Two more wins for Scotland at World Junior Championships

Scotland’s juniors continued their fine form at the World Junior Team Championships yesterday with comprehensive wins over the Czech Republic and Spain.

A 4-1 defeat of Spain was followed by a 5-0 whitewash of the Czechs to leave the Scots second in Group F on game difference behind joint third seeds Korea.

It mean’s Scotland are guaranteed to finish at least second in the group, which would mean they go forward into the play offs for positions 9 to 16 in the world.

But with a match against Korea to come at 17.00hrs GMT today the top spot in the group is still to play for although it will be a tall order to beat the Asian powerhouse.

Head coach Robert Blair said: “We had two very good wins yesterday starting with a 4-1 win against a good Spanish team.

“With good depth in all events, we knew it would be a close fight and with the boys events slightly favouring us and the girls slightly them, the mixed was always going to be crucial.

“Matthew and Rachel came through in three sets after a very tight first two sets that could have gone either way and Joshua then produced a great performance in the singles to clinch a very important match.

“With another game only a few hours later we mixed up the team to try and keep players fresh and the 5-0 victory was way more than I could have hoped for.  All the players were fantastic and put on a great performance.

“We now play Korea in a few hours to decide who wins the group and decide if we play for places 1-8 or 9-16.”

The mixed team event of these World Junior Championships continues until Saturday 10 November and is followed by the individual events from 12-18 November.

Full results, draws and match times are at www.tournamentsoftware.org.uk