Julien Boucher's world championship blog
World championships – post-mortem
I am writing from the Frankfurt International Airport. It is 12:10 p.m., September 28 and I have just finished lunch. We arrived here after a six-hour bus ride from Trieste to Milan and a one hour flight to Frankfurt. After a three-hour wait, we face an eight –hour flight to Ottawa.
The sting from last night’s loss is still being felt. A 3-0 loss to Germany plus the lowest points for and against ratio put us in fourth in our pool. We would have needed to win at least one set and especially had played better after the 20-point mark. All three sets were close but our errors in execution are what killed us.
Everyone here called our pool the « Pool of Death ». Even the Polish head of delegation showed sympathy in our fate. Mexico, ranked behind us in NORCECA, qualified for the second round beating Australia 3-1. Our final ranking: 19th, the third lowest in our history.
There is still a lot of work to do. To maintain our team’s nucleus we need to find a way to play more matches against higher ranked teams. And to assure our future national senior team members can compete with the world powers we must continue to preach a more complete technical and physical development for our young athletes.
Here is where our players and coaches are headed this winter:
National training centre in Gatineau: Olivier Faucher, Justin Duff, Gord Perrin and Vincent Pichette
Ankara, Turkey: Josh Howatson and Dallas Soonias (joining Steve Gotch)
ACH Volley, Slovenia: Dan Lewis and Adam Simac
AS Cannes, France: Nic Cundy
Lennik, Belgium: Toon Van Lankvelt
Friedrichschafen, Germany: Fred Winters
Portugal: Dustin Schneider
South Korea: Gavin Schmitt
Greece: Louis-Pierre Mainville
Poland: Adam Kaminski
Izmir, Turkey: Glenn Hoag
All the best for your 2010-11 seasons
Arrivederci,
Julien Boucher, Canadian team manager
