"He Has Something Against Me"

Dick Runesson was not satisfied with referees at the end of the third set in Sunday's quarterfinal match against Engelholm. "It feels bitter," he says.

RESULTS Volleyball SM finals Quarterfinal 1: 5
Engelholm 3 - Gislaved 0 (25-14, 25-12, 25-23)

Runesson's criticism of last night's referees were not gracious. And then it was still "mildly put" according to him.

"Honestly, we should have had the third set. But there are some other elves who settled in and took extremely strange verdict. We were leading 21-19 and then the match had four catastrophic calls. It is balls after balls that hit the floor on [EVS's] side that went unnoticed. There was chaos in the end, the referees lost it completely and it is amazingly boring. Seriously, the [Swedish] Association needs to raise the referee standards," he says.

Runesson mention that it was the same judge who ended GVK's run in the semifinal against Hylte / Halmstad four years ago.

"I talked to him afterwards, and he has something against GVK and me. To this day. It is sad that such grudges can be maintained at this level. The worst part is that he came and confessed afterwards that he has a problem with me."

What did he do?

"He came and said that 'There is one coach in Sweden who thinks I am not a good referee, and that's Dick. I know he thinks this way, and I take it with me into the game.' Taking this mindset into a match... his judgements have been reflecting this for a long time. It's inexperience not to let go of old things."

"I am not saying that we would have won the third set, but we could have had more of a chance."

The match then? Well, it was a clear victory for Engelholm 3-0.

"The scores do not reflect the playing of the match. We stuck with them, we fought hard and we wore on quite well. We didn't earn as many points as we fought for, but we sustained our team morale."

For the second quarterfinal at home on Thursday takes with it the third set.

"There we served with pressure, but really we must lift our serve-receive. The battle is far from lost!"

IMPACT PLAYERS//GISLAVED MVP: Lisa Tannerfalk (4 blocks, 2 kills), Sanna Schultz (10 kills)
IMPACT PLAYERS//ENGELHOLM MVP: Jen Cross (7 kills, 1 block, 1 ace), Isabelle Haak (14 kills, 3 aces, 3 blocks), Sophie Wallner (6 kills, 3 aces, 1 block)