5th December, 2013
High Performance/ National Head Coach of Australia, Jens Lang has described Nigerian players taking part in the ongoing 2013 International Table Tennis Federation, ITTF, World Junior Championship in Rabat, Morocco as good players who hold great future ahead of them.
Nigeria which was ranked 16 in the seeding for the tournament’s boys team event moved a place upward after the duo of Olajide Omotayo and Olasunkanmi Oginni defeated the Aussie boys in Tuesday’s final.
Nigerian Azeez Ogunlade lost the first match to Ivan Sulfaro 11-7, 3-11, 8-11, 5-11. Captain of the Nigerian team to the world championships, Olajide Omotayo beat Jake Duffy 11-5, 11-8, 10-12, 11-8, while Olasunkanmi Oginni defeated Yang Shen 11-7, 11-7, 11-6. Omotayo, however, sealed the victory after beating Ivan Sulfaro 11-7, 11-8, 11-9 to help Nigeria finished 15th in the world.
“To be honest I was surprise with the performance of Nigeria’s Olasunkanmi Oginni because on paper, he was number three player but we think maybe we have 50/50 chance against him. Unfortunately we lost and we did not have much of chance. Nigerian players are consistency and aggressive on the table and they use every opportunity they have in using their forehand unlike our players,” said Lang.
“In general, I am impressed with the Nigerian players with the way they conducted themselves and we owe them a lot of respect as they deserved the victory. It is hard to say why we have not been able to beat Nigeria because table tennis in Australia is still a very small sport and we have a long way to go trying to develop some structures.
“I think it is a great opportunity for young players from all countries from all continents to come together and compete against each other in the World Junior Championship. It is a great learning experience especially for our players because they get to play players of a much higher standard. I think again coming together to play is a great opportunity as well as great incentive for players also to go back and see what they have to work on and how far other countries are above them. So for the players, it is a great motivation and incentives to play at this stage,” he said.
Australian Yang Shen who lost 0-3 to Oginni said he had learnt some lessons from the match, saying “Ï am disappointed losing to Nigeria but I think it was a good experience for me playing against the Nigerians who are more consistent and aggressive than us. When we were paired against them, we thought it was a 50/50 chance because we did not have much information about the Nigerian team. So we did not know how to play them.
I was a bit surprise on how aggressive they were and it was this that gave them the win,” said Shen.