As part of the development play to help establish womens volleyball in the UAE, the organisers of the tournament scheduled in an exhibition match between the UAE women’s team and a “World Team”, which consisted of a player from each country represented at the tournament. It was decided at the technical meeting that the only female head coaches at the tournament should have the honour of coaching the team, and thus Australian Coach Amanda Fielding and French Coach Laurence Plasman were given the job.
Australian Captain Anna Maycock was chosen to be part of the World Team, which also included Rouguy Coulibaly (France), Janneke van Tiensen (Netherlands), Dominice Steffen (Germany), Valentina Fiorin (Italy), Tatiana Kosheleva (Russia), Nancy Carrillo (Cuba), Yasmin Yehia (Egypt), Natavan Gasimova (Azerbaijan) and Melinda Hennaoui (Algeria).
The World Team started strongly in the 1 set match, jumping out to a 6-0 lead. But the UAE team had some hard and fast hitting spikers that brought them back into the game. Evenly matched from 8-8 onwards, the UAE team showed that they could play elite volleyball and match it with the world’s best. That and possibly the language barriers and limited communication on the World Team would have also help out the UAE women. The match was neck and neck all the way, forcing the World Team coaching staff to use their 2 time outs, and it was the UAE team that had the first match point at 24-23, looking to cause an upset over the more experienced team of players. But in the end the World Team were victorious 27-25 over the UAE team.
1 response so far ↓
Mich SS // May 23, 2008 at 1:17 am |
Go the Aussies, our plan to infiltrate and dominate international women’s volleyball takes another step forward! Go Annie!