MEN’S FIRST DIVISION
Season kick-started with win over
Cambridge
Newcastle (Staffs) 3 – 1 Cambridge (25-20, 26-28, 27-25, 25-15)
Despite their opening day defeat to Sheffield last week, ‘Castle were
able to take a number of positives and moved into their second match of
the NVL season with some confidence. Recent history of encounters with
Cambridge have not been favourable for ‘Castle, but with competition for
places in the starting six hotting up, this game was always going to be
an interesting one.
With a full compliment of 12 players available player-coach Ant Viggars
was again able to direct affairs from the bench and call upon his
substitutes to gain a tactical advantage throughout, most notably by
combining the all-round skills of his two front line setters Sam Bragg
and Jon Pennock. It is a great compliment to the Newcastle squad to have
two setters of such ability as this pair to keep feeding their hitters
with fast and accurate setting, but in Bragg and Pennock they also have
two men who can spike with power and guile themselves.
In the first set ‘Castle started greatly the strongest and leapt out of
the traps into a healthy lead just as Viggars had hoped. However the
variety of pace and technique deployed in Cambridge’s attacks caused
confusion in the ‘Castle defence and the quality of the match started to
decline as the error count mounted. Despite claiming the set comfortably
by 5 points with some emphatic spiking from James Cooper through the
right side of the net, the team knew that they would have to sharpen
their performance if they were to get the straight sets victory they
were hoping for.
Unfortunately the home team could not address the malaise that was
setting in as the error count from both sides grew, particularly from
the service line. For the discerning Volleyball fan this would have
proved highly frustrating, but in fact this provided for two very close
sets of Volleyball, with Cambridge snatching the 2nd from the grasp of
‘Castle (28-26) and the third being closed out by the home team (27-25).
In the fourth set new Cornish middle blocker Matt Rogers was introduced
and made a good impression on his debut for the club. ‘Castle regained
the discipline that they had been searching for since the middle of the
first set, blocking with good structure and finally making the most of
the clear advantage they had over their opponents through the middle of
the court. The 4th set score-line of 25-15 reflected the performance
that Viggars had been demanding throughout and saw ‘Castle gain a
valuable early season victory.
Squad: Will Roberts (c), Richard Guest, Dave Lovell, Simon Jones, Sam
Bragg, Jon Pennock, Mark Speake (libero), Sam Allen, Matt Rogers, James
Cooper, Adam Brewer, Ant Viggars