The men’s 1st team played extremely well last Saturday evening and won convincingly against a good quality London Aquila side. The home team played their best volleyball by far this season in the potentially difficult match against Aquila. The championship race is clearly developing into a three horse race and this win keeps Riga in contention along with London Docklands and London Malory. The latter two teams will be their opponents in the second of three Premier League tournaments on Sunday 1 February at St. Nicholas Park Leisure Centre. The tournaments have been initiated to promote the sport of volleyball and include junior training sessions in addition to three matches between the top three teams in England.
In last Saturdays match both teams played very well in the opening set and there was very little to choose between both sides with the lead changing hands on numerous occasions. However, at 19-19 the home team increased the pressure with a run of difficult serves from Kees de Hoogh coupled with some excellent blocks at the net from John Gilling and Andy Lynn which brought the set to a quick end in favour of the Warwick team (25-21).
In the second set Riga took an early lead because of the excellent distribution from setter Phil Wyles & the quality power hitting of all the attackers which left Aquila very exposed in their blocking. The home team was running a large number of combinations which resulted in a 21-14 lead towards the end of the set. A slight dip in concentration towards the end of the set resulted in Aquila reducing the lead but the set never looked in danger & after a quick timeout the set was secured (25-23).
de Hoogh: run of serves
The third set showed an Aquila team still fighting but getting a little despondant because they were finding it very difficult to bypass the Riga block and never looked like they believed in winning the set. Riga meanwhile carried on running their combinations and in particular Kees de Hoogh and Andy Lynn looked extremely impressive at times, thundering down some huge hits. After scores of 12-6 and 16-8 midway through the third set, the final result was 25-14.
Coach Tom Young was very pleased with the quality of his team’s volleyball. "This is the best we’ve played this season by far and I hope that we can sustain this level until the end of the season", he said. "We’ve spent a lot of time on team play over the last few weeks and it’s starting to pay off as all the players were working very hard for each other. The spirit is good at the moment and we’ll do our best to keep it that way".
The programme of the Premier League tournament on Sunday 1 February includes Junior Training Sessions between 10.30 – 12 noon followed by three matches between the top three teams in the National Division 1. Each match will be three sets long and the results will count towards the overall result from the three Premier League tournaments.