Dear insidethegames

Two weeks into the Great Britain Men’s Volleyball team tour of Africa, and I have great news to report.

First, let me tell you about our matches against Tunisia. We didn’t know much about the Tunisians apart from that, on paper, they’re miles better than us. In our first official match we lost in three very close sets.

However, we had our chances and sensed that we could be in with a shout for the other matches.

A win against one of the top two teams from Africa would be very nice when it comes to the 2012 Olympics and the pools are being decided.

The next day we played a friendly match and promptly won 3-0. Result! We also made some GB volleyball history when the youngest guy on the tour, Chris Frost, appeared on court. He became the youngest player ever to play for Great Britain, at 17 years and a few months. Well done, Chris!

After two days’ training with the Tunisians, we played our second official match. This was the big one. Guess what your little GB team did? We only went out there and won 3-0! Against a team ranked 22nd in the world. The match was live on TV, the local Mayor and his entourage were in attendance and we got some cake at a reception afterwards. What more do you want, eh? Perhaps more detailed match information? Allow me to direct you to www.britishvolleyball.org.

So with that incredible result tucked under our belt, we flew from Tunisia to Cairo for the next leg of the tour. We were keen to continue to impress. And what a fantastic week in Egypt we’ve had! After a short drive to our hotel, we had our first brush with security, what with metal detectors and X-ray machines. For most of the tour group, this was their first foray to Egypt, and I think they were especially impressed when we got our own plain clothes security man who had two guns, one of which apparently fired 650 rounds a minute. I suppose you can’t be too careful.

We spent the first full day training for the official match against Egypt. There was a good deal of pressure on us to start getting some results for all our hard work over the past few years. There’s been a lot made recently about the funding situation for "minor" sports, and volleyball has been no exception. But we’re only athletes. We can’t change any decisions and we have no say in how those decisions are reached. The only thing we can do is put in performances on the volleyball court. If we keep working hard, making strides and winning, the behind-the-scenes issues will take care of themselves.

When we toured Egypt three years ago, we were allowed to play against only the junior Egyptian team, whom we struggled to beat. So here we were again, desperate to prove ourselves and earn some respect, competing against one of the better sides in the volleyball world. Also, we were lucky enough to be invited to play against Egypt during the week when one of the bigger sporting clubs in Cairo were having the grand opening of their new gym. These are facilities we can only dream about in the UK - absolutely fantastic.

The match was very late starting. You can’t plan for these problems, but you can prepare your team to be ready to deal with anything. So, over the years, we’ve learned how to stay calm and adjust on the fly. In fact, we were so well adjusted that we only went out and won the match! Yes, against Egypt. A truly remarkable result. After a tight first set, which our opponents won, we were determined to make good in the second one. It was virtually a carbon copy of the first set, except that this time we were on the winning side.

The match continued in this fashion for another two gruelling sets, much to the delight of the packed gymnasium, but I think even the guys with the drums were flagging a bit towards the end of the fourth set. The match went to the shorter fifth set to break the tie. We could see the panic set in on the faces of the Egyptian players as they realised we weren’t going to fade away. Sure enough, we used a couple of their errors and won a close fifth set. What a fantastic result! 

Let’s put this into perspective. This Egypt team is ranked 14th in the world, are perennial African champions and are the African representatives at the Olympics and World Championships. They’ve just played a great World League, where they beat Finland and ran the United States and Russia very close indeed.

Some of their players are truly world-class operators and play at the very top of club volleyball. But in walks the GB volleyball team, which didn't even exist a few years ago.

What's our world ranking, you ask? Well, the way the ranking system in volleyball works is a bit strange. Points are accrued only at major events and not for wins in friendly matches. When you look at the list of teams that regularly miss out on major events, owing to the near-impossible task of qualification from the Europe region, it then makes sense that good-quality teams are ranked 50+ in the world. Team GB is ranked in triple digits.

Seriously. For us to go to Egypt, in a raucous gymnasium and beat their full national team, which ranks nearly 100 places higher than us, is some feat. We’re sending out messages that we’re not to be taken lightly, that we’re working really hard towards London 2012 and that we’re not going just for the 24-hour, all-you-can eat buffet in the athletes’ village. 

This was indeed a banner day for volleyball in Great Britain and one that no one will forget quickly. Three years ago we could barely beat a team of Egyptian kids and now we’ve just beaten their best team fair and square. Being a volleyball player is extremely hard hard work and isn’t very often fun. We’ve suffered so much pain and agony, so many defeats, so many humbling experiences and so many sacrifices, but we’re on a journey and no one is going to stand in our way. This Egyptian team will almost certainly be at London 2012, and here in 2010 we’ve beaten them. There’s no such thing as a guarantee in sport, but we’ll have that extra bit of confidence against them at London’s Earl’s Court – and that alone is priceless.

But, as we’ve so often been told by our coach Harry Brokking, in volleyball there’s no time to be sad and there’s less time to celebrate. This match against Egypt was only the first engagement of a week-long tour in which we would play various matches and have combined training sessions. We got back to the hotel around midnight, and nine hours later we were already back on the training court.

It’s no accident that this tour is three weeks long. It’s intended to test us both on and off the court during a similar time-frame to that of the Olympic volleyball tournament. We have to deal with injury and illness during a tournament and this is all a learning experience for us. That’s why it’s so important to have a talented squad that has depth, because the matches won’t stop come 2012.

Right now, we’re at the airport, waiting to fly to our third and final destination on this tour - Doha, Qatar. I’ll write again soon.

All the best 
Andy 

Andy Pink, who plays for Bassano in Italy, is Britain's vice-captain

British Volleyball is represented by davidwelchmanagement.com