Saudi downs Macau, Hong Kong sails as Palestine quits
27/11/2006 16:38
Saudi Arabia, runner-up of the just- ended Arabian Championship, beat
Macau of China 3-0 at the Doha Asiad men's volleyball tournament which opened in
Doha yesterday.
Much luckier than its neighbor of Macau, Hong Kong of China
harvested a toilless victory on Sunday and entered Round 2 after its scheduled
opponent Palestine quit from the event due to traveling difficulties.
The
Saudi Arabian players, mainly active army men, started strongly and took an easy
opening set 25-18, thanks hugely to spikers Al Bahli Abdullah, Al Khalifa Sharif
and Al Makawni Yassir, who exhibited mighty fierce attacks to pierce the rivals'
defence with their devastating spikes.
In the following set, Macau failed to
stem the winning momentum of their opponents and their attempts to bounce back
were dented by the rivals' powerful spikes and their own unforced
mistakes.
In the last set, the Saudi Arabian men looked more relaxed and
showed their real potential, with the three spiking machines lining up to
bombard the Macau's defence with a barrage of powerful kills to help the team
take the set 25-14.
Despite the stunning opening for its Asiad journey, Saudi
head coach Radoslav Svircev said he did not believe in the old saying of "well
begun is half done".
"On the contrary, our team has a long way to go as our
four important players have suffered injuries from the just-ended Arabian
Championship and we only have two substitution now," said Svircev.
"I am not
surprised with the result as our opponent is better than us in spiking and
blocking and I am disappointed to see my players losing their determination to
win the match since the second set," said Leong Vengtong, Macau's head coach.
"We need to readdress the problems after this match."
In other two matches of
the day, Lebanon handed out a volleyball lesson to their young Mongolian peers
by beating the latters 3-1 (25-16 23-25 25-11 25-16) and Kuwait tamed Maldives
3- 0 (25-22 25-17 25-22).
Besides Palestine's leaving, Indonesia and
Turkmenistan had also quit from the men's volleyball tournament before the event
opened on Sunday.
Now, 16 teams will compete for the champion of the men's
event. Host Qatar has directly entered the last-eight list, together with five
world championship participants, namely China, Japan, South Korea, Iran and
Kazakhstan.
However, another 10 teams, including Hong Kong of China, Macau of
China and Chinese Taipei, have to compete for two other seats for the
quarterfinals.
All 45 matches of men's volleyball will be staged at the Al-
Rayyan Indoor Hall in northwest suburb of Doha.
xinhua
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