A team of 7 players
(Martijn, Jon, Rune, Gareth, Neil, Adam and Gerard) headed to Birmingham
for the preliminary round of the National cup. Wombourne VC was the
opponent hosting the game. A really organised team of 12 players plus 3
officials welcomed us with a match day programme available for the
supporters and visitors on the day (see pic!).The game started and Oxford played well, despite having only 1 training earlier that week after the summer break. At 24:13 the team relaxed a little and saw the opposition winning 5 points in a row to finally stop at 25:18 for Oxford.
The second set started with confidence but we realised quickly that Wombourne had more potential than originally thought. At 20:20 Oxford started to make few mistakes and therefore couldn't keep up, losing the second set 22:25.
For the third set, despite the stamina level starting to drop, we held the set well making the technical time-out 16:15. But that time-out did not work well for us and we let the opponents take a 2-point lead that we couldn't recover.
For the fourth set, the Coach decided to switch 2 players around which was beneficial, some good hits and blocks allowed us to be again in front at the technical time-out, but this time we held strong and got back the set 25:22.
Final/deciding set: Having 12 players did not help Wombourne too much because they only used 8 of them for all 5 sets, which did not favour their energy/focus level. At 5-5 Rune took charge of the serving which he did not want to quit, supported by some great pick ups, strong blocking, and a great finish by Vollox to finally win 15-5 - securing the first win of the season!
MVP for the game Jon Williams
Written by Gerard
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