NVL Division Three West |
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Report written by Chris Jones |
Thanks to a team pulling out of the league at the last minute the Riga 2 squad got a lie-in on Sunday morning now only having to play a single header in Wales. The majority of the squad turned up about an hour early, were they keen or stupid - who knows?! Riga only had 6 players to face Bridgend and with the 6 consisting of 2 setters and 4 outside/opposite hitters it was always going to be a challenging time for the squad and Alex the coach. Riga started the first set with an amazing run of serving from Bart and found themselves 6-0 up and Bridgend forced into calling a time-out. Sadly for Riga it was a good strategic time-out and they won the following point. Riga continued to trade points with Bridgend and Tom and Bobdan were doing a great job having drawn the short straw and playing through the middle. There were a few rocky/confusing moments in the Riga back court that sadly let Bridgend back into the game and everything was equal @ 18 all and everything to play for. Bridgend's strong serve caused Riga a few problems and Alex had to call a time out to try and rally the troops but sadly things weren't to go Riga's way and they lost the set 18:25. After such a strong start to the match and having seen it slip away the second set was always going to be tough. Riga soon found themselves playing catch up trailing Bridgend who were playing a very consistent game of volleyball. Riga were suffering from a severe lack of communication that Alex was all to happy to tell us in a time-out! Despite the good distribution of sets by Steve & Bart the Riga hitters were finding it hard to find the spaces in the Bridgend defense and sadly went down in the set 25-14. The Riga guys knew they could do better and didn't want to travel to Wales for nothing and went out into the 3rd set with a positive attitude determined to get something out of the match. Alex had also made some line-up changes, with Peter now running middle and Tom back to his familiar outside position. This seemed to be a good move with Peter making some great blocks against the Bridgend hitters, combined with some strong hitting from Tom and Chris through the outside. Despite all this Bridgend are not currently (and consistently) top of M3W for nothing and they didn't want to go to a 4th set and efficiently wrapped up the 3rd and final set, with Riga going down 18:25. Tom Young's (Jnr) great hitting was rewarded with his first MVP of the season. Big thanks also to Alex for giving up her Sunday to coach us - promise we'll get a win next time!!
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