That Cuneo was a complicated match was clear to everyone, given the specific weight of the Puliservice Acqua S. Bernardo staff, protagonist in the summer of a sumptuous transfer market in which it took almost exclusively athletes from the Super League with the clear intention of creating a roster that had few rivals in A2. Long trip, huge stadium with 1800 fans “against”, ingredients which when added together can give great value even to a defeat. No alibi, mind you, but many important awarenesses, as the Grotese coach Massimiliano Ortenzi himself underlines: “It was a complicated match, what we expected in short. We expected that Cuneo would be very aggressive on serve and we told ourselves that we also had to be willing to endure difficulties. In the first, at the beginning we wasted a few too many break point opportunities and this affected us, Cuneo pushed very hard with his serve and we were never able to get into a rhythm. We promised ourselves, however, to be patient and wait for our moment because we know that we have weapons and that our moment will come sooner or later. We were good from this point of view, because when our moment came we were ready. The boys managed to regain momentum and won the third set, then we managed to lead the fourth from start to finish, with great aggression. In the tie break, a couple of counterattack opportunities probably made the difference, they exploited them while we weren’t able to manage them in the best way.”
The coach from the Marche region doesn’t look for an alibi, who actually enjoys the great reaction of his team in a context in which reacting wasn’t at all easy or obvious: “Aside from the fact that Manu (Marchiani, starting setter on his return from the hand injury conceded against Ravenna on 3 December last) has just returned and there is still a lot of fear, the mechanisms need to be rediscovered a little. At the end of the race I told the boys that I’m very happy with the reaction they had and that we have to start from that.”
