More wins for the Bulls !!

Again, late report, but it is for the good!
The Bulls went to Newbury on the 09th February to face Basingstoke & Newbury Men (Friendly).

1st Game - Basingstoke Vs. Oxford Bulls

On this day, Jon had agreed to coach the team, and we meet him at the sports hall. After a 20 minutes warm up, the team on court is Seb (setter), Adam & Luca (outsides), Simon & Anders (middles) and Ben (opposite), with myself replacing the middles as libero.

A very big start from our master server Seb puts us in a comfortable lead 7-0: it felt that Basingstoke needed a few more minutes to warm up... And they did! They slowly caught back points after points up to 10-8. At this time unfortunately Anders - slightly injured - had to be swapped for Tomas - already injured previously. But this change made us re-focus on the game and we increased our lead again up to 14-9, and then 17-12. This time, Adam was serving and managed (with the help of the team of course...) to bring us to a comfortable 24-13 (Basingstoke used their 2 timeouts at 21-13 & 23-13). We got slightly scared when Basingstoke started reducing the the point difference (and we were probably expecting that they would make a mistake but they didn't), but Jon decided to put Hanif on court replacing Luca and we finally managed to secure the last & needed point to win the first set 25-19.

All this drama... Us with low momentum... Them with high momemtum... And here we are in the second set, already lead 8-3 after 3 rotations. The only change from the finishing team was Anders back on court. Jon took a timeout to make us refocus, but things carried on not going well: 16-8. Normally, at this stage, our team panics and everyone starts making mistakes. Some people would say it didn't happen this time! We started catching back point after points, picking up more balls, scoring points directly instead of pushing the ball on their side, reducing slowly their advance: 18-10, 19-14, 21-19 (they took their first tactical timeout), 23-20... And Anders served 4 times allowing us to reach the Famous Sudden Death 24-24!!They scored 1 point, we caught back, we scored 1 point and they caught back: 26-26!! Final 2 serves from Adam finally allowed us to celebrate our first victory in 2 sets straight!

Our little Ben got the MVP title, granted for his accurate, consistent & sneaky cross shots.

2nd Game - Newbury Mens Vs. Oxford Bulls

Not a lot to say: It was a friendly game but we won it. Only good things for the future !!

See you all this coming Sunday for the next game in Headington !!!