A TALENTED Dunfermline Water Polo Club star says she's relishing the chance to compete on the European stage for a second time with Great Britain.

Zara Christie, who also swims with Dunfermline Amateur Swimming Club, has been selected to compete at the Under-19 Women's European Water Polo Championships, which begin on Saturday in the Croatian capital, Zagreb.

Her place in the squad comes a year on from her involvement at the Under-17 event in Turkey, in which she and her team-mates placed 13th.

Since then, Zara - who last year was named as the Junior Water Polo Player of the Year at Scottish Swimming's annual awards - has been selected at under-19 level for a senior women's EU Nations Cup competition, helping GB to third place.

She admits that the 16-team European championships will be a step-up from that but, after a training camp in Greece, in which they gained some notable friendly results, Zara is hopeful of a successful tournament.

"I'm excited because I think we've got a really good chance of placing top eight this time," she told Press Sport.

"If we place top eight, we get to go to the worlds, which will be this time next year. It's been years since a junior team were at worlds.

"We've done so much training for it, so we're pretty confident.

"We played some friendly matches. We played Greece and we drew with them - that was their under-19s team that placed third at the last Euros - then we played Israel, who placed fifth I think, and we beat them 17-12.

"Then, on the last day, we played the under-19s US girls team, and we beat them as well."

GB have been drawn in Group D and, on the opening day of the competition, will play Germany and Bulgaria.

They'll then play Malta on Sunday, and Turkey on Tuesday, with a top two finish seeing them progress to the latter stages, whilst placing third or below in their section would put them into the 13-16th place play-offs.

The experience of the under-17 tournament is something Zara - one of five members from that squad who are with the under-19s - believes will help, especially if playing in front of a partisan crowd.

"I think it definitely calms some of the nerves, because I've done it before, so I'm not as nervous about playing internationals anymore. That's probably the main thing," she continued.

"We weren't expecting last year's match against Turkey for there to be 100 boys shouting on Turkey! Now we've experienced that, if it is to happen again, then we're more prepared for it.

"I think the team dynamic was very good last year. Everyone got on really well, so it's nice to still be doing it with some mates from last year."

To help meet the costs of the trip - water polo is almost entirely self-funded - a gofundme page has been set up for the team, and can be accessed here.