Match Report: Harriers Jets, Home 10th February 2005

3-1 win: 19-25, 25-22, 25-22, 25-17 (side-out scores: 9-14, 13-11, 15-12, 15-8)

Team : Ashley Barrow, Brian Dawkins, Chris Seal, Ivan Dunleavy, Jonathan Glenn, Marc Redding, Nigel Collins, Nishi Saran, Sascha Stemme, Sophie Collin, Stuart Collin, Susie Ebert

Referees: Neil Bennett, Sara Clark; Scorers: Roger Gudge, Bruce Archibald

Set 1 rotation (1 to 6): Brian (sub Nishi 10-17) (OH), Sophie (S), Ivan (sub Ashley 10-17) (MB), Chris (OH), Mark (S), Sascha (MB).

Set 2: Chris (OH), Jonathan (S), Ashley (MB), Nishi (OH), Susie (S), Stuart (MB).

Set 3: Nigel (OH), Marc (S), Sascha (MB), Brian (OH), Sophie (S), Ivan (MB).

Set 4: Nigel (OH), Susie (S), Sascha (MB), Stuart (OH), Jonathan (S), Ashley (MB).

Captain Chris played everyone in the squad of 12, with new member Susie making her Vale debut and Ivan and Stuart playing their first Herts League match.

An interesting game to say the least as I attempted to play a full squad of 12 players which included 5 players with no or very little match experience. The Jets had not won a match so far so it was a good opportunity to do this. Having said that the first set didn't go as planned, the starting six included "new" players Brian, Ivan and Sophie who played well but we did not gel as a team and we all made some basic mistakes going 10-17 down before Ashley and Nishi replaced Ivan and Brian respectively but it was too late to save the set, losing 19-25. Second set saw Stuart and Susie playing their first league match, this was a much better performance and a hard fought 25-22 win with some consistent setting from Susie and Jonathan. Third set was a much improved game from Ivan, Sophie and Brian, with Sascha dominating the middle of the net. Marc also settled in to playing a good solid game. Fourth set was better again and by now the "newer" players were playing well, combined with the oppositions drop in energy (by their own admission, they only had 6 players) we comfortably won the match with a 25-17 finish Footnote: although playing 12 players was a good experiment and everyone got to take part, hopefully enjoying it, I think against a stronger team we would have been taken apart, also I had one helluva lot of paperwork to do!!!!

Chris.