For those who are new to the League, the tournament is named after Des, who was a community activist in the Netherley district of Liverpool and started a women’s team which played for a number of years in the league. He is also the only MVL committee member in nearly 50 years who has died in office.
The 2015 Men’s Competition was held on Sunday 25th October 2015 at Woodchurch School Sports Centre on the Wirral. 6 teams entered the tournament which was played as a “Round Robin” of 2 set matches on 2 courts. Although originally planned to be timed, an unexpected last minute extension of the court time availability, meant that all matches were completed.
INTERVOLLEY (Manchester) were the outstanding team on the day and became “Merseyside VL Tournament Champions for 2015”. Chester V.C. were only defeated by total points of 40 to 35 in the match with the champions to become worthy runners-up. The overall standard of the other teams was good, with a number of close matches and 3 drawn games in all.
An interesting statistic of the current volleyball era is that, of the 43 players involved in the tournament, 26 of them were born abroard and only 17 were from GB. I think this epitomizes the dilemma for Merseyside men’s volleyball – on the one hand the participation of European volleyballers adds to the enjoyment, standard and possibly “survival” of the MVL Men’s Divisions; but on the other hand we need to be finding or producing more local players – especially as (I believe) there were no Under 20’s playing on the day.
Congratulations to Intervolley (Manchester) as Champions; & to Chester V.C. as Runners Up.
FINAL POSITIONS
- INTERVOLLEY (Manchester) 20 points
- CHESTER 16 points
- Liverpool 10 points
- Warrington Wolves 6 points
- Blackburn Vipers 4 points
- “Coors for Concern” (Woodchurch) 4 points
The “Des Jeffers Women’s Tournament” takes place on Sunday 8th November 2015.
Any prospective entrants should contact me ASAP as we are nearly fully subscribed.