AVC Men’s U23 Championship/Thailand Brings the first Loss to Taipei in an East-Asian Marathon

Ardabil, Iran, May 4, 2017 – Thailand brought the first loss to Taipei 3-2 (19-25, 22-25, 25-20, 25-18, 15-12) at the SMM 2^nd Asian Men’s U23 Volleyball championship at Rezazadeh 6000-seat Stadium on Thursday.

Thailand, former seventh team of Asian U23 Men Championship in previous edition in Myanmar stayed on course following their dramatic 3-2 (19-25, 22-25, 25-20, 25-18, 15-12) win over determined Taipei after a hard-fought five-set thriller in an exhausting two hours.

Smart attacks and serves of Hsing-Kuo Lee and great team-work in defense secured the winning point advantage for Taipei in the opening set against Thailand 25-19.

Thailand reduced their unforced mistakes to capture dominance in the second set but all they did was a warm-up with 25-22 loss to pave the way for the next set. With prolific blocking and spiking, Thailand hit back to level the scores 5-5 to trail Taipei by 10-8. Thai players seemed to play at highest level in the next two sets as Iranian fans full-packed the stadium to watch next match of Iran v Malaysia and helped Thailand to keep up with power in two consecutive sets 25-20, 25-18.

Taipei regained their confidence and tried to stop Thailand in the fifth set but Thailand carrying the support of fans closed the first technical time-out 8-6. Thailand used the opposite errors to keep the edge and with four substitutions and two time-out calls finally win the final set 15-12.

Coach Monchai of Thailand after the match said: “we had problems in first balls and reception. With better substitutions, we could improve much better from the third sets on.”

Thailand will face Kazakhstan in the next match and the coach found them not very strong and put “they are tall; yet, they are clumsy and not hard to be beaten”.