Albatros Heren 1 welcomed Wham-Wham H1 in the first home game of the season. The previous away games did not finish in our favor.

Andrea and Anderson could not make it to the match, but Sebastiaan and Stefano fit perfectly well in the team. Johannes recovered from his injury and strengthened the middle position. Hilliard was also back but unfortunately as a spectator and adviser only. “Everything seemed to work. We do need to work on the service to put more pressure”, advised he after the match.

The match itself started 30 minutes later than planned hence Artem did not have to rush through red lights and Lorenzo could have finished his work training.

During home games we expect to get the support from our fans. We weren’t disappointed and the fans got satisfied. The first set we won without a lot of issues despite making many service mistakes. Everything else went well with stronger attacks and blocking when comparing to our previous games. “It is great to get our first point of the season”, Lorenzo commented after this set.

The second set went differently. The opponent started using their experienced players in a different way, more efficient. We lost focus multiple times and got behind. In the second half of the set Michal substituted Andrei making Artem the opposite hitter. His shoulder still did not recover from previous games, but Alex’s plan worked and we got back on track. Some good middle attacks by Pedro and Johannes and strong services by Stefano and we also won the second set.

Sebastiaan added attacking power on outside net and Stefano switched to the opposite position. The third set wasn’t very difficult for us and it finished 25-11 with Albatros winning.

The last set began in similar way as the second one. On top of that the level of emotions increased after arguments over ref’s calls. Alex and Artem urged us to stop thinking about these mistakes and focus on the next rallies. We were able to reverse the flow of the set winning the whole match with 4-0. “I promised on Tuesday that for every set we win I get a pizza”, Michal revealed after the match. We wish him good luck and hope to see Andrew (our wild card) join the future games.

12 Oct 2022 Albatros HS 1 vs Wham-Wham HS 1
Location: Wethouder Verheijhal , Amsterdam
Result 4-0 (25-18, 25-21, 25-11 and 25-17)
Team: Michał, Artem, Andrei, Stefano, Sebastiaan , Pedro , Johannes , Lorenzo, Alex (coach), Marat

M.S.