Great Britain's women's Olympic volleyball team have been forced into a last-minute change of plans as they build towards London 2012.
GB were due to face Algeria in a double-header at Glasgow's Kelvin Hall this weekend. But the African champions have had visa problems and they have not been able to travel. The British Volleyball Federation made approaches to other international federations to try to fill the void but time was against them.
Insead, the GB women will play two matches at the Kelvin Hall against a men's British Select, which has been hand-picked to ensure they put the GB women through their paces.
"Of course, it would have been good to see Algeria so close to the Olympics but they will be feeling the same about us," said Great Britain head coach Audrey Cooper.
"This will give us two high-quality matches and give the players an ideal workout.
"I'm very pleased with the way our preparations have gone so far and we beat Finland in five matches out of five in our 10-day training camp there".
Today's match at 1pm will be played out in front of invited schools and tomorrow's (3pm) match is now free. Those who purchased tickets in advance will be entitled to a refund.
Gymnast Dan Purvis is out to seal his Olympic place with the help of local support at this weekend's British Championships in Liverpool.
The Scot, brought up in Southport, chases a hat trick of titles, having tied for the gold medal with Sam Hunter in 2010 and won it outright last year.
In what is the final selection event ahead of the Olympics, Purvis – last year's World Cup champion – and fellow-Scot Dan Keatings, recently returned from injury, are bidding for places.
Keatings, the world all-around silver medallist in 2009, and England's Sam Oldham, the 2010 European junior all-around champion, are back in the frame after missing out on the recent European Championship success due to injury.
Max Whitlock, Ruslan Panteyleymonov, Kristain Thomas and Louis Smith, who won bronze at the last Olympics, are also hoping to improve their credentials before the selectors choose the Olympic team on Monday.
For the first time in 15 years, the men's and women's championships will be staged together, with Beth Tweddle MBE, the top draw in the women's event.
The defending champions, Nicole Cooke and Lizzie Armitstead, have been included in Great Britain's confirmed women's road team for the Olympic Games. Cooke and Armitstead are joined by Emma Pooley and Lucy Martin in the four-rider team for the 140-kilometre road race on July 29, which finishes on The Mall. It will be intriguing to see how British Cycling, including women's road coach Chris Newton, manage the team. Armitstead was nominated leader at last September's World Championships in Copenhagen, but hit out at Cooke for riding "for herself".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article