Bahrain set for top Asian volleyball event

TDT | Manama                                                           

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain’s senior men’s national volleyball team are all set to take on the continent’s best in the 2022 Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) Cup for Men, set to take place in Nakhon Pathom, Thailand.

The Bahrainis are making their debut in the prestigious tournament, which gets underway on Sunday featuring 11 of the top senior squads from all over Asia and Oceania. The nationals are in Pool D for the competition’s preliminary round alongside Chinese Taipei and China.

Pool A consists of hosts Thailand, South Korea and Hong Kong; Pool B is composed of Iran and Pakistan; and Pool C includes Japan, Australia and India. Defending champions Qatar were also set to take part, but have since withdrawn.

Iran were the silver-medallists from the last edition in 2018 while Japan won the bronze. Bahrain is set to open their tournament campaign on Sunday against Chinese Taipei. The match is scheduled for a 2pm start. The Bahrainis then take on China on Tuesday, also at 2pm.

Following a single round-robin in the opening stage, the top two from each pool move on to the main round, where they will once again be divided into two groups, including Pools E and F. The third-ranked sides will go on to Pool G.

Game results from the preliminaries will be carried over in the main stage. That will then set up the match-ups for the semi-finals and the concluding classification games. The tournament is set to conclude on August 14 with the gold and bronze medal contests.

The nationals travelled to the Thai capital late last month to begin their final preparations for the AVC Cup. They departed with a 14-player squad, coached by Brazilian tactician Issanaye Ramires. “The challenge will be huge,” Coach Ramires said about the tournament.

“We will fight hard to represent Bahrain with a lot of determination and desire to overcome ourselves so that we are ready for the opportunities that this competition will present us.”

The Bahrainis are set to be underdogs in the AVC Cup for Men, and will be relying heavily on the Kingdom’s top talents in the game, some of whom include setters Mahmood Hasan Ebrahim and Mahmood Al Afia; outside hitter Nasser Anan; opposites Mohammed Anan and Ali Ebrahim; middle blockers Ali Serafi and Abbas Al Khabbaz; and liberos Hussain Abdullah Abbas and Ali Khairala.

Bahrain’s senior men’s national volleyball team had recently won the silver medals at the third GCC Games in Kuwait, held last May.