Australian volleyballers will welcome a friendly crowd in Brisbane after returning from Iran

The Australian Men’s Indoor Volleyball team will go from one extreme to the other when they play the final round of the Volleyball Nations League starting this Friday night in Brisbane.

Work experience student Charlize Kruger attended a press conference for the Australian men’s volleyball team this morning. Here is her report.

The Australian Men’s Indoor Volleyball team will go from one extreme to the other when they play the final round of the Volleyball Nations League starting this Friday night in Brisbane.

The Australians have just returned from an international tournament in Iran, which is a focus of much international attention at the moment.

The coach of the team, Mark Lebedew, said he would welcome a home advantage in the three match series to be played against Russia, China and Argentina over the weekend.

The Volleyroos will play Russia on Friday, China on Saturday and Argentina on Sunday at the Queensland State Netball Centre.

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“We’re really excited to hear some ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie’s coming from the stands,” he said.

“We had really good crowd support from the neutral spectators so we’re hoping to get even better than that from our own fans this weekend,” Lebedew said.

When asked if the rising tensions between Iran and the west raised any concerns while they were playing in Iran, Lebedew said: “Well, it was pretty easy for us because all the IP’s are blocked so we didn’t know anything that was going on we heard the … obviously we heard some of that stuff but we were in contact with fellas from the Australian Embassy and the Australian Embassy didn’t seem to think that it would affect us.

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“We weren’t in the centre in Tehran we were sort of off the mountain side west side we were a little bit insulated from that and we weren’t too stressed by it.’’

Australia won two of their five matches abroad, and the three games they lost all went to five sets.

The series will be a homecoming for local Beau Graham, a past student of Iona College and the Belmont State School.