Na­tion­al men's se­nior vol­ley­baller Marc-An­tho­ny Hon­ore, a mid­dle-block­er, and his Por­tu­gal Fed­er­a­tion Men’s Hon­da A-1 Di­vi­sion-lead­ing SL Ben­fi­ca ex­tend­ed their win­ning streak to a per­fect 12-0 to start the 2021 sea­son with back-to-back wins on the week­end.

Play­ing the first of the week­end dou­ble-head­er on Sat­ur­day, SL Ben­fi­ca, re­cent win­ners of a ninth Su­per Cup in ten years, de­feat­ed AA Sao Mamede 25-18, 25-15, 22-25, 25-14.

The win pushed Ben­fi­ca's record to an 11-0 make with on­ly four sets dropped, be­fore they eased past SC Es­pin­ho 25-16, 25-23, and 25-22 on Sun­day to make it a per­fect 12-0 and 36 points at the top of the 15-team ta­ble.

A dis­tant sec­ond is Viana with 24 points and a 9-0 record ints clear of Viana who are al­so un­beat­en af­ter nine match­es. Sport­ing CP al­so has 24 points, but with an 8-2 record, the same as fourth-placed Es­moriz.

A 13-year vet­er­an, Hon­ore and his Por­tuguese club were al­so un­beat­en for the 2019/2020 do­mes­tic sea­son with a 24-0 record be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion was halt­ed due to the coro­n­avirus in ear­ly March.

How­ev­er, the T&T play­er and his team-mates have not dropped off the pace since the sea­son start­ed and are yet to lose a match in any com­pe­ti­tion hav­ing al­so reached the last-eight of the 2020/21 Eu­ro­pean Chal­lenge Cup af­ter be­ing hand­ed a round-of-16 de­fault se­ries win over Hun­gar­i­ans, VRC Kaz­incbar­ci­ka.

Over in Turkey, se­nior women’s vol­ley­ball mid­dle-block­er, Sinead Jack-Kisal and Il­bank suf­fered a fifth straight loss in the 16-team women’s Vol­ley­ball League (Sul­tan­lar Li­gi), on Sun­day.

In her first sea­son with the club af­ter two years in Japan Vol­ley­ball Women’s Pre­mier League with Den­so Airy­bees, Jack-Kisal’s and her team-mates went un­der to Ay­din Buyuk­se­hir Belediye­spor 18-25, 23-25, 24-26 to drop to 2-11 to re­main 14th on the ta­ble with six points, three ahead of Be­sik­tas (1-14) who they face on Wednes­day while cel­lar-placed Bey­lik­duzu is win­less af­ter 14 match­es.

This is Jack-Kisal's sec­ond stint in Turkey hav­ing en­joy­ing a suc­cess­ful stint with Galatasaray from 2016 to 2018.

The San Fer­nan­do-born Jack, a na­tion­al se­nior team play­er since 2011 and nick­named “The Grenade” for her ex­plo­sive spikes from clever short-range re­verse set play earned a run­ners-up medal in Turkey 2016/2017 and was fourth in the 2017/2018 cam­paign.

She played lo­cal­ly for the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), al­so en­joyed stints with Poland’s AZS Bi­a­lystok (2010-2013) be­fore mov­ing to Russ­ian club, Uralochka NTMK (2013-2016).