Predicting the three nations that will qualify from Group D in the women’s tournament at the 2024 IFAF Flag Football World Championships is a tough ask.

There are the reigning European champions, the only team that beat them in the group stages last summer, the World Games bronze medalists and a nation that has reached the final four of their continental competition six times.

Great Britain women beat Spain last August to secure the European crown and with it fourth place in the IFAF Flag Football World Rankings. That after the fallout from the Covid pandemic had denied the women’s 2019 European silver medalists and bronze winners in 2017 an opportunity to compete at the IFAF World Championships in Israel in 2021 and to qualify for The World Games a year later.

The serpentine method used to draw the groups that will compete in Lahti produced some tough opponents for the highest seeded team, not least Panama, third place finisher at The World Games, who were world champions back in 2016 and beaten finalists two years later.

There is an unusual element of familiarity between the fourth and seventh ranked teams. GB’s Massachusetts-based offensive coordinator Jack Reed was the head coach of the Panama team that enjoyed medal success at the World Games and led them at the 2021 world championships. Just for good measure he guided Panama’s U17 girls’ team to a pair of NFL Flag championships.

Panama is the only team in Group D to have won an IFAF World Championships medal and their only losses before beating Austria at The World Games in 2022 came to finalists USA in the group stages and Mexico in the semifinals.

Panama won their world championships group with a 4-0 record in 2021, which included a 34-7 win over Czechia, on the way to a fifth-place finish.

Czechia inflicted the only loss of Great Britain’s successful European foray last summer and beat fellow Group D rival Israel 25-24 to take 11^th place at the 2021 world championships.

Israel did not enter the Euros in 2023 having hosted the 2021 world championships where they finished 12^thafter posting a 1-1-1 group record. That no-show in Ireland impacted a current world ranking world ranking of 18^th which suggests these four teams are very well matched.

Israel won European championship silver medals in 2011 and 2017, and bronze in 2009 and 2013, having reached the final four stage of their continental tournament on six occasions.

Predict this group at your peril.