The regional volleyball side, consisting of players from Sunraysia, Horsham, Bendigo and Warrnambool, has entered three teams in this year’s Volleyball Victoria State League after not being in existence three years ago.

A metro dominated competition, the Phantoms, led by Sunraysia Volleyball and the Horsham Volleyball Association, have made the city folk sit up and take notice after an impressive debut season in Division Two.

The side has now been promoted to the Reserves grade, only behind the premier competition.

Head coach David Berry said they would not have made it as far as they had if it were not for the support of Volleyball Victoria.

“We wanted to work our way in from the bottom up, and we were very fortunate that Volleyball Victoria gave us that opportunity,” he said.

“It’s been three years in the making. We got a group together three years ago to play in trial matches to qualify.

“In the second match we played against some Australian representatives and could not pull off the win. You have never seen a bunch of more devastated guys before.

“Despite that, we never lost sight of the fact that we wanted to have a go.”

Paul Freckleton of Sunraysia Volleyball said the support from the metro clubs had grown.

“Last year we only managed to get support from three metro clubs for playing up in the country areas, so now that we have managed to stretch it to five we’re really happy, even though there are another three we are working on,” he said.

The travel factor is one that is well known by any country representative team, but one that Freckleton said the players were more then prepared for.

“We are hoping to get business partners behind each of the team players to sponsor them for travel arrangements,” he said.

“We hope we can be hugely successful but of course we have to think one step at a time.

“Who knows what will happen in five years time.”

This article appeared in Tuesday's Sunraysia Daily 31/1/2012.