NVL Division 1, 18 November 2006
1-3 (23-25,
25-22, 18-25, 18-25)
Match Report by Alex Smith
On 18th November, at the Alan Higgs Centre in Coventry, Warwick Riga Women’s First Team hosted Polonia Ladies. Riga came into the match with three victories from the last four meetings of the two teams, and with confidence following victories in their last league match and in the 2nd round of the cup last weekend, however Polonia came into the match comfortably situated in 2nd place in the league having only lost one match so far this season.
The two teams seemed fairly evenly balanced at the start of the match and the scoreline reflected this accordingly. Riga’s luck changed when outside hitter Ketlin Varri went down with a knee injury having landed badly whilst attacking. This took her out for the rest of the match, but hopefully she will recover quickly and return next week. Polonia took advantage of the shock Riga felt and served extremely well to break down the passing unit and Polonia took a 14-7 lead. A time out from coach Damon Minotti helped settle the nerves of the team while some excellent hitting from Alex Smith and good serving from Lisa Purcell and Sally Keates enabled Riga to pull the score back to 18-18, but despite this valiant comeback, Polonia took the first set 23-25.
Riga changed ends feeling confident that they could retaliate and defended extremely well behind some solid serving from all members of the team. Riga’s passing unit, led by Libero Julie Bromell, improved. This enabled Purcell to begin using the middle hitters, allowing Julia Verdich to stamp her mark on the game and Riga took the second set 25-22.
Convinced they now had the game in the bag, Riga relaxed at the start of the third set despite Minotti’s warnings not to and quickly found themselves 7 points behind again. Fanny Gueguen came on to add some strength in the defence, but this and Keates’ excellent blocking weren’t enough to pull the set back and Riga lost the third set 18-25.
Tracey Whitley came on in the fourth set to shore up the right side block and set well, often converting some poor passes to very hittable sets. Again, Riga started well, trading side outs successfully. Unfortunately, some errors from the passing unit gave Polonia another big lead. At 8-15 down, all credit has to be given to Riga for not giving up. Instead, led by Rachael Turner’s great defending and good hitting from Kelly Jones, Riga fought back with determination to not allow Polonia the easy win. There were a few incredible rallies which had the crowd applauding, but eventually Polonia’s lead proved insurmountable and Riga fell 18-25.
There were many good things to be taken from the match as Riga are only the second team to take a set from Polonia this season. Riga fought hard and matched everything the London team threw at them and are already looking forward to the return match in March.
As Polonia signed the score sheet at the end of the match, they nominated Alex Smith as the Most Valuable Player of the match. This helped make the defeat less painful for her on her birthday!
The team would like to thank Ellie Beattie who came up from the 2nd team to help strengthen the squad while Hannah Tyre is away on holiday.
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