EUROPEAN 110metres hurdles champion Andy Turner will captain England at the Great North CityGames tomorrow – and has promised to buy a round of drinks if the team triumph.

Turner feels he is not worthy of the captaincy honour ahead of England taking on Australia over nine events on the Newcastle Gateshead Quayside, in a meeting billed as the ‘Athletics Ashes’.

Turner, who claimed the European title in Barcelona this summer, should have have little problem winning his event on the purpose built track – his season’s best of 13.28seconds is over half a second faster than the next quickest in the field.

But delivering a team speech to the likes of world and European 800m bronze medalist Jenny Meadows, who runs in the mile, former Olympic 4x100m relay champion Marlon Devonish, who goes over 150m, and European 100m silver medal winner Mark Lewis-Francis could be a different matter.

Linford Christie inspired the British team ahead of the European Championships by reading poetry, but Turner won’t go down the same route.

‘‘I’m a little bit scared about the team speech I’ve got to give. I could never live up to Linford Christie’s poetry speech,’’ he said.

‘‘I have no idea what I am going to say to them.

‘‘These are my team-mates, these are my friends that I’ve trained and competed with for years. I not sure I feel worthy of giving a team speech to these kind of people. Look at Jenny Meadows, she’s got a World Championship bronze medal, that’s more prestigious than what I’ve done.

‘‘What can I say that they haven’t heard before? I’m just going to tell them all to win and if they do I’ll buy them a pint, see if that works.’’