Well the day
started with a number of challenges and continued in that fashion
until our return. Firstly the match was scheduled for 11:30 first
ball, “I mean come on!”, that meant that the SU II ‘band of
brothers’ were up as early as 6:45 to get there on time, that’s
earlier than I get up for work!
Followed with the
news that three starting players (and two other squad members) were
to be unavailable, this left the squad with a number of once again
forced changes that meant fielding two players for their NL starting
debut and two other key players on court playing well out of
position. Hence only 2 of the squad (Bobby B and Mad Dog McGreggor)
had played more than 1 set of NL volleyball in the position they had
to cover. Recipe for disaster, but it was the best that we could do!
At 2-0 down the
score line reflected the difficulties this posed and tensions within
the team started to build and frey, fractioning what cohesion there
was. But the most disappointing aspect of the match, even more than
the 3-0 defeat was that we did not do the simple things that make a
tough match easier to play, cataloguing small errors one after the
other compounded the mistakes made by the previous player, leaving
the hitting and defence for the majority of the match, ineffectual.
The worst of it
was when we served in, or passed well, or slowed the pace with
simple sets, or linked well with the setter and hit to kill we were
better than they were. Indeed at 16-6 down in the second set we
rattled them by doing exactly that, at 18-14 they were all over the
place and had to call for a time out, but we did not capitalise on
that momentum and lost the impetus by missing several serves in a
row – sacrilege! Understandably players ALL had a tough time trying
to help the new blood with rotations and tactics etc, but the cold
hard fact of the matter is, if you are concentrating on keeping
others right you are not devoting enough to concentrate on your job.
If you do not take your own responsibility for serving in, or
passing well, or hitting hard, then you get beat.
More effort
required Su II, learn your rotations and get to training you’ve got
time to die another day.
