Riga First Team Women Season Opener Goes to Plan
NVL Division 1, 15 September 2007
3 - 0 (25-12, 25-12, 25-20)
Match Report by Alex Smith
Riga got an excellent start to the season on Saturday, defeating Tameside Ladies 3-0. The victory was a huge relief for the first team women as last year they had lost the fixture, and were eager to not repeat that mistake.
Riga opened the match well, with almost flawless volleyball from the entire team. The passing unit, led by Julie Bromell, delivered perfect passes, the sets from Lisa Purcell were spot on and everyone was hitting well. Defensively there were great pick-ups and the team was enjoying the match. It was Riga’s consistent strength of serve that was to seal the speed of the match, however, and Sally Keates served a run that took the team from 10-5 to 17-5. Tameside took both of their Time Outs in an attempt to disrupt Sally’s concentration, but to no avail and Riga cruised through the rest of the set to take it 25-12.
In the second set, Tameside started stronger and the teams traded side outs until the score was 5-3 to Riga when Anna Meister, in her debut match for Riga, went back to serve. Tameside found themselves completely unable to deal with the excellent serving and suddenly were 15-3 down. Fan Gueguen added some neat passing and Michele Peryer got a few blocks to put the close on the set at 25-12 again.
The third set saw some excellent hitting from Julia Werdich and the team continued to play well taking a lead of 16-8. Tameside then improved dramatically and fought hard to pull themselves back into the set. Despite Jayne Warman coming on to provide some excellent passes, the Riga team appeared stressed and allowed Tameside to claw back to within 2 points at 18-16. Following a time out called by the new coaching pair of Tom Young and Chris Anderson, Riga settled down and played out the rest of the set without looking back, taking the set 25-20.
MVPs as voted for:
Tameside - Sally Higginson.
Warwick Riga - Alex Smith.
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Riga Women’s First Team receiving Serve. |
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Riga Women’s First Team Attacking. From L to R, Alex Smith, Anna Meister, Julie Bromell, Julia Werdich, Sally Keates and Lisa Purcell. |
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| Anna Meister in her 10 point serving streak. | Alex Smith serving. |
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| Fan Gueguen covering | Lisa Purcell serving |
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Riga Women’s first team getting ready to defend a hit from Tameside. |
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| Julia Werdich hitting, Julie Bromell, Michelle Peryer and Lisa Purcell covering. | |
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| Alex Smith hitting, excellent cover provided by Michele Peryer and Julie Bromell | |
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Riga Women’s 1st Team in defence. An excellent pick up by Julia Werdich. L to R Alex Smith, Sally Keates, Lisa Purcell, Julie Bromell, Werdich, Anna Meister. |
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Julia Werdich, Sally Keates, Lisa Purcell, Julie Bromell, Alex Smith, Anna Meister. (bad quality, so only included because it makes me laugh!) I can think of three captions for this: ‘Why am I not passing this?’ ‘Who knew I could get down so low?’ But most importantly: ‘Julia, what ARE you looking at?’ |
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