The University of East London’s women faced Nottingham University in the crucial play-off of the BUCS Last 8 game at UEL’s SportsDock. The tie had an extra edge to it, with the revelation that the new Nottingham coach was in fact Simon Loftus, ex-UEL coach.
UEL cruises past Nottingham
The first two sets ended up as more of a formality than anything else for the East London side, with both sets going to the hosts. The comfortable margins of victory – 25-11 and 25-12 – may have caused the hosts to take their foot off the gas in the third set, with Nottingham coming out firing on all cylinders.
The visitors were capitalising on UEL’s complacency well, taking advantage of the scenario and shocking the previously free-flowing home side. After some stern words from coach Jefferson Williams in a time-out, UEL’s strength and character pulled them through, taking the victory with a 27-25 third-set win.
Challenges
Speaking to Rising East after the game, Jefferson Williams reflected on the important victory for the side’s season: “I was pleased, overall, with the blocking. Ashley Headen, our captain and middle-blocker, had a very good game. I think we counted six or seven kill-blocks in two sets … and when that happens it’s very very good.”
Speaking on how his side can improve further, Williams said: “I think offensively we still need to build, as we do have a lot of variation in our offence, but we didn’t really have to use it as much today.”
Williams is aware that challenging tests lay ahead, with the potential to face a tough Durham team coming up: “We know that Durham have two quite good middle-blockers, and we’ll have to work to spread our offence to put pressure on them.
Bitter sweet victory
“Our character was I think the only good part about the third set, because we were able to pull ourselves back when we were down a few points. I said to them [the team] in the first place it’s disappointing that we allowed the set to get that way, because our job should have been to manage different phases of the game, and they didn’t do that at all. We switched off a little bit mentally, and our focus dropped.”
Despite cruising past Loftus’s Nottingham, tougher tests will lie ahead for UEL and no lack of focus will be allowed as Williams stated in the interview.
