Having come back to force the match into a tie-break, Scotland took a lead of 8:6 as the teams switched courts and then led until the end, 13:9 and 14:11. The Grand Duchy’s swan’s song of three straight points tied the score at 14:14 for the last time, as Katie Sampson and Sophie Hunter scored two kills to finish the match.
Scotland was unstoppable from the middle and this is one of those matches where the statistics do little justice to the winning team’s performance. Luxembourg’s Leah Dickhoff was top scorer of the match with 27 points. Scotland’s scoring was more evenly distributed, with Naomi Symonds getting in 17 points and Katie Barbour, Hunter and Sampson adding nine each. In absolute numbers Scotland was slightly better in blocking, with 7 blocks (to Luxembourg’s 6), and in total had 37/111 kills (to 46/120). Both teams scored nine points apiece with aces.
“We started very nervously with Luxembourg in complete control of the game in the first two sets” said Scotland’s head coach, Vincent Krawczyk as his players were still celebrating a unique and memorable victory on the court. “But we have some good hitters and when we settled we managed to play down the middle and turn the match around”.
The second day of the tournament concludes on Saturday evening with the home team of Cyprus taking on Liechtenstein at 19:00 local time (16:00 GMT).
