17-Nov, start time: 18:00, end time: 19:52 - Attendance: 10,150

JPN	3	23	25	25	25	-	98
CHN	1	25	21	18	20	-	84

Match Description:

Japan wins Asian battle
2003 Men's World Cup hosts Japan showed great determination and spirit to fight back from one set down to claim an excellent four set victory over Asian counterparts China in front of a boisterous home crowd in the Yoyogi Stadium in Tokyo on Monday.

From the opening whistle it was tough to separate either team as they searched for an opening but neither side would give before some superb setting from Daisuke Usami gave Japan the initiative at 23-22 in the first set. But that saw China's captain Hairong Shi step up to the service line at 23-23 to serve an ace and a power ball to give China the set.

It was great pressure Volleyball from the Chinese skipper but China weren't so lucky in the second set as Japan converted more of their chances with Takahiro Yamamoto on the spike and Nobuhiro Ito particularly impressive on the block and a 23-17 lead was converted into a 25-21 set win.

The momentum continued for Japan in the third set with an enthusiastic crowd backing their every move and after a storming third set it was apt that captain and MIP Yoichi Kato should smash down the line on set point to complete the 25-18 win.

And it was more of the same for Japan in the fourth set with Nobuyoshi Hosokawa, despite his lack of height, proving very effective at the net with his variety in attack. Japan led 19-16 with another Yamamoto smash and it wasn't long after they had wrapped up their second victory of the tournament.

Comments:

TANAKA, Mikiyasu (JPN Head Coach)
Recently, we couldn't win against China and South Korea, so I am relieved to win against China here in Japan. China is a good team to play against, and since Yamamoto usually plays good against China, I was able to watch the game calmly. We lost the first set, and our mood got bad for a while in the third set, but our ace attackers were stable throughout this match, so I think the game was good.

YAMAMOTO, Takahiro (JPN Player)
When I played against China two years ago in the Asian Championship, we won two times against them, and we won today, so that means we've won every game against China that I played in. And in that sense, I wasn't afraid of China at all. People say that their blocking is high, but not that high compared to the other teams in the world. And their blocking were focused on the cross attacks, so I countered them with straight course attacks.

DI, Anhe (CHN Head Coach)
We lost this match mainly because we made too many mistakes. Lack of experience of our players struggled us. The number of serving errors we made was unusually high for us. The tall Japanese players served offensively, which gave us difficult time and made us hard to perform well near the net.

SHI, Hairong (CHN Captain)
I think we started well. Our serving and attacking went well in the first set. However, we made too many errors in the second and the third sets, making us unable to stay clam. Playing against the home team also gave us a lot of pressure to a young team like us.

Official Result:

Match statistics (P-2) - PDF