Rest of Denmark and France

Well the Tour of Denmark is over, we ended up losing a closely fought series 3-4. A little dissapointing to lose the series in the end, we were a little inconsistent throughout. However at certain stages we did play some good volleyball. The first game was in Korsør about an hour away from Copenhagen. It was a fairly scrappy match with both teams making a lot of errors in the small gym. We ended up finishing the better in the 5th set to take the match. It was important to finally win a 5th set, and a match on the tour, and it was awesome to sing the team song again.
The second match was always going to be a little more important for me personally. It was in Odense which for me is as close to a home ground as I can get outside Australia after playing there for the 2005-2006 season. We really didn't start to well, losing the first and second set before we knew what hit us. The Danish guys had really stepped up a notch this game and were controlling the play. The 3rd was better as we started to steady and won the set to 22. However after taking an early lead in the 4th we could not hold on and ended up losing in 4. Personally I was fairly happy with my game. I was subbed off in the 1st set but was able to bounce back when I came back on at the end of the 2nd. Got on a bit of a run and scored 20 in the last 2 sets so i cannot complain about that! It was good for me to be able to come on and play well after already being benched, it's a part of my game that has improved a lot withing the last 6 months or so, hopefully it will continue to improve.
The 3rd match in Vejle was again in a small gym, and this again seemed to suit us. We played a solid consistent game and ended up taking the match 3-1 without to much difficulty. good to see everyone contribute in this game. At this point in time it was also time to saygoodbye to beloved physio Jarrod Scott. This was Jarrod's second tour and again it was great to have him. His enthusiasm for being on tour, being overseas and learning more about about what it takes to treat us guys was great to have and I look forward to a few more tours with Scotty in the future. The 4th match was in Middelfart and was also the re-introduction of Mr Paul (Paul) Carroll from a successful season with Pepperdine in the US. Unfortunatelly this was probably our worst match for the tour so far. We made a lot of errors and never really gained any rhythm throughout the game. Although some of the sets were close we never played well enough to make a break and take a set. 3-0 for Denmark, amazingly the only 3-0 result in the 7 game series.
The 5th game was in Aarhus. All credit for the organisers in Aarhus who put together a great stadium with taraflex as well as enticing over 1000 people to come and watch the game. It was also a big game for Aden Tutton who played in Aarhus only the last season finished. He actually got a bigger cheer than most of the Danish guys when he ran out onto the court. It was a closely fought match in the forst 4 sets. We ended up going set for set with the Danes winning the 1st and 3rd, ourselves the 2nd and 4th. I felt like we had some good momentum going into the 5th set.....but we ended up having a shocking 5th set. We started slow and then never got going, to many errors and our inability to kill the ball pretty much gave the set and the match to Denmark. Denmark become the first team to take 2 matches in a row and subsequently take a 3-2 lead in the series. It was do or die for our 6th match in Ålborg, and for the first 2 and a half sets we were doing more dieing than doing! We ended up losing the first after being up 17-11, subsequently we lost the second easily and found ourselves down 2-0, and 19-13 in the 5th. Suddenly we made a run to 19-17 and we were back in the match. The momentum change was abvious and continued to push to end up being down 24-22. After siding out the Danish guys had a swing for the match only to put the ball only centremetres out the back of the court. 24-24, we continued to trade point for point saving about 5-6 match (and series) points before we finally grabbed 2 points in a row to grab the 3rd set. The Danish guys seemed to be in a bit of shock at the start of the 4th and we opened up a commanding lead. They made a run at the end of the set but it was not enough and we took t he set to 23. Again it was a great start that set us up in the 5th. We were 8-5 at the change of ends and extended the lead to 12-8 with some srong transition attacking. At 14-10 the Danes made 3 points in a row, but we came through with the side-out kill to complete a remarkable comeback 15-13 in the 5th! After the game we boarded a buf bound for Copenhagen and got in at a bout 3am in the morning (pretty much when the sun was rising) and then we had to play that night. A tough schedule, but we were confident in taking the match and the series. For the first set it looked like it was going to be the case, we dominated taking the set to 18. However after this we didn't play quite as well. We couldn't kill the ball as freely as we once had and although it was close we could not win the following 3 sets. After the teams both teams were physically drained. Personally I did not have anything left in the tank after 2 big games in the 2 nights. Luckily for us we had the day off to go and visit Copenhagen and recover the very next day.
Denmark produced one of the most beautiful days for us to go and have a look around town. 28 degree weather and a lot of people in town that saturday. We spent the morning looking through all the shops on the main street of Copenhagen getting some shopping in. Then we went down to the harbour to chill out and have a beer and just watch the people go by. Then after an icecream (a must in Denmark) we went to see Oceans 13 at the movies. So all in all it was probably the best dayof the tour (non-volleyball wise) so far.

Next stop France.
I was excited about coming to France to play the French B team. France is one fo the best volleyballing countries and play a great style of volleyball where the play with a lot of control and force the opposition to play good shots to finish nearly every rally. I also get the opportunity to room with Igor in France (good to get rid of Matty cause according to Roy and JD we just fight all the time haha) which is always an interesting experience, but great as I did miss the annoying Russian when he was away. I dunno if he felt the same because it only took 2 days for him to put a 'Franga sucks ass' poster on the wall....not to sure what I did wrong, but i guess ill have to love with the new decoration. The first day was a training match against the French team. They had 1 player from the World Championships team, as well as several other players I had seen in the French national team and top French National A teams over the last few years. They also had a player who had some of the most massive arms I've seen on a Volleyballer, Just picture what a real life human action figure would look like! He was immediatelly nickname GI Joe. We played a pretty decent game, we attacked and served really well and won the 1st and 4th sets. Unfortunatelly we were not bale to finish in the 5th losing 15-10. However we knew we could improve in many areas of our game before the 1st official match the next day. Oh and the highlight of the day was GI Joe getting 6 packed from a ball that hit his own setters knee and went sideways into his face......he actually subbed himself off, absolutelly hilarious.
The first official match was one of the better team efforts I had seen in my time within the national team. We were again out of the blocks quick to take the first. The quick runners were killing everything and a couple of timely blocks from Fergo gave us the advantage and the win. the second set was far closer, France settled and were able to stay 1-2 points ahead the entire set. We had a chance at about 18-19 to go 19 all, but was not able to make use of the transition opportunity and ended up fading to lose the set 25-20. It was not looking good in the 3rd when we were down early at 8-4. We ende up making a few subs whcih helped changed the momentum of the set a little. Igor continued to put some good balls away and we came over the top to claim the set. We carried our momentum into the 4th and steadily increased the lead to be up by about 4 points at the 2nd technical timeout. We stumbled a little at the end of the set after being up 23-19, but were able to kill our last 2 sideout balls to take a well earned 25-23 victory. So 3-1 is a great result. We attacked at 59% kill with only 10% error, which is some of the better stats the national team has seen in recent memory. Everyone in the team contributed really well in many areas of the match. Highlights of the match included Igor getting a monster block on GI Joe, and Ralph making it 2 in 2 days by nailing GI joe in the throat off a quick. (but he didn't get subbed off this time)
The following day was a training with the French team, not much to report. GI Joe's own teamates were giving him shit about getting the shit blocked out of him the day before, both teams had a big laugh. We played 3 sets of a drill in humid temperatures, it looked like we had just jumped into a pool fullt clothed. GI Joe was again having a great day, suddenly after one rally he just sprinted outside not to be seen again.....not sure what happened, somebody said he might of thrown up, but were not sure. Either way it hasn't been the best week for the big guy!
The 4th day was not the best match for ourselves, we had a long bus ride to the game and it looked like this had taken a bit out of us as we started really badly in the 1st set....and I mean really badly. So it was 7-16 and the set was looking pretty bleak. Somehow we began to make some points, just putting serves in and letting our block and defence do the job and suddenly it was 23-19, then 20, 21, 22 and unbelivable we were level at 23-23! However we failed to win that point and then lost another to go down 25-23. The next set was again close throughout, but we couldn't hold our consistency at the business end of the set to go down 25-22. The 3rd set was fairly disastorous as they ran over the top of us to make it 1-1 in the official games played in France.
The 5th match was another training match. It was fairly even in both the first 2 sets with the French continuing to get the big points when it mattered at the end of the set, first 2 to the Frogs. We then started to play, the 2rd and 4th we were playing some great volleyball, good block touches and a good kill % got us the then next 2 hard fought sets. But it seemed like it was all for nothing as we went down 8-4 and eventually 13-8 in the 5th. We sided out to make it 13-9 and Igor went back to serve. Igor's roll serves seemed to be enough as a few blocks, a few transition plays later and we were up 14-13!!!!! We even had a tough transition swing for the match (Which I managed to completely smash out the back of the court.....bugga) and then couldnt mind another good opportunity to finish the match. The French could and they eventaully took it 21-19!!! So another close match with a dissapointing loss. We can still take a lot of up's into our tournament in China wich we aim to win.

Outsid the volleyball hall Montpellier was also a really beautiful city. We got so see a bit of this with our walks through town so I definitelly had to throw a few photos in.