On Saturday 7th March, Riga Ladies 1st team, Sponsored by Mooncup, played in the semi final of the National Cup against local rivals City of Wolverhampton. There only previous meeting this season had been in the league, and although Warwick didn’t play at their best that day, they still won convincingly. It was clear though during the warm up that Wolves had acquired new players since that previous meeting and this was going to be a tough proposition.

Warwick had a dream start to the game and soon found themselves 7-2 up with strong serving from Celine Haederli and good blocking from the front line. Wolverhampton soon recovered from their poor start with strong serving of their own and put the Riga passing unit under pressure. The loss of the early lead they had acquired seem to rock Warwick slightly and Riga struggled with their block defence and were never able to win a point on their serve for the rest if the game finally going down 25-18.

The second set started with Riga trading point for point with Lisa Purcell and Anna Wojdala combining well through the middle. Warwick’s passing unit, lead by Julie Bromell, was working well but as the set progressed though the new found quality of the Wolves team started to come though and Riga struggled to match them. Despite finding it difficult keeping up with the play of the opposition though Warwick never gave in and this was to have a telling effect in the 3rd set.

For the start of the 3rd set Coach Collins decided to move the rotation round three places so the players were facing different opposition rotations. This seemed to have an effect and Warwick found themselves being much more competitive. Strong hitting from Haederli and Maixnerova and blocking by Peryer and Beattie kept putting the Wolverhampton team under pressure but Warwick could never pull away. At 14:16 down Kay was brought into the fray for Beattie to see if she could make a difference. Warwick continued to be a couple of points down despite all players giving their all and Young being introduced to beef up the defense. This effort paid off though towards the end of the set as Warwick levelled the score forcing the Wolves coach into his final time out at 22-22. The teams then traded points to 26-26 with Riga saving 3 match points before finally seeing them lose the 4th match point against them and the game, much to the disappointment of a large crowd hoping to see the game go on.

Despite the obvious disappointment the team agreed on reflection the better team had won and Coach Andy Collins was more than happy with the effort the team had put in. The team has had a great season so far and need now to concentrate on their last 3 games to try and secure at least a 3rd place finish in the league.