Tauranga volleyballers Sam O'Dea and Brad Fuller are preparing for their next battle after beating Tuvalu in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

O'Dea and Fuller, also known as the Beach Blacks scored a 2-0 win over Tuvalu in their second Beach Volleyball match.

The pair have now qualified for the quarter finals and play their final pool game against England at 7am Thursday morning NZ time.

'It was a little bit fresh but I think the guys just came out with a lot of energy,” says O'Dea following today's match.

'We kind of cruised through the first set and I think maybe just relaxed a little bit going into the second and kind of let them back in, then next minute it's a game. We had a little bit of a wobble and that kind of brought it to us a bit.”

O'Dea says it was good to get pressed by a team and to face a little bit of a challenge, because 'these early teams can easily be quite one-sided”.

'It definitely wasn't our best game. We will look at some video tomorrow and then we will have a practice ahead of our next match against England, which will be a good one.”

Having been on the road since the New Zealand summer, the Beach Blacks have had a good look at their Games rivals ahead of the tournament.

'The preparation has been great, going overseas I wasn't really sure what to expect, but we've had a chance to see who we're going to be up against in some of the bigger games, and we've actually played the teams in our pool twice, so that's definitely been handy,” says Fuller.

Results

Set 1

O'Dea / Fuller NZ 21 – 14 Tuvalu Saaga/Ampex

Set 2

O'Dea / Fuller NZ 21 – 17 Tuvalu Saaga/Ampex

NZ win 2-0

Beach Ferns

Alice Zeimann and Shaunna Polley won their second match against Kenya this morning 2-0 to qualify for the quarter finals, their next game is against Canada at 8am Thursday morning NZ time.