NVL Division 2, 15 September 2007
1 – 3 (21-25, 29-27, 25-21, 25-23)
Match Report by Andy Collins
Warwick Mens 2nd started their 2007/08 campaign against local side Leicester who for the past couple of seasons have been pushing for promotion to Div 1 of the National League. Despite having a far from ideal pre season, with a mad search for a setter after the departure of Juliano back to Brazil and the operation to Andy Collins, and the lack of training together at all, the team went into the game with confidence.
The first set started well with Warwick playing with control and taking an early lead. Tomasz Morawski was settling in nicely to his new role of setter and the passing unit of Tom Spijkers, Luuca Molinari and Rob Meek was performing well. Warwick taking the 1st set to 21.
The second set started well with Riga forcing another early lead with rich Digby blocking well, but Leicester showed their experience and clawed there way back into the set towards the later half. Riga’s passing unit started to feel the pressure and despite some good hitting from Matt Bate and Rob Meek Leicester took the 2nd set 29-27.
Warwick started the 3rd set feeling annoyed they had thrown away a good chance of winning the previous one and this affected the confidence of the team and were always struggling. The lack of preseason training together was unfortunately starting to show and the set was lost to 21.
After a good talk between sets Warwick came out stronger in the 4th but despite taking an early lead, never regained the confidence of the 1st 2 sets. Tom Young Jnr made his first start of the season and made some good first passes and defence but couldn’t stop the team losing the 4th set and the game.
Despite the loss the team was very pleased with the performance against what will be one of the stronger teams in div 2 and knows with 4 weeks of training now before the next game they can be confident of having a good season and maintaining their Div 2 status.
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