Australia, with new head coach Marcos Miranda at the helm, suffered their first loss at the 2021 FIVB Men’s Volleyball Nations League in a secure bubble in Rimini, Italy on Friday after going down to Germany in straight sets 19-25, 18-25, 16-25.
Luke Smith chipped in with 10 points from his powerful attacks for Australia, but his efforts were to no avail as Germany fared much better, with prolific Christian Fromm scoring a match-high 15 points including 14 attacks. Linus Weber added 14 points.
Christian Fromm said after the match at the virtual mixed zone: “I’m very glad that we started like that, I’m very proud of my team. We stayed focused on the game and we totally deserved this victory. We spiked very well, there are few details that we have to improve. We were all waiting a long long time for this, we had hard preparations to show our best volleyball here and I think we are on the right track.”
Australia’s Nehemiah Mote said: “I’m very pleased with the energy and efforts from the boys. We have a very different looking side, we have nine new faces, nine guys who haven’t played at the international level before. But they were definitely bringing energy. We need to stay a little bit more poised in those situations when it is quite tight and take our time. Especially in our service and so that we dictate our rhythm a little bit.”
Australia will next go up against Bulgaria on Saturday, May 29.
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