Problem for Germany is the Heritage players like Keinhorst, Seibold, Danzey are the spine (1,6,9) and Germany rely so much on them. Off the field things are poor and it will show likely in the away games where Germany will miss the Spine. Having had the Domestic comp rescheduled atleast twice this year and only so far just 3 games taking place including a training weekend then the German players are missing out on valuable education and game time. The biggest problem for Germany is the structure of the board. The President is a yound lad (24 years old) who lives in London most of the time. The Development Officer has NO clubs developed and just relies on bringing in Union players like Jens Schmidt and co. The board has only a couple of people who actually do anything and most are still active in Union including the Development officer. This is for me a major concern. Germany are way behind Czechs, Malta, Norway domestically but because they can call on quality heritage players who pay their own way even from Australia then the National team is very strong. But in reality it papers over the cracks. The sad thing is there are some top people who do many great things like Bene Rehm for example who gives everything and managed to stop the German RU president trying to move the game elsewhere. Its just a shame that he is not supported by the members of the board. The players deserve much praise and will have learnt alot this past 2 weeks especially regarding fitness and the big differences between League and Union