Russia suffers third defeat in World Volleyball C'ships

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Although the Russian women's volleyball team is one of the strongest in the world, the men's team does not share the same ranking. At the U-185 World Volleyball Championships it suffered 1-3 defeat at the hands of Japan in Friday's match.

Russia has lost its two previous matches against Myanmar and Indonesia. The team will play its fourth and final match against Chinese Taipei on Sunday.

The Japanese team, one of the strongest in the competition, proved its superiority over the Russians in a match that lasted less than 90-minutes.

Taking a 5-0 lead in the beginning of the first set, Japan's Yasuyuki Ueno threatened the Russian defense line with his powerful spikes throughout the game.

The Russians, who seemed nervous at first, were unable to develop their game and could do nothing to prevent the Japanese from scoring against them. Japan managed to wrap up the first set 25-10.

Determined Russian spikers, twins Dmitri and Serguei Mikhailov, continued to develop their team's powerful style by hammering dozens of spikes toward Japan's defense line.

Russia then managed to take the lead halfway through the game and closed the game with 25-22 win over the Japanese.

The second set victory injected new hopes into the Russian players as they picked up a 7-5 lead in the third set.

However, Japanese blockers Satoshi Inobe and Shunici Ogata managed to stymie the attacks from the twins, and the top scorer from the two previous games, Yasuyuki Ueno, showed no mercy to the Russians.

Japan managed to equalize at 7-7 and powered ahead to win the third set 25-22.

With another set to come, the Japanese players appeared determined to send the Russians home, and took the fourth set 25- 18.

Assistant coach to the Russian team, Ilya Volodarskiy, admitted that his team had failed once again to perform well against Japan.

"Without doubt, our players are good at attacking but we have a very weak defense as most of our players have had no experience in playing this sort of game before," Volodarskiy told reporters.

Commenting on his team's last game against Chinese Taipei, Volodarskiy said that he would conduct a review based on his team's previous performances and try to devise a strategy to beat Chinese Taipei.

"We don't want to leave Indonesia without any victories at all," Volodarskiy said.

The Japanese head coach, Iwao Hara, said he was pleased as most of his players had performed optimally.

"We're relieved that we have been able to win our first two games. We hope we can continue like this in our next match," Hara said.

In the second match, Chinese Taipei defeated Myanmar 3-2 (25- 15, 21-25, 25-23, 21-25, 15-13).