First defeat for Men 1 in BVA league

On Sunday 24 March, the mighty men 1 team got together for their home games. Even though spring had begun, it was still freezing outside and so we were hoping for it to hot up inside the Headington sport hall. 

Squad for the day: Rune, Jon, Gareth, Roberto, Martijn, Gerard, Gabri, Raul, and Hideki (on loan from team 2)

Oxford v Spikeos

We refereed the first match of the triangle and then played the first match against Spikeo’s, last year’s league winners and our closest competition to win the league this season. We had beaten them twice already this season, and they were very much up for taking revenge. 

Being warmed up from the first match, they got into the game more quickly than us. At 0-4 and 4-11 behind, we struggled to find our rhythm, while they were full of confidence. From there we pulled it back a few points at the time but we could not stamp our authority fully on the match. From 22-22, we had set point at 24-23, which we failed to convert and a couple of mistakes gave them the set. 

Some changes in the second set did not make it any better. Again we gave them a nice head start at 1-6, to 6-14. We made too many mistakes and were inconsistent, while they put us under some pressure and defended very well. We tried hard but did not find a way back into the match and lost 19-25, 0-2. Back to the drawing board! MVP: Gabri.

Oxford v Maidenhead

The second match was against Maidenhead, who are residing towards the bottom of the league table. We continued to play similar to the first match, and never got into full-team volleyball flow. Lethargic energy levels on court made the crowd almost fall asleep. We did however pull ourselves together and from 11-8 down, went on to 16-13 and 22-16 up to win the first set 25-17. In the second set we started well and got ahead of them and never looked back. Our side-out worked well, and we stayed ahead to win the set 25-16. MVP: Gareth.

Four matches left for us this season!

(Written by Martijn)