The bare bones of a win………

The match that was played on Saturday 27th January was in round 4 of the Scottish Cup. Coatbridge High School was the venue for the only match the Club had in the 4th round. Su II men played against the University of St Andrews team while the other three Club teams had byes into the quarter finals.

The team from the Kingdom of Fife arrived in good time, warmed up efficiently and promptly lost the first set 25-13. It happens often when long journeys are required – you have to get the travel out of your legs, you have to get your bearings in an unfamiliar venue, you have to focus your attention on the matter at hand……..The players from the Uni did that and won the second set 25-23.

The game was tight, was noisy was full of good plays and bad passing. Colin Patterson’s team were doing a very good job of nullifying our first tempo play. Our service was tactically good but often lacked weight, and while we won the third set 25-17 it was anything but comfortable.

Going into set 4 there was some real competitive tension in the gym. Their block was asking some severe questions of our spiking, while our serving was penetrating their side-out defence. At 20-17 up we were calm and confident, after the next 6 rallies we were 20-23 down and very edgy.

The score crept up to 22-24 in their favour, and we scored the next 3 points to lead 25-24 and things were really tense. They made a side out, then we scored 2 points to seal the win and breathe a sigh of relief.

Under the circumstances this was a very good win, but was not such a great performance – we will be better next week!