Riga 2nds started the second half of the West Midlands league campaign with a home fixture against arch-rivals Rugby Phoenix.
Many of the players were either suffering from colds or were just recovering from illness and the team had not trained since before Christmas so some ring-rustiness was expected.
Rugby finally got the break they needed at took the 1st set 29-27.
Riga settled down in the 2nd set and played reasonably competently to take the set 25-19 without any real cause for concern.
Then, a 3rd set disaster, coach Dave Nason decided to give veteran setter Boughton a rest, in fact he made him go and do a line. This left not-quite-so-veteran Rob Clarke (who had been doing some intelligent hitting through 4 in the previous set) to set for the team with no chance of a reprieve. Despite a promising start when the team reached 5 points without response Riga fell away and suffered a 25-20 reverse.
Debutant Matt Greaves serves whilst Valdis looks on
Yann hits past the single Rugby blocker
At 19-12 the writing looked on the wall but some inspired hitting from Julien Richard took the smiles of Rugby's faces. Riga recovered to within a point but at the critical juncture a Riga serve boomed out of the back of the court.
However a valiant rear guard action from the Riga boys meant they finally got their noses in front and took the set at the first time of asking 25-23.
Rugby were really down and out at this point but it is of credit to the Riga team that they kept it that way, and playing some of the best volleyball seen all night they polished the set off in style 15-9.
The result means that we leapfrog Rugby in the table, and actually go top again, mostly because we don't know any of the other results.
Thanks to Ray & Chris for refereeing, Virginia & Ruth for scoring and Valdis for line-judging.
