Qualification for the under 12s Nations Challenge starts tomorrow. The team (Viktor Frydrych, Henry Trump and Jamie Diack) has had some encouraging success in recent events, as reported by CD. To qualify for the finals here they will need to finish first or second in their round robin group, then win a match against a team in the other group. They start against Portugal

Two of the matches were straightforward (a double bagel for Jamie and a 6-2 6-1 win for Jamie/Viktor) However Henry lost a 3 setter, so the end result was 2-1 again. I expect Jamie & Viktor will be asked to play singles tomorrow if fit in a key match against Ukraine, which they need to win to avoid a knock-out match against the Czech Republic. It is unfortunate that 4 of the 8 finalists from the Winter Cup are in the same qualifying pool: Portugal, Ukraine, Czech Republic and ourselves. In February GBR edged out Ukraine for bronze, after losing to eventual winners Czech Republic. As both Ukraine and GBR have two wins the winner tomorrow will play the second place nation in Group B, while the loser has to take on the Czech Republic, who have already won Group B

For the play-off match they did pick Jamie and Viktor for singles and they have obliged with straight sets wins (bakery products for Jamie but tight sets for Viktor) so we qualify for the U12 finals in 12 days time

The under 16s started their qualifying group a day before other under 16 / 18 groups and have comfortably beaten Bulgaria 3-0 thanks to straight sets wins for Felix Gill and Jack Pinnington Jones, with doubles success for Felix with Joel Pierleoni. They play Bosnia and Herzegovina for a place in the finals (which provides qualification places for the Junior Davis Cup). A late withdrawal from one of the other nations gave GBR the second seeding slot, thus avoiding the strong Russian team

The under 16s won 3-0 again to book their spot in the finals. Felix won 7-6(4) 6-1, Jack 4-6 6-4 6-4 and Jack/Joel took the doubles 6-1 6-4. As expected they play the strong Russian team for seeding rights.

The under 18s are all square after the singles (Connor lost 7-6(1) 6-0 but Jacob won 6-2 7-5 ). If the win the doubles they play either Israel or second seeds Germany in the qualification match

Despite a superb win for Joel over someone who has already won a G2 (6-1 2-6 6-2) Felix was edged out 7-5 in the 3rd by the Russian number 1 and jack/Joel lost an equally tight doubles 10-7 in the match tiebreak. Although they have qualified for the finals, the standard of the other qualified teams appears very high, so they will do very well to make the Davis Cup

The under 18s also qualified for their finals thanks to a comfortable 2-0 win over Israel - both Emile and Jacob winning 6-2 6-2

The finals for the under 16s/18s started today. The under 16s got the best draw they could have had, given they didn't win their group, and came close but just lost out to Hungary. As a result tomorrow's match against Latvia is win or bust as far as Davis Cup qualification is concerned

U16 QF GBR 1 Hungary 2

Joel Pierleoni d. Zsombor Velcz 6-1 6-3
Felix Gill lost to Peter Fajta 3-6 5-7
Pierleoni/Pinnington Jones lost to Fajta/Velcz 7-5 6-7(5) [5-10]