JEDDAH, 3 September 2007 — Saudi Arabia were relegated to the consolation pool despite beating Sri Lanka in straight sets 25-14, 25-11, 25-22 yesterday in the 14th Asian Senior Men’s Volleyball Championship in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The Kingdom lost to Thailand 3-1 (22-25, 25-21, 25-16, 25-16) on Saturday and this cost them a place in the quarterfinals where, under tournament rules, four teams have been seeded to play along with the four pool winners. Indonesia, defending champions Japan, Korea and China have been given outright places in the round of eight.
Thailand advanced after also beating Sri Lanka 25-17, 25-17, 25- 21 on Friday.
In the consolation round to decide the places for 9th to 16th, Saudi Arabia meet Maldives tomorrow, Qatar on Wednesday and Kazakhstan on Thursday.
Prior to the Jakarta tournament, the Saudi volleyball team did a two months training camp in Riyadh, Taif and Serbia.
Meanwhile, it was agreed first priority should be given to the development and promotion of volleyball and beach volleyball during the 17th General Assembly of Asia Volleyball Confederation (AVC).
Delegates agreed Asian volleyball grew rapidly the past two years though a great gap still exists between the Asian teams and the world strong teams, both for men and women, especially in the senior category. Hence, they stressed, AVC must double their efforts to promote volleyball and beach volleyball.
