Belgium – Northern Ireland
Belgium’s head coach Dominique Baeyens decided to rest some of his best players – Frank Depestele, Sam Deroo, Pieter Verhees, Simon Van de Voorde and Stijn Dejonckheere – but still the home side had no problems at all to impose their pace with Hendrik Tuerlinckx scoring with good consistency supported by Kevin Klinkenberg and Matthijs Verhanneman. Only in the last stages of the first set Northern Ireland could score some more points with an ace by Mark Fulton and good serving by Peter Lundy before Klinkenberg finished it off at 25-14. Verhanneman contributed the lead right from the start for the home side in the second set (25-12) before Belgium slowed the pace down in the early stages of the third set. However, Verhanneman, Van den Dries, plus Klinkenberg and Tuerlinckx – exceptionally playing as middle blocker – quickly restored the Belgian supremacy for the final 3:0.
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