Travel day/Wednesday May 19, 2010

After our remarkable victory over Azerbaijan in Sheffield on Saturday, we find ourselves on a bus to Stansted airport not four days later.  We are through to the second round of qualifying matches for the European Volleyball Championships 2011 where we will face Finland, Greece and Latvia.  For those of you out there who assume we travel first class, let this be a lesson about making assumptions.  We politely queued for our Ryan Air flight. Thanks to some creative priority boarding, we managed to monopolise most of the exit-row seating, which for a team of very tall people, is the holy grail of travel necessities. 

There was one slight issue upon arrival in Riga. Mosquitoes. Lots of Mosquitoes. Just to try and give you a mental picture...the Riga airport is about 20 minutes drive out of the city centre and appeared to be located in a swamp. We stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac, and those little blood-suckers literally blocked out the setting sun. Cue hilarious scenes of people trying to sprint to the terminal building with their overweight carry-on luggage all the while swatting mosquitoes left, right and centre. I would have been rolling around on the floor laughing if I wasn’t worried about catching malaria. 

We passed through customs and baggage reclaim easy enough, although I was gutted to come second in our little "baggage" game. Anyone who wants to play places all the loose change in their pocket into a kitty, and the first bag that pops out on the conveyor belt is the winner. Our physio Karen won a cool £9, I came second and won nothing. Latvia isn’t on the Euro, so I’m secretly hoping that I do not finish first on the way back either. A pocket full of Lats doesn’t buy you much in the UK after all. We have a full day of training tomorrow before our first match versus the host Latvians on Friday night.

Thursday

We got our first look at the venue for the upcoming matches today, and the Latvians have taken it up a notch. We are playing in the fantastic Arena Riga which hosts Ice hockey and major international music acts. It can seat 11,200. We had a great crowd in Sheffield last week, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Latvians get 5,000 people in the door, of course complete with air horns, drums and whistles. This is volleyball as it should be.  The team is very excited as we sense we have some momentum and a real chance to raise some eyebrows across the volleyball world.  As we had to come through the first round of qualifying we are seeded fourth in this pool of four but we are confident of doing better than that.  It is an intensely focussed day. 

Friday/Match versus Latvia

Tonight we played our first match of the second round versus the hosts Latvia. I wish I could report that we were victorious but tonight it just didn’t happen for us. We lost 3-1 in a very tight contest. We had numerous opportunities to win each of the first three sets but we couldn’t turn the big points in our favour. I suppose the silver lining is that two years ago we would have been happy with our performance but this time around we are bitterly disappointed. We know we can play better and should be beating teams like Latvia now. All credit to the Latvians; they played a smart match and took advantage of their large home crowd. The match was live on TV here in Latvia and also on the web so thanks to all who tuned in and supported Team GB. We are not here to make up the numbers any longer, we are here to win matches at this level and also gain respect for all the hard work everyone involved with the GB program has put in.  Although we may not have won our match vs. Latvia we certainly gained their respect. The Latvian coach was very complimentary after the match and said he was very surprised at our level. 

Saturday/ Match versus Finland

It was difficult to sleep last night. Evidently Friday night at the Europa Hotel Riga is music night, and on the floor above us the only swing band in Latvia played for far too long into the night.  I’m certain the bass player was squarely over my bed. They were pretty good to be fair to them, but it just wasn’t what the team had in mind after the disappointing loss to Latvia. 

Although we lost 3-0 to Finland, we didn’t disgrace ourselves in the slightest. When this Olympic cycle started a team of the calibre of Finland would have put out their second team against us and laughed all the way to an easy win. That just isn’t the case anymore. We pushed their best players all the way and even had a sniff at taking a set or two ourselves. I only played the first set as we were determined to get everyone on the squad experience against one of the top teams in Europe. It was an absolute pleasure to watch the younger guys play.  Watching how good our young guys are now and thinking of how good they can be and it makes one think about volleyball in the UK in future.

Here’s hoping Pits Andersons & the Swamp Shakers haven’t got an encore planned for tonight!

Sunday Night/ Match versus Greece

I’m writing this from the Riga airport very early Monday morning, the morning after our final match of the weekend versus Greece.  The match was a similar story to the other two from this weekend. We controlled large portions of the match and again had some set points we didn’t take advantage of resulting in a close loss 3-0.

Perhaps the easiest way to judge our efforts is to compare them to our results from this same competition two years ago. In that tournament we showed a flash or two of our potential but it was far too infrequent and we were outclassed. We lost to Greece that day two years ago 25-10 or thereabouts, so we should be quietly pleased that against Greece two years later we had set points and perhaps should have been leading the match 2-0

We now begin an insane travel schedule. I always have a chuckle to myself when you hear football commentators say, "Oh they played a mid week match in Europe, they must be tired for Sunday’s match".  We have played three matches in three days; will spend an entire day getting back from Riga via Stansted to Sheffield, and upon arrival get off the bus and go directly into a weights workout. I, like the rest of the squad, will then have 36 hours to unpack, wash and repack before we leave again for the second leg of this competition in Greece. I am personally looking forward to getting a secondchance to beat the same teams and some feta cheese. Opa!

Andy Pink, who plays for Bassano in Italy, is Britain's vice-captain.