Great opening of the European Championships by Polish volleyball players. The Czechs were defeated in the first match

Polish volleyball players started the struggle at the European Championships. Their first rivals were the lower ranked Czechs. Although the Poles were strong favourites, you had to be careful and stay focused until the end.

The European Championships started on Monday, August 28, but the Poles’ match had to wait until Thursday. For the inauguration, the Biało-Czerwoni played against the Czech Republic, with whom they faced as part of group C.

A very good opening of the European Championships by Poland

Nikola Grbic’s players for this match included: Łukasz Kaczmarek, Marcin Janusz, Jakub Kochanowski, Norbert Huber, Kamil Semeniuk, Aleksander Śliwka and libero Paweł Zatorski. This is quite a surprising decision of the coach, and the absence of Bartosz Kurek, who had health problems before the tournament, was particularly worrying.

This set was played very well by the successor of the previously mentioned Bartosz Kurek – Łukasz Kaczmarek, who scored two points in a row and gave us the lead at the start of the match. From the beginning of the match, the Polish block functioned very well and stopped the attempts of the Czechs, who include Jan Hadrava, well known to Polish fans. Jiri Novak asked for the first time-out in this match when the score was 12:6.

In the end, Bartosz Kurek checked in on the pitch, so you could breathe a sigh of relief about the captain’s health. The Poles did not let this high advantage be snatched away and won this set 25:17.

The Czechs were helpless in this match

In the second set, Polish volleyball players started to play as if in a trance. They quickly took the lead 6:0, and the Czechs were helpless. Only with time did they start to score, but it was too late to threaten Nikola Grbic’s charges. This game fell prey to the White-Reds 25:20, although it looked like more.

The third set was not so one-sided, but the Poles quickly took the lead 7:4. At some point, something got stuck in the game of the White-and-Reds and the Czechs reduced the losses to one point (8:7). Fortunately, it was only temporary and Nikola Grbic’s players started to build their advantage again (13:7). The third set ended with the victory of our volleyball players 25:20 and the triumph 3:0 in the whole meeting. The next match will be played by Polish volleyball players against the Netherlands on Friday, September 1, at 20:00.