Volleyball…Beijing 2008

Volleyball team Australia Men qualified for the World Cup after winning the Asian Championships for the first time in history. This is a massive achievement and are now looking for a top 8 finish at the World Cup. With some pretty handy results recently, including the win at Asian Championships, and even a win in August over 2007 European Champions Spain, its a pretty exciting time for this young team. The squad of 18 is as follows courtesy of the FIVB.

1. Daniel Howard
2. Jarryd Christensen
3. Nathan Roberts
4. Bejamin Hardy
5. Luke Campbell
6. Igor Yudin
7. Matthew Yong
8. Andrew Grant
9. Andrew Earl
10. Shane Alexander
11. Phillip DeSalvo
12. Aden Tutton
13. David Ferguson
14. Nigel Panagopka
15. John Dekker
16. William Thwaite
17. Paul Carrol
18. Brett Alderman

The names in Bold are the athletes that played at the recent Asian Championships.

The team entered the new century with an appearance in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where they placed 8^th, beating Spain in the process and taking a set from World Champions, Italy.

 

Having participated in the Sydney Olympics as the host nation, VTAM set out to qualify for Athens, in its own right (for the first time).  At the World Olympic Qualification Tournament in Tokyo, Australia achieved this historic goal becoming the Asian Volleyball Confederation’s representative in Athens as the highest ranked Asian team, when it defeated traditional Asian powers Japan, Korea and China for the first time in a single International tournament.

 

At the Athens Olympics, in 2004, VTAM eventually finished 11^th while taking set off the USA and World and Olympic Champions Brazil

 

A new look VTAM competed in its 4^th World Championships in 2006, to follow up its appearance in the 1982, 1998, 2002 editions of the tournament.

 

In 2007, VTAM returned to Fukuoka (a host city of the 2006 World Championships) to win the Asia Pacific Cup for the first time. 

 

Following on from their success at the Asia Pacific Cup, VTAM traveled to India for the 2^nd Commonwealth Championships for Men and won their second successive tournament in the space of two months as preparation for the 14^th Asian Senior Men’s Volleyball Championship in Indonesia.

 

At the 14^th Asian Senior Men’s Volleyball Championship VTAM created Asian volleyball history by winning the championship after playing ten games in ten days with only one loss.  This was the first time in which a country other than China, Japan or Korea had won the Continental Championship and as such qualified Australia to its first Volleyball World Cup. More FIVB

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 8:33 am and is filed under Australia, Qualification, World Cup 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.