MVLWD1

Wirral A vs Liverpool B.

Venue: Holly Lodge Girls College, Liverpool.

Team: Beth Douch, Lauren Parker, Nina Hofmann, Lois Watson, Eloise Duncalfe, Emma Overall, Bethany Connor

Result: WIrral A lost by 1 set to 3, set scores, 21-25, 25-18, 7-25, 20-25.

It’s very disappointing to lose when you are clearly the stronger team.

Wirral were dominating the first set, Liverpool were barely able to mount an attack but were kept in the game by numerous serving errors from our girls, then, from a position of strength at 20-18 we gifted them the set with series of unforced errors. We began the second set strongly with a great run of serves from Lauren taking us to an 11-2 lead. Liverpool showed some character and fought their way back into contention but some good serving from Ella and strong hitting from Lauren and Lois wrapped things up. The third set was the opposite of set two, we went behind to a strong run of Liverpool serves and could not dig our way out of the hole, every promise of a recovery was ended with another unforced error. 

Never mind, we could still win in 5. 

But the fourth set didn’t go our way. After fairly even opening exchanges we slipped a little behind and every time things were looking up another unforced error gave Liverpool the  ball back. We still had a chance at 18-20 but consecutive failures with underarm serves, putting attack hits out of court, and, at the end, a terrible, careless passing error on a very easy ball gave the match to Liverpool B.

A match where we had a significant height advantage and which we should have been able to use to practice our block and work on attack variations went badly wrong as the Liverpool girls' fighting qualities, better teamwork and better control of the ball took the match away from us. In the end though the result was in our hands and it was careless errors that cost us a win. We played some excellent volleyball, strong serving and some unstoppable hiting from Lois and Lauren but we need to see a lot more of that if we are goinmg to make any progress in the EVA U18 Grand Prix after Christmas.