EURO TEAM 2010 – Polish girls come back from brink

By Mark Phelan (Live in Warsaw).  Photos: BadmintonPhoto.com (Live)

The Polish women’s team caused the upset of the day in Warsaw as they battled back from a 2-0 deficit to beat Ukraine 3-2 to keep their slender hopes of qualification alive in a tight group that also includes France and Scotland.

The Polish girls went 2 down early on in the match as the Ukraine had way to much fire power at the top end of their singles with Larisa Griga and Olena Prus providing convincing 2 sets victories. It is fair to say that the Polish girls would readily admit that singles is not their strong point in this year’s competition, but no one obviously told that to Malgorzata Kurdelska (pictured) as the doubles specialist pulled off the win of the day to beat Mariya Diptan in three immense sets to keep the match alive as they headed into the women’s doubles.

If Poland are relatively weak in singles they more than make up for it in doubles and Pocztowiak and Wojtkowska levelled the tie at 2 matches each with a professional 2-set win. The stage was now set for Kurdeleska to take to the court again, after her heroics just an hour previous, and with Polish superstar Nadiezda Kostiuczyk on her shoulder, the writing was always on the wall for the Ukrainian pair Prus and Diptan. Once again Kurdelska proved pivotal in an inspired display and in an easy 2-set win inflicted a second defeat to Diptan which left the Ukrainian in tears after the final shuttle had been hit.

“I normally don’t play singles but to win against Ukraine we knew we had to win at least one of the three singles matches. We were already 2-0 down as I was going on court but really I felt no pressure as I’m not a singles player but I did feel really good on court and felt fresh after our game against the French. We have to probably beat Scotland 5-0 to get out of this group now and we will go out and try and do that as we have a good team spirit and who knows what might happen,” said Kurdelska after her day 2 heroics.

In the same group Scotland also pulled off a 3-2 win over France to leave the group wide open with any one of the four teams in with a chance of advancing to the quarterfinals. In the deciding rubber Jilly Cooper and Linda Sloan combined to beat Pi Hongyan and Audrey Fontaine as the French failed to win any of the doubles.

All the big guns continued to use these preliminary round robin matches as no more that warm ups for the weekend as both Denmark and England completed 5-0 whitewashes in both the men’s and women’s events. The German men (pictured) were faultless in a 5-0 demolition of Scotland and Ireland continued to catch the eye as they beat Greece 4-1 and will now play Holland for top spot in group C. The Irish are sure to fancy their chances as we must remember that The Netherlands are without Pang and Palyama due to their pending court case against their federation later this month.