NORWICH’S Amy Conroy has just one thing on her mind as she heads to Hamburg this week and that’s returning with a first ever British women’s Wheelchair Basketball World Championship medal.

The British squad offers has a blend of youth and experience in Germany, with eight of the 12 having represented GB at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio.

The 12 athletes selected make up a youthful squad, with an average age of just 23 but despite this Conroy, 25, is hopeful of finishing in the medals, building on their fifth-place result from four years ago.

The team head into the World Championships in excellent form, winning the recent Lyon Wheelchair Basketball Competition without losing a game.

And Conroy insists the squad is in confident mood as they aim to make their mark in Germany, she said: “It’s always an honour to be selected for GB, and even more so now because we train so hard and we’ve got such a deep pool of athletes.

“I really believe we’re going to do something special and make history. We’ve never medalled at a Championships before, but now we’ve all centralised in Sheffield, we train together all the time, and I really believe that we can do it this time.

“We’re together all the time, Monday to Friday training here, so there’s great comradery in the team. It’s important to have a close team, when you compete in team sport at a high level there’s so many highs and lows, so to have team-mates that have got your back the whole time makes the journey easier.

“The Dutch are really strong, we’ve played almost all the teams already and we’ve beaten each team at least once, but the Dutch are our toughest competitors in our pool. If we come out and play how we know we can play, then we can beat anyone in the world.

“From my experience the Germans always have an efficient, well put-together tournament and I know they’ve done a lot of promotion for the Championships, so I think it’s going to be a really well-run and well-publicised event.”

Conroy, who plays for Angels of the North, insists she has fallen in love with the sport of wheelchair basketball and that is has helped her to build a strong belief and confidence in herself.

“I think wheelchair basketball is the best sport to watch, there’s so many dynamics and so much going on, the vicious aspect of watching people crash into each other, which is also the comedy aspect,” said Conroy.

“But it’s just fast and there’s so many things happening. You can never stop improving your personal game and growing up with a disability and having my leg amputated a lot of people are quite precious over you.

“Whereas when I first started playing everyone was equal and everyone was crashing into each other. That’s when I knew this was for me.”

#TogetherWeAreGB & Follow the action at www.britishwheelchairbasketball.co.uk