DECEMBER 2000 SPORT HEADLINES

Friday, January 26, 2001 - Web posted at 10:27:12 AM GMT

Volleyball team off to Nigeria

NAMIBIA's national men's volleyball team leaves for Nigeria today to participate in the sub-qualifying rounds for the 2002 Volleyball World Cup which will take place in Argentina.

Namibia has been drawn in a tough group along with Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria and only the top two teams in the mini-league will go through to the next qualifying competition.

Although Namibia will start as the underdogs, player-coach Deon Cloete believes that they can pull off a surprise or two."

"A few years ago other countries easily beat us, but we are not pushovers anymore.

We haven't played the countries in our group before, so we might have an element of surprise to our advantage," he said.

Cloete added that Namibia's players were much shorter than their opponents, but this too could work to their advantage."

"We will apply a quick attack system, while our game is generally faster and we hope to tire our opponents out," he said.

In 1999 Namibia lost 3-0 to Zambia, but beat Lesotho by the same score, while they lost both their international matches last year - 3-0 to Botswana and 3-2 to Swaziland.

Cloete said it was imperative that Namibia play more international matches to become more competitive, but that a lack of funds hampered their plans.

The Namibian team consists of the following players:Joel Matthews, Deon Cloete, Raymond Farmer, Goddard Husselmann, Matt Husselmann, Llewellyn Husselmann, Joseph Amakali, Walter Farmer, John Beukes, Ruben Deli, Mario de Vos and Ettienne Mouton.

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