The First Tour

So after a brief 3 week stop in Australia it's of on our marthon 6 week tour to Croatia, Denmark, France and Japan. After a fairly long flight we arrived in Zagbred Croatia ready to play a 4 team tournament against Croatia, Turkey and Slovenia. All 3 teams were at a decent level and we were certainly going to have to play well to get some wins. The first match was a fairly up and down affair. We started well in the 1st only to see Croatia come back and take the lead, it took a good fight back at the end of the set to take it. Croatia stepped it up to take the next 2 before we fought back to take it to a 5th set. We started poorly in the 5th and couldn't come back, Croatia in 5.

Determined to grab our first win of the tour we started in brilliant fashion winning the first 2 sets against Turkey with some briliant volleyball. However Turkey fought back and we lost all our momentum as they too eventually overhauled us in 5 sets.

The match against Slovenia started badly for us, the Slovenians were having a great service game putting our passers under pressure. Slovenia took the first 2 sets. Then we fought back to take the 4th set with much more solid play. In the 4th we were always there abouts until the end of the set when we made too many errors to give Slovenia an easier win than they should of had.

So then it was onto a 3 match tour around Croatia against the Croatian team. It was at this point in time we welcomed back Igor from his duties in Poland. It was great to see him again, and I think he was pretty glad to see some familiar Aussie faces again.

So our first game was in Sisak, and it wasn't our best effort. We were close but just never close enough to take out the sets, it was a dissapointing match and we lost in 3.

The 2nd match was probably just as bad, a dissapointing effort as we never seemed to gain any momentum and lost again in 3.

Before our 3rd match we were invited to go see a 'nature park' nearby. In the end we only really saw a video of the nature park and went into an old house with dirt floors. In the hot day in heinsight it didn't seem like the best idea!

The 3rd game was better. We started a young team with Will on for Fergs and Johnny D replacing Roy (who was still having some back problems) To our credit we began aggressivelly and served well to take the first set. We were then down 5-6 points in the 2nd when we started to come back. Roy came on as opposite and started to make a difference and suddenly it was 19-19. However it was not to be as Croatia took it 30-28. The next 2 sets were pretty similar, we were close but could never make a break and get away from the Croats. So it was Croatia in 4.

All in all Croatia was a nice place, a was not a huge fan of Zagbred, but the smaller cities are really quite nice and picturesque. It was also interesting seeing the damage on the walls of houses and buildings fomr the war in the early 90's!

A little dissapointing not to have a win on the board at this stage, but we were all looking forward to getting to Denmark. (especially Aden and Youngy)
So the first full day in Denmark we had a day off, so most of the guys ventured into Copenhagen. I went in with Igor and Shane.

Unfortunatelly it was a public holiday and so none of the shops were open. However we still had a blast seeing the sights like the palace, the little mermaid and others, all from the citi bikes (bikes you can get for free to ride around in the city) So it was an awesome day.

Igor almost drove into a parked car after this photo!

So now Im sitting in Korser waiting to play our first match against the Danish. It's been good to see a lot of friends here in the Danish team, so lets hope I can get bragging rights over them straight away!