The Area Cup is the annual EVA tournament for non National League players and Berkshire has in the past entered men's and women's teams with some success. This year the competition was held in Chester over the weekend of the 8th and 9th May with the Mens team coming 4th and the Ladies Team coming 6th

This year the team was put together at rather last minute for both men's and women's competitions and were delighted to have players from - Maidenhead, Spikeopaths, Basingstoke, Reading University and nearly Didcot and Newbury too! So a good representative team from our county.

We travelled up to Chester and Ellesmere Port for the tournament which takes place over two days, Saturday men and women were together in Ellesmere Port, which was fun. The guys got off to a great start, beating Greater Manchester 2 sets to 1 and showing off the springbok like jumping/hitting skills of our young Argentinian from Reading Uni, Luciano ! There was a pool of four teams and points were won for each set, so all matches played to 3 sets and we needed to beat the other two teams 3-0 to ensure going through. We next played Cheshire and managed to beat them comfortably 3-0, including a marvellous display of serving from Daniel Lis, who served 19 straight points and was quite tired when he came off for our Libero player, Steffen Liedtke! But all was on the last match against Suffolk, who, like us, had only dropped one set. They were a tough bunch but really no match for the incredible team spirit and huge energy that the Berkshire guys pulled out for that last match. You might be forgiven for thinking that this was a team that had played together for some considerable time, not just met each other the weekend before for an hour or so ! For the guys to have got together a week before the tournament for an hour or so and then to have walked onto court with only a ten minute warm up on saturday morning, then to have played so extremely well and won throughout the day was an amazing achievement.

In particular, we must recognise Steffen's fabulous, solid performance as Libero, despite wanting to be able to hit, he supported my decision and request to play only at the back where he made some excellent pickups, great passes and gave other players a rest - this performance I would say made such a huge difference to the team and to us winning. Luciano was of course one of our stars, astounding most of us with his leaping like the proverbial salmon higher than most of us could ever go and serving like a demon - although we must give the outstanding achievement award for serving to Daniel, for his NINETEEN points in a row that he served, so vicious was that serve! Andy was setting dream balls for much of the time and connected to great effect with all of the team at some point, but I will particularly remember the lovely cross with Rob and Christophe. Also, Christophe who had no rest the whole weekend, Olivier who also rested only for one set and Airam who supported from the bench, came on and set for the team so well on both days. Everyone played really well, everyone gave their best, everyone made sure they didn't let the team down. Of course, Christian and Mark played well in more than just the volleyball ...! And I will never forget Mark's face when he clattered that winning hit to win that final match on saturday ! Many would have bottled such a moment.

Having beaten Suffolk 3-0 on closely fought sets, we retired to watch the girls lose their last match, unfortunately. We all met up again for a riotous evening at TGI Friday's who coped with a rowdy and energetic crowd of 25 volleyballers admirably.

Sunday was unfortunately not such a great day for the men's team. We faced tough opposition from Merseyside in our first match, which would have been fine but unfortunately they behaved really badly and taunted, jeered and booed our team throughout, which definitely got to us all. I have subsequently complained to the organisers and also to the EVA, so bad was this behaviour. We didn't really recover and lost both to London and to Suffolk, whom we had beaten 3-0 the day before, but still played some great volleyball against some excellent opposition.