Team on right track, says UAE manager

Dubai: The manager of the UAE volleyball team has insisted the squad’s preparations for the 17th Asian Senior Men’s Volleyball Championship are on track despite their recent lacklustre showing.

The UAE squad returned winless after two matches against Qatar and Bahrain at last week’s Asian Volleyball Confederation’s (AVC) West Asian qualifiers for the 2014 FIVB Men’s Volleyball World Championship.

Bahrain went on to win the qualifiers in Pool C to advance to the next stage of the qualifiers along with Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Group A and B respectively.

In the zonal round, teams from other regions will be competing in the Central zone, Eastern zone and South-Eastern zone. Ten teams from the zonal round will then advance for final round of the Asian qualifiers that will feature a total of 16 teams that already includes Australia, Iran, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand who have already qualified.

Only the top four teams at the end of the final round will earn a berth and represent Asia in next year’s world championship to be held in Poland.

“We started our preparations late and that may perhaps explain our performance during the qualifiers in Qatar. But we are pleased with the progress made by the players as we needed a competition like the qualifiers to kickstart our preparations for the Asian Championship,” Salem Al Khatiri, manager of the UAE volleyball team, told Gulf News.

The UAE’s Polish coach Gregory Rys was also handicapped due to the absence of some of his key players, who could not obtain release from work.

“Once our main players return then things will be different. What we need to do now is raise the intensity of our preparations and proceed to the next stage,” he added.

The UAE squad has already commenced the second stage of their preparations with regular sessions twice a day at the Al Ahli Club’s indoor hall.

“We have another three months of hard work before us and we want to ensure our team makes use of the time at hand,” Al Kathiri said.

The squad will continue training in Dubai until the end of the month after which the juniors will depart for the 27th Summer Universiade Games to be held in Kazan, Russia from July 6-16.

“The idea is to continue developing our junior players so that we can have a compact team in three months time,” the UAE manager said.