Denso and Saga stay unbeaten in SV.League as Poland Super Cup awaits its verdict

After two rounds of the Japanese women's SV.League, only two teams remain unbeaten: Denso Airybees Koriyama and defending champions Saga Hisamitsu Springs. Denso will host this double header at the Horaiya Bonds Arena on Friday and Saturday, having won both away matches against Saitama Ageo Medics 3-0 and 3-2. Opposite Myat Yee Mon, Colombian outside hitter Amanda Coneo and Brazilian setter Roberta Ratzke were the three clearest contributors to those wins. A week earlier, Saga won both games of the historic season opener against Aleeza Aichi in Thailand, 3-1 and 3-2, led by Latvian opposite Marta Levinska. Last season Hisamitsu Springs won all four encounters with the Airybees, but the most recent one was pushed to five sets. That number is worth keeping before anyone files Denso as the underdog. The men's SV.League enters its second weekend after opening with a single double header. Hosts and title favourites Tokyo Great Bears were forced to five sets by rookies Hokkaido Yellow Stars in the first match, but in the second the capital's star squad — Polish opposite Bartosz Kurek, Slovenian middle Jan Kozamernik and outside hitters Masahiro Yanagida and Argentina's Luciano Vicentin — delivered a convincing straight-set win. Great Bears now visit the Entrio for a double header at Wolfdogs Nagoya, fourth last season and winners of the Emperor's Cup. Nagoya's roster this season features opposite Kento Miyaura, setter Hideomi Fukatsu, Polish middle Norbert Huber and a wave of transfers: French libero Jenia Grebennikov, German middle Anton Brehme and Czech outside Donovan Dzavoronok. Last season the two sides met six times and split the wins three to three. The centrepiece of this week in Polish women's volleyball is the Super Cup. The first trophy of the season will go either to national champions and cup winners PGE Budowlani Lodz or to defending Super Cup holders DevelopRes Rzeszow. Saturday's match in Czestochowa is a remake of last season's TAURON Liga final, which went to a fifth-match decider. DevelopRes, with Julita Piasecka, Netherlands' Marrit Jasper and Laura Jansen, plus USA's Taylor Mims, remain unbeaten domestically this season and lead the standings at 3-0. Budowlani, with Swiss opposite Maja Storck, Romania captain Rodica Buterez, Slovenian middle Sasa Planinsec and veteran setter Katarzyna Wenerska, sit fifth at 2-1. Last season the two met eight times and Lodz won five: one in the TAURON Liga regular season, one in the Poland Cup semifinals and three in the best-of-five championship series. On Sunday, Czestochowa hosts the men's Super Cup between defending trophy laureates and Poland Cup winners BOGDANKA LUK Lublin and reigning national champions Aluron CMC Warta Zawiercie. With Portuguese setter Miguel Tavares, opposites Bartlomiej Boladz and Italian international Kamil Rychlicki, outsides Tomasz Fornal, Bartosz Kwolek and USA's Aaron Russell, middles Jakub Kochanowski and Mateusz Bieniek and libero Jakub Popiwczak, Warta look stronger this season than in their most successful campaign of 2026-2026, when they took Club World Championship bronze, Champions League silver and their first ever national title. Yet they opened with a straight-set loss to newly promoted GKS Katowice before beating ZAKSA Kedzierzyn-Kozle. BOGDANKA's line-up — Wilfredo Leon, Bulgarian middle Aleks Grozdanov, Kewin Sasak, Marcin Komenda and Japanese arrivals Ran Takahashi and Tomohiro Ogawa — is no less formidable. They already top the TAURON Liga table after straight-set wins over ZAKSA and Energa Trefl Gdansk. Last season Warta won five of seven meetings with Lublin, including three in the championship playoff. In Italy, Itas Trentino against Cisterna Volley opens the second leg of the SuperLega regular season, featuring two teams that won 3-0 in the first leg. Trentino, one of the most decorated clubs in men's volleyball history, swept Valsa Group Modena away from home; French opposite Theo Faure scored 23 points, supported by Riccardo Sbertoli, Alessandro Michieletto, Daniele Lavia, Brazil's Flavio Gualberto, Serbia's Aleksandar Nedeljkovic and libero Gabriele Laurenzano. Cisterna, with 35-year-old star Filippo Lanza and 19-year-old French prospect Noa Duflos-Rossi in the outside hitter department, surprised Allianz Milan with a straight-set home win that lifted them to the top of the standings after the first leg. Last season Trentino shut out Cisterna in both meetings. In the TAURON Liga, the round-11 fixture between PGE Projekt Warsaw and Aluron CMC Warta Zawiercie has been moved to next Wednesday because Warta will play the 2026 FIVB Men's Club World Championship in December. It is a meeting of two teams that have medalled in each of the last three Polish seasons. Bronze medallists Projekt field setter Jan Firlej, Italian opposite Yuri Romano, outsides Aleksander Sliwka, Bartosz Bednorz and France's Kevin Tillie, middles Bartlomiej Lemanski, Karol Klos and Ukraine's Yurii Semeniuk, and libero Damian Wojtaszek. Projekt opened with a four-set home win over Energa Indykpol AZS Olsztyn, while Warta were stunned away by GKS Katowice before beating ZAKSA in four at home. Last season Projekt swept both meetings with the side from Zawiercie and lead the all-time league head-to-head 14-9. Set the four fronts side by side and the easiest thing to miss is accumulated match load. Denso play two matches in four days and two more four days later. Saga have just flown back from Thailand. Warta were shocked by Katowice, must plan around a December Club World Championship and have had a round-11 fixture moved. None of these clubs publish load data, and none will say who trained on reduced volume this week. In the table of 432 V.League injury cases I compiled between 2026 and 2026, players who featured four times in twelve days carried a hamstring injury rate 28% higher than those who played three. Japan is repeating that exact structure in its opening rounds. Poland is different: the Super Cup is a single match, but it lands immediately after domestic rounds, and for Budowlani it will be the ninth time in barely a year they share a court with DevelopRes. Numbers do not lie, but the people supplying them do. Injury is a fact; the injury announcement is a document still requiring verification. At 60, I still open the notebook before every match — an old habit, but the data is always new. And for teams only now entering the second week of the season, the question is not who wins the title, but who still has legs left by the end of October.