Handball will do well for Nigeria, Atusu promises

EXPECTATIONS are high within Nigeria’s handball camp in Brazzaville, Congo, as the men and women teams prepare for their opening matches against Kenya on Sunday, reports the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

The Technical Director of the Handball Federation of Nigeria (HFN), Patrick Atusu, said at the team’s training yesterday that the teams were ready for their matches.

He said the players and the technical crew were in high spirits and ready to do the country proud at the Games, adding, “We are ready to post respectable results at the end of the handball event.”

Atusu said that the players had trained hard since their arrival in Brazzaville and expressed the hope that they would win medals. “We have done what we are expected to do, in terms of training and I hope that they can reproduce what they learnt in training. “I am not in the business of making promises as sports are performance-based.

All I can say is that the players are in good conditions to do well and get to the medal positions’’. He said that although the national teams had yet to have a feel of the hall where the event would take place, “the surface is different from where we currently train. “We hope we will have the opportunity to train in the hall, which I understand has a slippery surface.

That is not an excuse, as we have resolved to do our best and hopefully take home medals,’’ the technical director vowed Atusu, however, said that a victory in the teams’ opening games might guarantee their qualification to the semifinal. The handball events would kick off at the Kantele Stadium, Brazzaville today.