Volleyball Canada - Nagano, Japan, October 1, 2019 - Brazil beat Canada 3-0 (25-14, 25-22, 25-14) on the opening day of the 2019 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Cup at Nagano's White Ring arena. 

Canada had opportunities to re-bound against the world-ranked number one in the second set, but Brazil’s experience and patience won the day.

• Canada highlights - https://youtu.be/5G17Eu8dY7s

"Brazil is Brazil, and you cannot give them a window of opportunity to come back in a set. After that, I think it was a bit of an emotional letdown so we had to be careful in the third set,” said Canada’s coach Dan Lewis. "But it wasn’t that we stopped fighting, it’s just that Brazil have a lot of skill and they put us in a lot of trouble on serve and so on. We’ll take a look at the video, get ready for Russia."

Canada’s Stephen Maar and Nicholas Hoag had eight points each for the losing side. Alan Souza was match top scorer with 14 points for Brazil.

"Brazil played a great game,” said Canada’s team captain, Nicholas Hoag. “We have a very young team here, but I don’t think that was a problem tonight. …They served really well and made very few mistakes, and I think we should have fought harder in our reception and then our play could have been better. Our block defense was really good tonight - we touched a lot of balls and there were a lot of blocks, so we want to improve on that for Russia tomorrow, and we’ll see how the rest of the tournament goes.” 

Canada plays Russia next at 1 am Eastern time on Oct. 02.

• Streaming schedule: www.cbc.ca/sports

The 2019 Men's World Cup is held in Fukuoka (Marinmesse) and Nagano (White Ring), before teams move to Hiroshima for the remaining six matches at the city's Green Arena.
 
The 12 participating teams compete in a single round-robin competition over 11 match days. Three games will be played at each venue each match day.

The World Cup was last held in 2015 – Canada finished seventh overall.

Official web site:
http://worldcup.2019.fivb.com/en
 
Roster:
#3 Steven Marshall, Abbotsford, BC
#4 Nicholas Hoag, Sherbrooke, QC (captain)
#6 Ryley Barnes (Edmonton, AB) 
#7 Stephen Maar, Aurora, ON
#9 Jason DeRocco, Winnipeg, MB
#10 Sharone Vernon-Evans, Scarborough, ON
#11 Daniel Jansen Vandoorn, Langley, BC 
#12 Lucas Van Berkel, Edmonton, AB
#13 Byron Keturakis, Surrey, BC
#19 Blair Bann, Edmonton, AB
#20 Arthur Szwarc, Toronto, ON
#21 Brett Walsh, Calgary, AB
#22 Blake Scheerhoorn, Belleville, ON
#23 Danny Demyanenko, Toronto, ON
 
Staff:
Dan Lewis, Head coach
Lionel Bonnaure, Assistant coach
Olivier Faucher,  Assistant coach
Tracy Blake, Athletic therapist
Julien Boucher, Team manager

Photo: FIVB

Volleyball Canada media contact:
Jackie Skender jskender@volleyball.ca
Mobile: 613-794-7676