Now the first day has come to an end, the evening matches resulted in a victory for the clubs from Ukraine, Finland and Spain.
Papa’s Court from Ukraine won 5-0 against Badminton Jonglënster, while Tapion Sulka managed to get the better of Bad 79 Anderlecht with a 4-1 scoreline and Recreativo Les La Orden have won against Frogner Il, also 4-1.
Abian fights through a tough match
Spanish Men’s Singles player Pablo Abian who was one of the players to arrive straight from the European Games in Minsk, needed all three games to secure a win against Mattias Xu.
Abian revealed after the match that he had been one of the players with delayed flights and missed connections.
- It was tough for me this match because I had a long journey with a flight delay and a missed connection so I had to wait, Abian said.
- We are wanting to fight for the medals and I believe that we are on our way to do that, he added.
Winning today was important
Maryna Ilyinskaya who had the decisive match in the tie against Badminton Jonglënster, beating Georgina Bland from England, in three games, which the Ukranian originally lead-in.
The player who normally does not play Women’s Singles revealed how important the win for her club was today.
- Today was important for us to win because tomorrow we play against the club from France and that will be a lot more difficult, Ilyinskaya said.
- So we needed this match to give us a chance of getting out of the group, into the knockout stages. I am happy because my team supported me all of the ways, she added.
Beating a team and a crowd
Tapion Sulka were the winners on court 2 against Belgian side Bad 79 Anderlecht, managing to come out on top in four out of the five games.
The Mixed Doubles who started off the victory spoke after their match, which at the time looked very close.
- They attacked and played very well at times, they made it hard for us we had to fight for the points, Tony Lindelöf said.
Despite it being against the Finnish team, there was a lot of noise in the crowd in Junglinster supporting Bad 79 Anderlecht, Tuuli Härkönen was in favour of the noise!
- I really enjoyed it. It doesn’t matter if it was for the opponent or for us, it is nice to have some noise in the hall, she said,
- For me, I wanted to prove that we could win the match even with the support for Belgium, I wanted to prove them wrong, Tony Lindelöf added.