After the rest round for the red and whites, the championship restarts from the first return leg of the A3 Girone Blu, which sees Volley Banca Macerata host Just British Bari, on Saturday 30th at 5pm. The Apulian team arrives from a difficult moment: in the the last three matches played have resulted in two defeats, against Modica and Lecce, interspersed with a tie-break victory against Napoli. Volley Banca Macerata, on the other hand, wants to resume the path where it left off, accumulating victories and confirming itself in first place, the best way to end the year and begin the second part of the season.
Center back Gabriele Sanfilippo explains how the team experienced the rest period, “On the one hand we were lucky to stop coinciding with the Christmas holidays, but on the other hand a break isn’t always good, you can lose a bit of attention and getting used to the pace of the match, so we always kept our heads focused on the championship. It was more of a physical rest than a mental one but also from a training point of view we have started working again in recent days. We have the important responsibility of defending first place in the standings.” On the way back to the field you find Bari, a different team than the one you beat in the first leg, “We are studying our opponents and beyond the latest results we know that they play good volleyball, with a high pace. On Saturday they will be able to take advantage of the field factor, plus they have added some important and experienced additions to the roster, such as the strong opposite Padura Diaz. We will have to try to impose ourselves right away and find our rhythm to put the match on the right track.” If Bari is a team that has also changed in some of its players, is there anything different in Volley Banca Macerata after the first round? “We are certainly more aware of our potential. We started the season with many new features and we didn’t even know what championship it would be, considering that we also moved to the Blue Group, a very competitive and difficult tournament. But we immediately got along well as a team, we grew and each player managed to make their own contribution to the success; we must put this awareness into play against Bari to continue winning.”
