Oman seal berth for New Zealand

Favourites and top seeds Oman qualified while Bahrain and Qatar stayed within striking distance of the remaining two berths for the AVC Beach Volleyball Continental Cup qualifiers being held at the Ajman Open Beach. Oman remained unbeaten at the end of the third day's play in the six-nation competition, while Bahrain and Qatar staked their claim to the next two spots though in contrasting style for the 2010-12 Continental Beach Volleyball Cup scheduled to be held in New Zealand from February 16-19, 2012. While Oman completed an easy win against the UAE in yesterday's round-robin, Bahrain — whose only blemish was a 3-1 loss to Oman — did enough with wins against Kuwait and Qatar to follow up with their opening day 4-0 thrashing of the hosts. Qatar saw a fierce opponent in the UAE as the hosts did well to tie their better-equipped neighbours 2-2 after four matches. With the golden set enforced to decide the tie, it was the pairing of Tareq Abdullah and Asif Sultan which did the trick for Qatar in the end. "Our players proved they are capable of playing under pressure. This is a very good result and we can look positively to the future," Qatar's Argentinean coach Ruben Barrera told Gulf News.