National League Division 1, 25th January 2003, London Malory v Warwick Riga
London Malory 3
Warwick Riga 2 (25-7 20-25 25-21 16-25 15-12)
Last Saturday Warwick Riga came very close to beating the current national English Volleyball champions, London Malory in a thrilling 5 setter, going down by the narrowest of margins 15 – 12 in the decider (7-25, 25-20, 21-25, 25-16, 12-15). Riga travelled to London and surpassed all their own expectations and gave Malory the fright of their lives by taking them to 5 sets for the first time this season & only just failed to pull off the shock result of the campaign thus far !!!
Warwick Riga had a miserable first set when Malory were the far better team & deserved their victory with some very difficult serving and strong blocks. Riga struggled from the start onwards, never finding any rhythm and only managed to scrape a meagre 7 points together in the whole set.
The Riga team adapted their receiving line up successfully at the start of the second set & this resulted in better passes to setter Phil Wyles who started to find both the centre and outside hitters to great affect. Although Malory seemed surprised by the Riga comeback there were no signs of panic from the home side as they expect most teams to falter towards the end of a set. This did not happen as Riga maintained a lead of 4 points for most of this set and with John Gilling thumping some excellent jump serves towards the end of the set, Malory were never allowed back in to the game & the set was wrapped up relatively easy in Riga’s favour (25-20).
Malory responded in the third by stronger hitting from the backcourt. Riga initially struggled in defence but managed to keep the scores very close throughout the set. Malory once again stepped up their serving efforts towards the end of the set and stopped Riga from shutting the small gap they had etched out & the set was lost (21-25) but still Riga never gave the impression that the game was out of their reach.
The fourth set showed an even more determined Warwick side with strong attacking efforts from Kees de Hoogh and Alex Medina, the new Spanish outside hitter who recently joined the team. Medina in particular was becoming a menace that Malory could not deal with in attack as well as from the service line, allowing Riga to take an early lead, then extend it to 7 points midway through the set and eventually win the set very convincingly 25-16.
The match was now set up for the big showdown between some of the best hitters in the country & the set got under way exceptionally well with Riga taking an early 4 – 2 lead. However, it was at this point that Malory showed why they have been the top team in the country for almost a decade & they reeled off 4 points in a row to swing the game back firmly in their own favour. Excellent serving & defence had caused this turn round in the fifth set coupled with a few individual errors of judgement from the Riga boys. Lesser teams would have thrown the towel in at this point but Riga have taken some giant steps forward this season & two time outs from coach Tom Young kept the team in the set and Riga managed to reduce the gap to two points (13-11) towards the end of the set. The teams traded a couple of points at this juncture and Malory used all their experience and scored the final points of the game by intelligent hits off the Riga block that the away team could not defend.
Afterwards, captain/coach Tom Young was both disappointed and proud of the team effort. ‘We had a terrible start in the first set,’ he said ‘but we kept on playing our own game and caused Malory serious problems. We started the fifth set as favourites from my point of view and I’m disappointed that we couldn’t sustain the pressure on Malory. I’m very proud of the overall team effort as we’re the first team to take Malory to five sets this season.
Riga’s next game is against Polonia Ealing on Saturday, 8th of February, 6 pm warm-up for a 6.30 start at St Nicholas Park Leisure Centre, Warwick when the team very much hope to use the Malory experience as a springboard to continue the progress achieved already this season.
Tom Spijkers