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Today was a good day: Australia coach
Jon Uriarte for Australia and Carlos Cardona for Puerto Rico press conference
Australia coach Jon Uriarte: Today was a serious challenge for us. Puerto Rico is a consistent team with excellent players. For our team, the challenge was to keep to the plan that gave us an advantage where we were stronger. It was a good day and the team put in a good mental effort. While we kept the keys to the match, sometimes it was clear the mental effort was still a challenge for us sometimes.
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Australia captain Igor Yudin: We are very happy to make the second step with the win today. We knew Puerto Rico would be tough mentally, but today as a team we showed we are ready to make the next step in tough situations and have the ability if we are in trouble where we can switch on and get ourselves out of tough situations. I’m proud of the way we played.
Puerto Rico captain Jose Rivera: I think we played below the level we need to play today. It’s the second consecutive day we played below the level we needed to play in this tournament. We need to improve in many areas. Australia played very well and we had problems with the block again today. I give them credit; they played much better than us.
Puerto Rico coach Carlos Cardona: There’s not much I can add. As our captain said, there were too many errors. We were not able to play our game at all and our spikes were stopped by their block. We just couldn’t play our game.
(Re. service errors and jetlag): It’s true we had too many service errors and there are some players who have not recovered from jetlag, but that’s no excuse. Australia played well.
(Re. qualifying for the Olympics): We have no chance to qualify for the Olympics, but we have remaining games so we will do our best and stay motivated.
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