Being good is mostly a mindset

Saturday 4th November saw City of Glasgow Ragazzi play host to Edinburgh’s NUVOC. Their coach, Bill Stobie had to manage a match against the Scottish Champions when he only had 4 of his regular starting 6 players available to him because of illness and injury.

The Glasgow side won a one-sided affair 3 sets to zero, and

afterwards our roving reporter Raven Gilll asked Bill for his thoughts on the game: "I thought my side (NUVOC) did better than I had expected, we passed reasonably well, although Su seemed to be serving less than 100%, it was probably hard for them to get ‘up’ for the match. For us there was no expectation although we did mange some successful hits on the outside through block-out. All in all I wasn’t unhappy with our performance".

The day’s second encounter saw the

Fabulous Suettes take on the University of Edinburgh. At the start of the first set it was nip and tuck with the Edinburgh side protecting a small and ultimately fragile lead.

At 10-9 up in that first set the visitors were making lots of enthusiastic noises until Katie Barbour stepped up to the service line and bombarded the team from the East with 9 stunning serves, which were backed up by a series of stunning defensive digs from Libero Raveen Gill, which were in turn put away for points from Laura McReady. At the end of this barrage of mental strenght the score read 19-10 and the University side never recovered from this.

At the end of the second set the score read 25-22 for the Suettes, but the momentum for the set was all in the Glasgow side’s favour, as Sam Fowler, making her debut as a starting six player, hit a series of devastating first tempo attacks, and young setter Nicole Ramage constructed her offence with attention to the detail of her decision making.

The third set was a demonstration of the power of the Champions as they ran out 25-8 winners.

So played 2, won 2, west wins against east, well done Su Ragazzi and roll on next week.