Phinisi struggles to beat Patriot

Phinisi struggles to beat Patriot

Musthofid, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Star-studded Jakarta Phinisi was stretched to five sets to
overcome fellow Jakartans Patriot in a Proliga professional
volleyball league match here on Sunday.

Phinisi, which lined up a number of former national players in
Loudry Maspaitella, Robby Meliala, Teddy Hidayat and Iman Agus
Faisal, struggled to a 3-2 win.

After coming back from a 22-25 loss in the opening set with
25-22, 25-16 wins in the following two, Phinisi could have sealed
the victory earlier, but it lost 25-27. It escaped finally with a
15-12 win in the deciding set.

Their female compatriots chalked up a 3-0 win over Patriot's
women while Gresik Phonska registered a 3-0 win over Jakarta
Princess.

A 3-0 victory was also scored by Surabaya Flame over Jakarta
Sananta in the other men's match.

"However good the players you have you can't expect good
teamwork if you have little time to prepare," captain Iman told a
postmatch conference.

Fafa, as Iman is nicknamed, said that the team was allowed
only two weeks of preparation time ahead of the competition,
which features eight men's and eight women's teams in its
inaugural season.

Phinisi lost its first two games in the first week of
competition, to Surabaya Flame and Jakarta Monas. It bounced back
with a 3-0 win over Bogor Tunas before carrying on against
Patriot.

The fact that Phinisi boasts a number of volleyball stars,
according to Fafa, has made the players overly confident and that
backfired in the opening games.

"We were too engrossed with how to put in a beautiful
performance and were overconfident. That had a boomerang effect,"
he said.

Sulaeman Ahmad, Patriot's coach, said that while his players
performed better than in the previous game they were unable to
match a team with an experienced squad.

"I tried hard by playing three spikers in front. But their
experience proved they could handle it," he said, adding that his
team was seeking simply to avoid ending up at the bottom at the
end of the competition.

It was its fourth loss, and Phinisi is aiming to bounce back
when it takes on Bogor Tunas next week. "If the kids maintain the
form they showed today, I'm sure we can score our first win," he
said.

In Bandung, West Java, host Tectona and the visiting Yogya
Yuwana squared their score -- the former winning 3-1 over the
latter in the women's competition but losing 0-3 in the men's.

Jakarta Monas edged ahead of Bogor Tunas with a 3-2 win by its
men's squad to keep its winning record intact in all of its four
matches, and a 3-0 win by the women.