We love volleyball and want to improve

The quest for homegrown glory at the 2012 Olympics is taking British sport to the strangest of places — for example, the foot of the Dutch professional volleyball league.

There you will find, occupying basement position in the table, Club Martinus — unremarkable except for the fact that the long established Amsterdam outfit is, in fact, the British national team.

As a result of an arrangement both innovative and curious, UK Sport has 'borrowed' the financially stricken Martinus for a season and filled its first team with the players they are developing for the London Games.

The club's fans, in a country where volleyball enjoys considerable popularity, have adopted Britain and need to be fairly tolerant, too, because after seven matches of the season Martinus, aka GB, are without a win.

And so it was that on Saturday night the journey to London 2012 took them via an airy sports hall besides the ring road of the northern city of Groningen.

There they were playing fourthplaced Lycurgus and it was another cuffing for the young British team, their inexperience showing in unforced errors at crucial times in a 25-20, 25-16, 25-20 defeat. With only 150 spectators braving a cold night, this is hardly the glamour end of European sport. The familiar outcome tested the patience of head coach Harry Brokking, 52, who used to run the Dutch national team. ' I t's frustrating but to be expected, given the level at which they started. Inevitably, they are behind skills-wise, but this is a long-term project and they are making progress,' he said.

"It's not realistic for them to be gold medal candidates in London but they can definitely be competitive. They just need to do what they do in practice under pressure and this is the place to learn. It can't be done in England."

When Martinus lost their main sponsor this year, Brokking brokered a deal for GB to step in until April; a similar experiment is being tried with the nascent British handball team in Denmark.

The British squad of 12 volleyballers, a mix of amateurs and players with some professional experience around Europe, now live and train just outside Amsterdam.

That they have a foreign coach is hardly surprising. Volleyball is one of the world's biggest participation sports but, despite being invented by Welshman William Morgan in the late 19th century, it has barely registered a blip on the mainstream British radar. In fact, the biggest boost for the sport in the UK has been the influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially Poland, where it is second only to football. Polish teams in London (Plumbers United?) are overflowing.

Brokking is trying to develop the likes of 21-year-old Ben Pipes from Hull. He is standing in for skipper Chris Porter, who is awaiting knee surgery — the game is about as easy on the knees as carpetfitting.

Pipes is the poster boy for British volleyball and after spending two seasons as a pro in Sweden and Spain, is sufficiently rated to be eyed by clubs in the Italian league, Europe's most prestigious, He is 6ft 8in — which passes for average in volleyball — and led gallantly on Saturday night. But it was not enough to stop another reverse against equally committed and vocal opponents in what, to outsiders, is a surprisingly aggressive sport.

"Every single team desperately wants to beat us,' he said. 'We are coming into their league and are a national team so every match we play seems to be like a cup final — but that's great for us because we are experiencing such intense competition.

"I won't pretend that losing every week has been fun. It's devastating but every Monday is the start of the new week and we have to drag ourselves up and look ahead to the next match.

"Our players are mostly aged between 20 and 26. It's all geared towards 2012, so by then we should have a good nucleus fed by other players."

The results are certainly not for want of trying and despite the squad's proximity to Amsterdam there is little time to experience the city's varied delights. Undergoing a rigorous routine of six hours training per day, they live off their UK Sport funding grants and occupy flats generally used by workers at the nearby airport.

"We have all bought into it because we love volleyball and want to improve. People at Martinus have been very welcoming," said Pipes.

"There's very little going out. We don't have much money and the front room of one of the flats is like a hair salon because we cut each other's hair. It's probably a bit like being a student — except without the fun bit."