South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service has come to the rescue of Great Britain's women's volleyball team by allowing them to stay at their training base in the run-up to the Olympic Games.

The team, who have a wildcard place in the tournament as host nation but recently beat top-20 ranked Peru, have taken up residence at SYFRS Sheffield base to be close to the English Institute of Sport.

GB captain Maria Bertelli praised SYFRS for helping them train for the Games in optimum conditions. "They've been absolutely fantastic," she said.

"South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue have offered us an absolutely brilliant deal here in terms of accommodation, food and an environment that allows us to purely focus on performance over this really important time."

Going on to discuss their chances in the tournament, Bertelli added: "The Olympics is the best 12 teams in the world so you're not going to go in there - a country that's never played in the Olympics - and say: 'We're going to do this, we're going to do that.'

"But what we've shown over the past four years is that we can compete with world teams, so there's no reason why we can't go and put that onto the court in London."

Sheffield will again be the venue for Team GB's penultimate pre-Games warm-up against Algeria in late June and SYFRS are happy to continue to give the team support right up to their opening match at Earls Court on July 28.

Posted 23/05/2012 by richard.hook@pavpub.com (picture courtesy www.gbwomensvolleyball.co.uk)