Italy gives Aussies a shellacking
Posted by devo on June 3, 2008
At the Olympic qualifying event in Japan today, Italy defeated Australia 3-0 (25-17, 25-9, 25-16)
The Italians dominated the net: 13 blocks to 0. No Aussies scored more than 4 points.
In a match between two unbeaten teams from the first weekend of play, the Europeans used a suffocating block to mow down the Asian champions 25-17, 25-9, 25-16 and improve their win-loss record to 3-0.
With Italy ranked 10th in the world to Australia’s 11th, a close encounter was expected in what was being billed as an early final to determine the top team here.
But it did not materialise as the Azzurri were too fast and too slick for the Aussies, who dropped to 2-1 with four games to play. more @ fivb
Head Coach Russell Borgeaud: It was clearly a disappointing match from our team. Italy is a very strong team, they have a lot of experience as well and showed that they had a good game plan that they were able to put in effect. Some of our young players to be honest played their worst volleyball under pressure today, and they need to look at how they handle this mentally in the future. In a tournament like this, always the next game is the most important, so we must start thinking about Korea. Italy put in a tremendous performance.
Captain Ben Hardy: It is moments like this when it is difficult to explain exactly what happened today. I think Italy played very well, of course, and we had some moments where it seemed we could not get the ball on the floor, past their block and on the floor, as they were defending everything. The start of the match was exceptional for them and that dictated the match. They are an experienced team and kept the pressure on the whole match. We could not find an answer. It was a tough game and we will try and put this game behind us and learn from it. more @ fivb
results ~ standings ~ stats 1 & stats 2 ~ match description ~ pictures ~ press conference ~ The Italian site translated ~
This entry was posted on June 3, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Australian Volleyball, Olympics, Sports, Volleyball, Volleyball Australia. Tagged: Italy, olympic qualifying, vtam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 3, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Our best scorer was definitely the Italian errors. Over half our points came from their errors, yet we gave them relatively few points off of our errors.
ah well - bounce back next game. Interesting thing is that Japan pushed Italy to 5 (and had, was it, 10 match points or something?)
June 3, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Totally agree with Andrew, also the amount of tooling the Itallians had done. Its easier said then done, but the VTAM outside-blocks needed to deflect the ball back in court.
But I liked how Coach Borgeaud used the bench, maybe VTAM needed to slow the match down somehow, that first & second set was quite freaky.
Frankie
June 3, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Makes a mockery of the world rankings really doesn’t it! Italy… world no.10 my butt!
June 3, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Yes, short but painful.
Interesting that Italy had more errors than Australia but won easily. Mmmm…
June 3, 2008 at 6:13 pm
The world ranking system does come up with some, ahhm, anomalies.
But on the other hand, Italy’s form in the last 12 months has been pretty poor. Which is why they are playing in this tournament and are not long ago qualified.