About devo
Hi! I am Allan DeSalvo. I was a volleyball coach at Wonthaggi Secondary College in Australia for 29 years, from 1978. Until my retirement in 2008, I taught English at WSC. I have also coached state under 15 teams for Volleyball Victoria, and state under 16 teams for the Victorian Secondary Schools Sports Association.
I hope to use this space to collect news, discussions, celebrations of volleyball in Australia. A space to express some views on volleyball. A space to post interesting items on volleyball.
If you have any items of interest that you think others would like to read about, you can email me the details from the contact devo tag at the top of the blog.
November 20, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Hi Allan,
I just wanted to compliment you on your blog and tell you about a new blog that we’ve launched on our network. http://www.bomberino.com is a volleyball blog written by Sandy Mansfield. She’s also covering the worlds.
I hope you can take a moment to visit.
Have a great day,
Gary Grant
Blair Valley Media
January 3, 2007 at 8:11 am
Hi Allan,
I accidently stumbled on to this site after doing a search for “phillip desalvo”. And what a pleasant surprise it is.
This is a great blog as it is often hard to find volleyball news here in Melbourne/Australia.
Anyway, I’ll tell you the reason why I was looking for information about Phillip. I took our junior volleyball team to see the game between Australia and Argentina at Dandenong in November 2006, and all the children were inspired by the Flying Kangaroos and in particular Phillip because of his fantastic skills and his never say die attitude as a libero.
I wonder if you could pass on our congratulations to Phillip on his new contract with Prague. I am sure he will be a success there.
And being a Victorian boy, Phillip might like to drop in during one of our training sessions and gives the children some advice on the finer points of the sport the next time he’s in town.
Once again, thanks for the blogs. Please keep us up to date with Phillip’s progress.
Chau Le
Ringwood Raptors
January 10, 2007 at 12:56 am
Hello,
Congratulations for the website…
wanna trade a link to ours (www.cvbretema.com)?
By the way, C.V.Brétema is a 2nd Division Spanish volley team :)
January 18, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Hi Allan,
You asked me about the Australian Youth Team playing against Gentofte in Denmark.
This is a link for a match report on the blog of the Gentofte coach Peter Borglund: http://borglundsvolley.blogspot.com/2007/01/store-drenge.html
He says that Gentofte won the game 3-1, losing out 28-30 in the third set but winning the others, including a 25-10 in the second set.
He was very impressed with the height and physique of the Australian team, but he says that Gentofte (who are top of the Danish league right now) were better in serving and passing.
April 17, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Dear Allen,
My name is Larraine Busch, nickname- ‘Larrie’ (not many people in my sporting world call me Larraine) I play Beach Volleyball and…
Here’s my story-
I am 100% committed to qualifying for Beijing Olympics in beach Volleyball. What’s stopping me is a permanent partner. I have been in discussions with the Australian Institute of Sport (A.I.S). They will not make me part of the program because I am too short. The average professional beach volleyball athlete for women is between 170 and 185cms tall. As i’m sure you know it does help to be tall in parts of this game and i’m not sure how much beach volleyball you are involved in but height is not everything. Brazil has proved time and time again that you don’t need to be tall to excell at this game. What the best teams in the World have is time together.
I am asking you Allen if you know of anyone who plays Beach Volleyball and has a dream of competing in the Olympics to contact me. There are plenty of people supporting me and my dream right now but all the support in the World doesn’t mean anything if i don’t have a partner. What is lucky about beach volleyball is that you can still represent and compete for Australia without being a part of the A.I.S program. The next player i compete for Australia with will have a signed agreement with me and the team. If the A.I.S don’t want me then it’s time they stop taking the players I play with for their program.
I’m currently in Vanuatu part of an Australian Youth Ambassador program developing beach volleyball in there schools and coaching the national Squad for the South Pacific games. My contract was for 12 months- finishing in April 2008. I reduced it to 6 months. The reason for this is so i still have a shot at qualifying for the Olympics. My plan is to train here until August, then go to Beijing and compete in the Challenger event there- the top 32 teams in the World are not able to play. the event is the Olympics format. From here go and train in Brazil- they’ve been playing this sport for a lot longer than us Aussies. Compete in the World Tour events in Brazil and Mexico this year. Continue training in Brazil, then in May 2008 travel and compete on the world tour. Then the Olympics in Beijing 8-24th August 2008.
I do need a beach volleyball partner to take on this journey with me!
I found your site after googling to find a female aussie player. In my network there is no-one yet to give this a shot, which is why i decided to write this random email to you. I’m sure there is a player out there with an Aussie passport that can play beach volleyball. If you can help in anyway i would be forever grateful.
I beleive when you’ve got a dream you stop at nothing to achieve!
Kind Regards,
Larraine ‘Larrie’ Busch
April 18, 2007 at 10:28 am
Hey Larry,
Just to let you know we’ll put your plea into the next issue of the mag. Maybe it will stir the passions in one of our readers.
Josh
May 14, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Allan, many congratulations.
I just heard of this today and at first glance it is very cool!
I look forward to the chance for a long browse.
Mark Lebedew
July 11, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Hey Allan… found your blog kinda by accident - but I knew you once-upon-a-time. I was the Victorian Schoolgirls coach many years ago… had quite a few Wonthaggi girls come through my state program, and also had a few play for me at Padua (now Mornington). Good to see you’re still involved, like the blog!
August 5, 2007 at 9:41 am
Allan,
Thanks for a great site! It is now the first place I look when I want the most up to date news of our national teams’ performances.
Phil Borgeaud
August 21, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Hi Allan,
As always you have proven to be a great support for the wider Volleyball community here in Victoria and now more so, Australia. Well done on your great blog - it is always up-to-date and contains great insights that most other Volleyball sites don’t give.
Keep up the great work.
Greg
August 30, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Dear Allan,
I am currently doing a university assignment on sports and was interested looking up beach volleyball as I am a big fan!! I read through some of your web site and I was absolutely touched by the blog number 5. What heart, determination and passion must this larrie have!!! I was touched deeply and loved her ending sentence - when you’ve got a dream - you stop at nothing to achieve…… I hope that she is on her way to her dream…….. Did you have any contacts??? My heart goes out to her, and i think that your website is fantastic by the way..
All the best
September 6, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Allan,
Doing a great job, no need to hunt round the ‘net anymore, this site keeps us all well informed and up to date.
September 18, 2007 at 10:45 am
Nice job Allan. The site also informs me that there are more than one or two “vintage” players still alive. Hello Russ!
September 24, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Hallo Mr. DeSalvo
This first site which help me to find out more about australian volleyball. Thank’s to made it. I hope this site could tell me a latest news about australian team. Bravo australia!
Yass, Indonesia
October 2, 2007 at 5:33 am
Hello from Poland Mr. DeSalvo,
I love volleyball: I play and I’m KS Jastrzębski Węgiel supporter (it’ a team where Igor Yudin plays and works Mark Lebedew). I’m glad that I can find out something else about australian volleyball.
All the best
:)
January 7, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Hi Allan,
Syeve Kaye sent me this link. I guess you may have heard that we are trying to start a “Hall of Fame” at the State Volleyball centre in Dandenong (Vic). We are beginning with Victorian indoor players who represented Australia starting in the 1970″s. I have been able to gather most of the information from George Mraz’s memorabilia but am not sure how long into the 1980’s players such as Peter Lowe, Tony Naar and Brook Ramage played. I can see from your information that Tony played in1982 and 1983 and that Brooke played in 1982. There is no information on the team that represented Australia in the Commonwealth games in London in 1980. If anyone has this information I would love to be able to finalise the 1970’s board and would , of course be happy to share the info I have compiled on players from the ’70’s.
Congratulations on a great source of information.
Helen
May 22, 2008 at 12:17 am
Hallo,I’ Cristina from Italy
I want to konw if is possbile to have interview or comment after matches of Austrlian team to put on my site…
Can yuo send me results of all matches?I dont’ know where find!
I would like to let know australian players to italian’s fans…if you can send me interviews will be ok!!
Rgds,Cristina
June 2, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Hey Allan!
Just browsing and thought id congratulate you on the site =]
looking brilliant!
and its a good way to track phillip’s progress too!
hope all is well
Jus
June 6, 2008 at 10:08 pm
devo, im having trouble with pc here so went thru the site. just back from a great game, on e bad point is that we lost. an hour before the game they were training the crowd in chants, most of the mob was there. hilde and i managed aussie aussie aussie when we took a point, that was the only time we could, there was always silence for three seconds before the drums and the 10k crowd started again. we saw one other aussie there beside us, ian thorpe, but didn t hear him chant too much. the 10k crowd tolerated our chant and flag. what a feeling it was imagine 65 years ago we were at each others throats.
trevor