Anyone watching the volleyball?

[pishhead]

Come on, match point.

 

[pishhead]

Yessss!!!!!!!!

 

[Simster]

 

[SeagullSongs]

GET IN THERE.

This will be massive for British Volleyball.

 

[Jimmy Grimble]

Superb scenes!

 

[T soprano]

Against all the odds great stuff I knew they could win that final set

 

[Captain Haddock]

I watched this too, from the off. Great match and well done to 'the GBs'!

Really enjoyed getting my teeth into that...have been watching snippets of nearly everything now!

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

It was perve-tastic. Wonderfully tight navy blue short shorts. Drool.

 

[Simster]

It was perve-tastic. Wonderfully tight navy blue short shorts. Drool.

That hottie (Michel) in front of the net is 6'5". SIX FOOT FIVE! That's the same height as Joe Hart!

Anyway, I shall be tuning into the Italy game.

 

[Seagull27]

Now we have 6 players allin white!

This is always something people get confused by, so I'll try and clear it up a bit...

Basically, the libero is a specialist defensive player. Like any player in a backcourt position, they can't jump and hit the ball over the net if taking off from infront of the 3 metre line. Their primary purpose is to receive serves and play from the other team and pass the ball up to the setter.

As you probably know, in volleyball you rotate one position in an anticlockwise direction each time your team wins the serve. If there was a player who was good at hitting, but their defensive play was weaker, you would want to replace them with the libero. Normally, each player on court can only be substituted off, then back on (or on, then back off) once during a set - but the libero can come on or off more or less as much as they want. What tends to happen is that when the weak defensive player rotates from the front court to the back court, the libero will swap with this player and play all of their back court rotations until they reach front court, at which point they swap back. If a libero has come on for a player, they can only be replaced again by that same player when they reach front court.

There are some competitions where the libero is allowed to serve, but I think (not entirely sure) that in the olympic competition, they cannot. However either way, you would probably not want them to serve as you'd expect your better hitting players to also be better at serving. Therefore, the libero will swap with the back court player only after the player has finished their serving rotation. This is why you saw 6 players of the same colour - the player who would be coming off for the libero was (I assume) serving.

I hope that clears things up, and hasn't confused you even more...

Oh and as a useless and probably obvious bit of information, you'll notice the libero is often a fair bit shorter than the rest of the team. As volleyball very much favours taller players, the players who are technically very good, but aren't tall enough (and in volleyball, you're looking at probably at least 6' 3"-4" minimum for a front court men's player at international level) usually end up playing as a libero.

 

[Seagull27]

Anyone watching the men's match? 1 set down but looking good in the second.

Come on GB, beat those Aussies!

 

[7:18]

Was at the women's game last night...marvellous scenes!

Earl's Court was mostly full for the previous match (a great fixture between Italy and Japan) but by about the end of the 2nd/start of 3rd set the crowd started to filter out...I was getting quite nervous about making the last train home to Brighton should it go 5 sets...not only was the match a nailbiter, so was the chance of getting home. I'd been up since 5.30 am on only 3 hours sleep, but Team GB had the small crowd that remained in raptures...the comeback was fantastic and it was worth sticking around right until the very end, even though it meant a lot of running for the tube/train and only getting back to Brighton at 2.45AM. Fantastic game and unforgettable experience!

Loved the #18 SASSA for Algeria!!!