Quadri Aruna’s quest to play in the final of the Table Tennis Bundesliga (TTBL) came to a close at the weekend as the Nigerian failed to save TTC-RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell from going 3-0 to defending champion Borussia Dusseldorf in the second leg of the semifinal.
Despite putting up a good fight against the star-studded Dusseldorf at home in the first leg of the semifinal on May 7, Aruna’s TTC went down 2-3 at home and went down 3-0 again on Sunday to miss
the final of the German table tennis championship.
A disappointed Aruna blamed the loss on fatigue. “I think we have overworked ourselves in training for the semifinal matches and this affected our performance adversely because in the first leg, I could not just understand what happened to me as I was just playing wrongly.
“When we played the first leg, we were confident that we would win but I missed the opportunity to help my team to an emphatic 3-0 win after Alexandre Cassin and Fanbo Meng had beaten Kristian Karlsson and Timo Boll 3-2 respectively and I lost 3-0 to Dang Qiu to ignite Dusseldorf comeback in the match.
“This has really affected us but the second leg was too much for us to bear because we have put everything into the first leg. We hope we can get this chance again next season,” Aruna added .
Aruna’s teammate Meng said: “Congratulations to Düsseldorf, you deserved to win. We took a little more risk today with the line-up and wanted at least a 1-1 at the break. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out. Despite the defeat, it was a great season overall with the semi-finals in the cup and in the league,” Meng said.
As it is now, the battle for the trophy will be between Düsseldorf and Saarbrücken on June 11th in Frankfurt.
