Sick Volleyroos beat Sri Lanka

Australia's women volleyballers beat Sri Lanka at the Asian Championship in China, leaving the team with two wins from four matches.

Australia's depleted women's volleyball team have battled to a 3-2 win over Sri Lanka at Asian Championship in China.

But a bug sweeping through the squad has coach Mark Barnard struggling to have enough healthy players to form a starting line-up against Hong on Sunday.

At the start of Saturday night's match against Sri Lanka, the Volleyroos had just eight players healthy enough to take the court.

By the end of the match they were down to six.

Despite starting with only two subs, Hannah Ross was confident they could win.

"Obviously it sucks to have limited options when it comes to subbing, but I knew we still had a really good chance to win," she said.

And for the first two sets that confidence seemed well placed as Australia raced to a 25-22 25-19 lead before fatigue kicked in.

"We tried to calm each other down on the court and play point-by-point. We knew there was no other option, we just had to keep going," Ross said.

Sri Lanka took the next two sets 25-19 25-16 before the Australians rallied to take the decider 22-20.

"That fifth set, I don't think any of us would even think of giving up after coming that far," Ross said.

The Volleyroos won their opening match against the Philippines before losing to Korea and Kazakhstan and are now battling for places ninth to 12th in Asia.

Ninth would be a repeat of Australia's result from two years ago.


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Source: AAP


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