Ladies go out of cup with all guns blazing

Women's KO Cup, 3rd round, 19th January 2002
Warwick Riga 0 Malory 3 (14-25 18-25 12-25)

It was always going to be a hard game, Malory London are riding high at the top of Division 1 and have a team chock-full of internationals, including 2, Audrey Cooper & Mo Glover with experience of playing in Olympic competition.
Nether the less it was a cheery Riga team that took the court. Nerves seemed to dictate that Malory had a relatively easy time of the first few points, the first Riga player in their stride was Marinella Cadoni who stuffed out the Malory 2-hitter with a fantastic block. The look on the Malory faces told you that this did not happen to them very often, even in Division 1.

With Marinella pounding down some hard spikes Riga traded some points with Malory but the visitors could always give as good as they got and scored many points way out on the left hand side.

Malory got enough points from this tactic to run out easy winners of the first set 25-14.

Tom takes the time-out
The ball gets past the Riga block

Set 2 was never going to be as easy for Malory and so it proved. With the girls over their early nerves and with coach Tom Young able to steady in ship in the break, Riga came out firing on all cylinders. Captain Rachel McCarthy was now leading from the front and was scoring points at will by blasting away at position 4, Riga were doing so well at this point that ex-England and Malory coach Jefferson Williams was forced to take a time-out.

The time-out seemed to have little effect on the way the match was going and at 17-17 it was possible that an upset was on the cards.

At this stage however, Malory's international experience started to show and they raised their game to a level that Riga could not compete at and took the set 25-18.
London Malory
 For the 3rd set Malory returned to their starting six whilst Tom brought on Jayne Warman to steady the ship. At the beginning of the set Malory were still playing breathless stuff with Mo Glover hitting the ball very hard indeed and Riga were soon 6-0 down.

At this point however Riga started a strong rearguard action as Jayne Warman and libero Lynette Purkis (ignoring coach Young's instructions to stay deep in back court) started to pick up ball after ball in the back of the court.

Despite nearly trading point for point it was never going to be enough after the poor start to the set and Riga eventually succumbed 25-12.
Despite the result the large crowd went home happy as they has seen some very good volleyball and the home team had performed as well as could have been expected. It was good experience for the team, especially since, if they win promotion, they will need to play at this level week-in, week-out next season.
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