 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (8-6) Mahut / Roger-Vasselin

The draw for the Final Eight takes place on Tuesday, but, by winning Group B, it means Great Britain will play the runners up of either Group A or Group C.

So that's either an Italy side which could include the world number seven Jannik Sinner and the world number 18 Lorenzo Musetti or a Serbia team featuring a certain 24-time Grand Slam champion in Novak Djokovic.

Massive matches to look forward to, whoever GB is paired with in the event in Malaga, Spain from 21-26 November.

 

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 I see why it can't be Oz but why can't it be Finland?

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 Just the way the draw is structured. The Group A and C winners are positioned to places 1 and 3 in the QF draw, the B and D winners into positions 8 and 6 - effectively seedings.

 

So the A and C runners up will be in the lower half to avoid playing the A and C winners until the final. But they are drawing for which of the A and C runners up GB will play. 

So each half will have a team from A, B, C and D. 

Hopefully that makes sense!!

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 Really tricky potential ties. Italian no.2 are better though and there is a chance of a leggy Djokovic approaching 37. Evans has beaten him once. I think we'd prefer Serbia but first we'd need to get to the dubs by winning one of the singles. If Draper fully recovers and puts in a good end of season, he could be the key.

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 A lot can happen in two months, injuries can happen for them and us, players choose not to play for whatever reason. 

Whichever of those two teams we play, first singles (Sinner maybe or Djoko) looks like a loss so it will come to second player and doubles. So yeah, maybe Serbia would look more beatable for sure in that situation. Either way, both teams will be tough cookies for our guys to play against. 

And before we start picking teams, we need to see how the season develops for our guys - Leon picked a provisional squad last time of 9 (Andy, Cam , Dan, Jack and Liam as singles options and then Jamie, Joe, Lloyd and Neal in doubles as specialists plus the option of Dan etc). I presume he will pick those 9 again and keep an eye on form over the Asian swing and Indoor season and see where that takes us.   

Magic

https://x.com/josemorgado/status/1703600395740659775?s=46&t=Bvtg7M7Hc8gNhFe9rQksUw

Oh, priceless, just priceless