Men's NVL Firsts Vs. York VC
Sunday 24th January 2010
Following the victory against Preston the men came up against a seemingly tricky York VC team. After previous experience of playing against York, the men knew it wasn't going to be easy. Coach Graham Fowler started with his usual six players, Carl Butcher, Peter Murray, Tomasz Tomzcak, Nikolay Nikolov, Kieron Bradley and Peter Nash with Carl Padayachee as libero.
Birmingham started well and despite exchanging points with York for the first few, they began to pull away from York. Some good powerful hitting as well as good defence meant that Birmingham were able to put establish a lead which they never looked like letting go. The boys were able to continue from there win against Preston to take the first set comfortably.
Birmingham began the second set in much the same vein as the previous. However in this set, the powerful hitting and back court play was coupled with strong bocking resulting in Carl Butcher shutting out the York 4 hitter in 2 consecutive points. The team performance allowed all platers to get in on the act which allowed coach Fowler to rest Tomczak and introduce Ronald Koko to the game. The strong performance continued to allow Birmingham to take another easy set win.
The third set saw York put up a fight with the teams exchanging points throughout the whole set. The Birmingham team continued to play well but with the main York hitting beginning to get some rythem the set was much tighter than the others. However the Birmingham quality was evident throughout as was their ability to close out matches at 23-23. They were able to win the final 2 points of the match to close out the set, the match and arguably their most accomplished performance of the season
This victory meant that Birmingham were able to make their way back down the M6 safe in the knowledge that they were guarenteed to remain top of the league this week and allowed them to turn their attentions to the KO Shield game in Middlesbrough next week.
MVP-Nikolay Nikolov.
Match Facts
Competition: National League 3N.
Played: Away.
Result: Won 3-0.
Set Scores: 15-25, 14-25, 23-25.