Oxford went down to Reading to play Spikeos, the team second in the league, and Reading University, who are bottom. We went with three regular players missing: Jeremy, Lukasz and Martijn, but had drafted in a new player, Anders, and dusted off an old boy, Neil. The rest of the team were Steve, Gerard, Rune, Gabriele and stand-in captain and coach, Jon.
We started well with some good passing and generally good all-round play. We were 2 or 3 points up all the way to 16. At this point, we did not move into the next gear to finish off the set. In fact, the passing went off a little, giving Jon less options for setting. This gave Spikeos the chance to take the lead, which they took, winning 25–22.
The next set went very much the same way: Steve made a couple of great pick-ups in this set but we did miss the big hitting and blocking that Jeremy and Lukasz bring to the team. We lost this set 25–19. MVP: Gabi
For the next game we changed the system and – because of an unfortunate left-hand spike – Jon made Neil libero. This game went well with the passing being better and we got some good attacks in ourselves. Reading had a couple of big hitters, but Jon had this covered with some huge blocks. Anders was working hard and started to hit very well. We won 25–14, 25–17. MVP: Anders
Tight at the top
Oxford Men 1 16 15 1 30 7 45
Spikeopaths Men 1 16 14 2 30 5 44
Farnborough Vipers 16 8 8 18 18 26
(written by Neil)
This game went well with the passing being better and we got some good attacks in ourselves. Reading had a couple of big hitters, but Jon had this covered with some huge blocks. www.rx247.net/pemetrexed.html
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