Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Disabled prowess

Spike action from tonight's game with Cambodia in dark blue and their coach, Christian Zepp, standing in red
With the buzz of the SEA Games still ringing in my ears and the knowledge that Cambodia have easily beaten their 2007 medals tally already, with 26 at the last count this evening, I went to watch my first match of the WOVD Volleyball World Cup. And I definitely chose the right matchup. Cambodia versus Slovakia is probably the toughest match that will be played by all the six teams competing in this world cup competition. I remember the games between the two teams in 2007 and I specifically remember the bad sportmanship showed by the Slovakia No 1 and captain. His non-stop moaning and whining (and his quality blocking and volleying) was a feature then and it looks like he hasn't learnt his lesson now, as he was at it again. Cambodia ran out 3-2 set winners in a very close preliminary round encounter and that set the crowd alight, with clapping, cheering and drum-bashing throughout the match. Most enjoyable and I hope to get along to a few more Cambodia games leading up to Saturday's final. They've already beaten Poland and still have to face Germany, Malaysia and India to identify who the the semi-finalists will be on Friday.
The support tonight was excellent and even this Malaysian player got caught up in the mood with the Cambodin flag
The Cambodian team and support staff celebrate their success over Slovakia

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3 Comments:

Blogger boran said...

congratulations! i will be seeing them playing from tonight on... :D

December 16, 2009 12:06 PM  
Blogger Andy Brouwer said...

Surprise, surprise, The Cambodia Daily finally got off their arse and put some sport into today's edition. There was a round-up of the SEA games medals that Cambodia have achieved to date, though all of the information was taken from the SEA Games website. They didn't send a reporter to the Games, and neither did any of the Khmer language papers or tv stations.
Also in the paper was a piece on the WOVD world cup. With a small interview with Chris Minko, they commented on the win against Poland. They also reminded me that the Cambodian team will be playing at 6pm every evening until the semi-final placings are decided.
Andy

December 16, 2009 1:33 PM  
Blogger Andy Brouwer said...

James,
to many people sport IS the only news they want to hear. Natural disasters, government failures, terrorist bombings are all very well on the news front but they don't make for good-time reading in the man. Whereas sport has the ability to make you feel very good...or very bad, and that's why sport IS news that people want to hear. :-)
Andy

December 17, 2009 12:25 PM  

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