Volleyball players of Iran and Australia lined up against each other earlier this morning in their first match in Olympic qualifying games in Metropolitan stadium in Japanese capital Tokyo.
Milad Ebadipour, Saeid Maarouf, Seyed Mohammad Mousavi, Mojtaba Mirzajanpour, Amir Ghafour, Adel Gholami and popular libero Farhad Zarif made the arrangement of the team at the very first set.
Australia which did not have its well-known Thomas Edgar in its primary line-up, began the game with scoring two points at a row which was retaliated by Iranian men. The two sides continued the shoulder-to-shoulder scoring until just before first technical time-out when the game paused with Iran being ahead 8-7.
Further, Australian players made a hard time for Iran by scoring several points and getting ahead 12-11 before Iran’s coach requires a technical tine-out. This time the situation changed in favor of Iran going ahead 19-15 before another break and continuing to win the first set 25 over 19.
Raúl Lozano’s boys stormed into the second set to force Australia’s Roberto Santilli call for an early time-out when they were 3 points behind Iran’s 4 points. But it didn’t change the result very much and only reduced the distance to 8-6 before next break. The trend continued and Iranian players who had Ebadipour replaced by Ghaemi finished the set with more gap at 25-17.
Santilli brought Thomas Edgar to his team on third set but it didn’t help with the results and Iranian players who enjoyed a very well-organized game and coordination, managed to defeat Australians 25-18 in third set too, to win the game 3-0. By crushing Australia, Iran took a very firm and strong first step towards Rio Olympic Games.
Iran will stand against Canada in its second match at 10:10 am local time, 1:10 am GMT.
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