The Riga volleyball team finished this year with a convincing 3-0 win over City of Salford. The Warwick team is improving all the time as the season progresses, securing another straight sets victory against a team which took them to 5 sets in the first match back in September. Last Saturdays win promises an interesting second half of the season which will be a three team race between London Docklands and London Malory for the national championship and possibly the KO cup.

On Saturday the first set saw a strong Salford team matching Riga point for point right up to the latter part of the set at which juncture Riga stepped up another gear to pull out a crucial 3 point advantage which was maintained mainly thanks to the excellent blocking efforts of Kees De Hoogh & new middle man, Dan Turnbull who is quickly developing in to a very good acquisition for the team.

Dan Turnbull & Tom Spijkers prepare to stop the opposition

Anderson hits cross court

The second started much better for Riga as they established an early lead of 4 points. Chris Anderson and Alex Radu, a player from the Moldavian national team, were brought into the game towards the middle of the set. The Riga team carried on and maintained the lead throughout the set. The final points from Alex Radu convincingly finished the set (25-20).

Salford started defending better in the third set and they quickly established a 10-13 lead. At this stage Kees de Hoogh was given a rest for Andy Lynn but the substitution did not immediately show the desired impact. Salford held on to their lead until Riga managed to turn things in their favour at 20-23. Dan Turnbull delivered a number of difficult serves and Chris Anderson and John Gilling produced a number of strong blocks to stop Salford scoring. Alex Radu finished the set with two excellent jump serves which won the set and match for Riga (27-25).

Chris Anderson stretches

Hudson, Lynn and Spijkers take a break

Riga coach Tom Young was pleased with the win afterwards. "We made more hard work of it than necessary but that is one of our infuriating habits" he said. "I am very pleased with the overall strength of the current squad as Dan Turnbull superbly replaced the absent Andy Elliot whilst Alex Radu showed invaluable as a replacement for Andy Lynn who has come back from Japan with a stomach bug." Next Sunday the Riga volleyball team will be playing in Leicester in the first of three National Premier League tournaments. The opponents will be London Malory and London Docklands and this will be an interesting clash between the best three teams in England. The other dates in this series are 1st February at Warwick & 23rd March in Windsor - the Warwick event will be given far more publicity nearer the time.