04/05 Season
Milton Keynes vs Solent
Date: 05-Mar-05
Score: 2-3 (25-21 20-25 25-22 18-25 10-15)

Milton Keynes vs Thames Valley
Date: 06-Mar-05
Score: 3-1 (25-23 19-25 25-18 25-21)

It was a weekend of two halves…

It had been a long break between matches and the lack of training and match play showed on Saturday as Milton Keynes looked a little rusty. The match started well for the home side with a 25-21 set win, giving the lads a little hope that the day would go well. However, Solent had other ideas and took the second set quite comfortably 20-25, as Milton Keynes' first pass disappeared.

The Milton Keynes lads rallied round each other in the third set, showing great team spirit to take the lead in the match a second time, winning a tight set 25-22, to take a 2-1 lead. However, in the fourth set, Solent made the most of the home team's inability to keep the concentration levels up, taking the set easily 18-25, and setting up a deciding fifth set.

Solent took the momentum into the deciding set, and continued to benefit from passing and defensive errors from Milton Keynes. It was always an uphill battle from then on, and the visitors came away with a deserved 10-15 final set and 2-3 match win.

Onto Sunday, this saw Thames Valley as the opponents at Milton Keynes. This was a very different day for the home side, almost as if Saturday was the warm up before the main event. Milton Keynes looked a different side, and managed to shrug off the aching muscles to push hard in what turned out to be a close match.

Thames Valley had some strong hitters and was stronger at the net than Milton Keynes, but that pulled the best out of the home teams defence. Despite some heavy kills by Thames Valley, Milton Keynes pushed on with some great all round team play to take the first set 25-23. A series of serving errors from Milton Keynes let Thames Valley back in the match with a 19-25 set going to the visitors. But Milton Keynes was determined not to finish the weekend with two losses, so the lads pushed on to take the next two sets 25-18, 25-21.

It was a good weekend all in all, seeing Milton Keynes jump to 4th in the table.

Next match: Sunday 13th March @ 16:00 away at Birmingham.

Team: Matt Almond, Simon Barton, Colin Brown, Tim Daun, Dave Goddard, Andreas Whitley, Ant Moffat, Scott Robson, Kevin Smith

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