Irish Junior Boys Paul McCreery from Ulster and Sam Hanley of Eastpoint TTC and Leinster have today caused a major shock at the European Youth Championships by knocking out the seeded Hungarian team to progress to the last 32. The Hungarians were overwhelming favourites coming into the game, with PEREI, Gergel(Ranked 28 in Europe) and PALATINUS, Martin(ranked 66 in Europe) significantly higher ranked than the Irish pair. The Irish duo combined brilliantly however, to dominate their opponents who struggled to deal with the quality of McCreery and Hanley’s short game. The Irish took the game in straight sets against the former European Cadet Doubles silver medallists, winning 3:0(5, 6, 11).
Their focus will now switch to this evening’s last 32 game against the Swedish duo ANDERSSON, Harald and TRAN, Anthony. Again these players are ranked 34 and 21 in Europe and are part of the Swedish Team that made the Junior Team Final. Speaking about the result, Sam Hanley was thrilled with the performance;
“Myslef and Paul are really starting to play well together now and we are delighted with the result and the performance. We have watched the Swedish duo, who are obviously very talented players. However, they tend to drop off the table a little and we would hope to exploit this with our short game. We have got used to the O2 Arena now and think we have a fighting chance this evening”
ITTA Technical Director John O’Donoghue expressed his views on the duo’s progress, stating
“Paul and Sam have done brilliantly well to defeat the always strong Hungarians – to progress to the last 32 of a major European competition is a significant achievent for the boys – who knows they may yet feature in the last 16 Draw tomorrow”
On behalf of all Irish Table Tennis supporters, we wish the guys the best of luck this evening and hopefully into tomorrow.