Volleyball: Land Marine Cup Finals |14 December 2020
Arsu players celebrate retaining the women’s division one title (Photo: Roland Duval)
Premium Spikers, Arsu retain top flight titles
● Anse Royale Boys, St Francis Sisters new second division champs
This year’s division one Land Marine Cup finals played on Saturday at the Palais des Sports were total replicas of last season’s with both Premium Spikers and Arsu retaining their titles with victories over the same opponents.
In the men’s final, Premium Spikers were up against Neo Boyz, while women’s champions Arsu faced their grand rivals Cascade.
As for the second division, two new champions, namely Anse Royale Boys and St Francis Sisters were crowned on Saturday, replacing last year’s winners Breakaway and Racing Club. The latter are now playing first division volleyball following their automatic promotion this season.
The men’s division one final was clearly a display of experience and maturity over endurance and fitness with Neo Boyz boasting a much younger line-up, compared to Premium Spikers’ fervent veterans in the likes of captain Paul Rose and hard-hitters Danny Marie and Ricky Vel.
With no time to waste, Premium Spikers surprised their opponents early in the set, taking a 15-5 lead to stay in control.
Despite some good individual efforts and constant instructions from coach Ruudy Joseph, Neo Boyz could not close the gap as the score changed from 17-6 to 19-10, 21-11 and 23-12 before Premium Spikers added two extra points to seal the set 23-13 for a 1-0 lead.
Applying the same strategy, Premium Spikers entered the second set on the same momentum, opening a 12-4 lead which was then extended to 17-6.
A bit overconfident, the players of coach Didier Dugasse slacked down on their game, allowing Neo Boyz to score some points, before finally ending the second set on 25-16 win for a 2-0 lead.
The third set, however was a different story as Neo Boyz adjusted their game, preventing their opponents from opening big leads and their strategy paid as they managed to keep the score close – 10-10, 13-13, 15-15 – before allowing Premium Spikers to take the lead up to 22-16.
Not wanting to lose the match in straight sets, coach Joseph adjusted his plays and his advice fell into good ears as Neo Boyz kept pushing to close the gap, bringing the score to 23-22, then 24-23 before Premium Spikers scored the last point of the set to win it 25-23 and the match 3-0.
Compared to the men, the women’s final was a bit more tightly contested as the score remained close, with Cascade having the upper hand in the first set, managing an important 21-18 lead which was pushed to 23-20, then 24-21 before finally winning the first set 25-21.
Not wanting to hand over their title, Arsu entered the second set on a different tempo locking the score at 5-5, before leading 11-5.
Following some instructions from coach François Magloire, Cascade managed to pick up and reduce the gap to 15-12, before letting it slip again to 22-15. Arsu managed to hold on to their lead to win the set 25-17 and level the match at one set apiece.
More confident after winning the second set, Arsu entered the third with all guns blazing, maintaining the lead all throughout. It started at 7-3, then 16-9 until Cascade managed to close it to 20-17. Arsu managed to hold on to their three-point lead to win the third set 25-22 for a 2-1 advantage in the match.
As both sides looked disorganised in their play, the fourth set was once again closely contested at the beginning with Arsu maintaining the lead, before extending it.
The closest Cascade could reach was at 20-17, before Arsu made it 22-17 and they made no mistake to win the set 25-19 for a 3-1 victory.
In the men’s division two final, winners Anse Royale Boys needed five sets to dispatch St Louis who put up a brave show.
After winning the first set 25-23, Anse Royale Boys fell behind, losing the second set 20-25, before regaining their lead with a 25-20 third set win.
St Louis were not ready to give up as they fought back in the fourth set to win it 25-22, pushing the match into a fifth and decisive set.
Anse Royale Boys came out stronger though to win the fifth set 16-14 and the 2020 Land Marine Cup title.
In the women’s final for the same division, St Francis Sisters had to dig deep into their reserves to beat the young Juniors squad 3-0 (25-23, 25-22, 25-23) to take home the title.
Still at Saturday’s finals, Land Marine managing director Hugh Adam presented Seychelles Volleyball Federation (SVF) chairman Ronald Wong with the sponsorship for the 2021 version of the competition.
The coaches’ reactions
Didier Dugasse – Premium Spikers: “It is obvious that we dominated the match, but it is worth noting that even if we opened some big leads, Neo Boyz put up a nice show and I am very happy about that since we managed to bring back some good actions into volleyball. Once again, it was all about experience and the players managed to remain calm all throughout the match, and even if we lost to the same Neo Boyz in the qualification match and were stretched to five sets against Racing Club in the semifinal we managed to work on our weaknesses. As for the future, we will be promoting more young players and I am urging them to come forward and join us. They should not look at the older and more experienced players as a threat, but rather as mentors and learning materials.”
Corey Toussaint – Neo Boyz player: “We are very disappointed with the first two sets, and you could see that our reception was not too good as they destabilised us from the service line. Premium managed to open huge leads and we kept chasing them. There was a bit of anxiety at first, but we managed to recover and our main mistake is that we settled into the match a bit too late. It is still disappointing to lose another final to Premium Spikers, but we are happy we made into the last two.”
François Ally – Arsu: “The final was very interesting and Cascade put up a great performance which forced us to make several tactical changes, including the positioning of players which in the end paid off. Overall it was a great final, showcasing some good volleyball, including offence, defence and blocks.
Our strong point today was our service and we managed to score a lot of points in that area of the match.”
François Magloire – Cascade: “I would personally say that everything went wrong for Cascade today. The players were not listening to instructions, and they did not have the willingness to win.
Areas we were supposed to excel at were the very ones we failed miserably at, and definitely our opponents capitalised on us. We were well prepared for the match, as you could see in our group and knockout matches we played very well. Today, I do not know what went wrong and nothing worked for us.”
Roland Duval
