Oxford Students 1 - 3 Tendring Men

17-25, 25-14, 20-25 & 12-25

Report by Rees Warren

After winning the Essex Derby 3-2 against Team Essex Estonians last weekend, Tendring VC Men travelled to their first away match of the season to Newbury, Berkshire to take on Oxford Students.

As per usual for away games, there was always going to be someone who turned up late to which they stated was the alarm clock fault. After not too much of delay, the squad travelled up to Newbury before Storm Brian could take hold.

After arriving at the venue, there was another delay. No one fancied taking on the Taekwondo fighters who had double booked the hall for an extra 30 minutes. Once they had finished the match could go ahead.

Tendring started well with some strong serving from Jacob Jones and some big hits from Tomasz Mowawski. Oxford started to come back halfway through the set but Tendring kept up the pressure and eased to the set victory 25-17.

Second set, Tendring and Oxford went about trading blows with each other with some great wipes off the block by Neil Masters and some extraordinary recovery by Rees Warren in the Liberio role. Unfortunately for Tendring, they got themselves stuck in a rut by the Oxford server and could not turn the tide letting the focus go with Oxford running away with the set 25-14.

A quick sensible coach’s talk from Bastien Chabe-Ferrer at the break sorted out the Tendring squad. He showed by example with his block kills making an instant impact at the start set on how to get things done. With some awesome play by Connor Bui with his one handed tip kill after the first Technical Timeout, helped keep Tendring on track for the set win. Oxford tried to turn the momentum with some clever hitting but to no avail with Tendring taking the set 25-20.

With Tendring now 2-1 up, the squad felt good and wanting more. With some sensible setting from Andre Kaprol, Tendring took big strides on winning the set with some huge spikes from Captain Stuart Dove. This left Oxford on the ropes and with Tendring on Match Point, the managed to wrap it all up with a fantastic one hand block from Club Chairman Alex Porter to make it 25-12.

After the match, Neil Masters was voted Most Valuable Player for Tendring.

Coach Bastien Chabe-Ferrer quoted that he was really pleased at how well the squad stayed together during the rocky times and worked hard in getting the win. Looking forward to the rest of the season ahead.
Next match Tendring play will be on Sunday 19th November 2017 away to London Baks.