Mens Regional Game away vs. Darkstar So the mens regional team finally got to play a game. Its been a while. Apart from the part-time splitters (Tom & Jay who play with Nuneaton) and Kev who plays with Loughborough Lions, it was the first competitive regional level match played by Carl, Ed & Neil since about April this year! With Bruce carelessly breaking his ankle a few weeks ago, Kev was forced to set as the only one with a competent grasp of the skills required. Add in Eds knackered shoulder, Carls knackered knee, Jays knackered ankle and Kevs newly-knackered calf muscle and it was all looking a bit shaky for our first game. The lack of practise together showed at first and Kev was forced to cover a lot of ground in the first set. The scores stayed fairly close until Darkstar cunningly started serving hard at one stage and opened up a gap which we never really entirely got to grips with. Although points were traded, Darkstar always had the crucial few points advantage needed to see out the first set (about 25-22 or thereabouts I think?). Ed, playing in an unfamiliar middle position, was doing a sterling job in causing mayhem and confusion all around - sadly mostly for his own team - but as the set wore on, his unconventional style of play befuddled Darkstar enough to make him extremely effective there. Scott, youre going to have to fight for your place back ;-) The second set saw an outbreak of competence from us and we gradually gained a stranglehold on the set - helped by a great run of serves from Jay at the start which settled us down and gave us a great advantage even when Darkstar started to hit back at us. With this points advantage, we always managed to keep control and we began to put in better passes to Kev, enabling him to spread the attack around. Some great connections from Tom through the middle helped keep points ticking over nicely and Ed put in some great blocks considering hes not really that tall and quite old. We saw out the second set about 25-18 or so I think. The third set... well, this all went rather swimmingly. From our outbreak of competence in the second set we approached standards of magnificence all too rarely seen in these parts. I know its easy to get carried away sometimes but when you win the set 25-6, you know youre doing something right. Some great hitting from Neil and Jay was the key to the strong performance with some good passing giving Kev an easier time of things. We also stopped serving the ball out, which has much to recommended it as a way of avoiding throwing away easy points. The fourth set was a much tighter affair and Darkstar hit back with some strong defence and quality pancakes. However I can tell my grandchildren I was on the court when Neil dumped a cheeky second ball over and wasnt called for a double touch. It was glorious and seemed utterly deflate Darkstar for a crucial period when they were starting to put some pressure on us, allowing us to pull crucial points clear. It wasnt over though... we tightened up a bit as the finish line approached and stopped doing the basics that had been serving us so well. This led to a bit of anxiety and tension and our play got a bit scrappy. We rallied again and a great hit from Jay, and blocks from Carl and Ed in quick succession gave us new belief and helped relax us at a difficult time. We failed to claim the match at the first attempt at 24-23, but went on to seal victory 27-25 shortly afterwards. All things considered, not a bad start to the season. Shame itll be January before we play again! Video of the game (lacking the last 5 minutes, sadly, as the battery ran out!) will be available here once it finished processing. Should be at about 9:45pm or so. https://youtube/watch?v=B03z-yUige4&feature=youtu.be
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 21:38:04 +0000
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