Arjun Singh: Our raiders were excellent today

U.P. Yoddha won a thriller of a contest by beating Haryana Steelers 30-29 at the Thyagaraj Sports Complex in Delhi on Thursday. Representing U.P. Yoddha at the post-match press conference were captain Rishank Devadiga and assistant coach Arjun Singh while Monu Goyat and coach Rambir Singh Khokhar took questions for Haryana Steelers.

U.P. Yoddha

Q: What do you have to say about your team’s win?

Arjun Singh: We were trailing Haryana Steelers by three points at half-time. Our defence couldn’t perform in the first half, so we couldn’t get as many points as we needed then. Our raiders had injuries, so we had to do without them for a few games, but we had them back today and they were excellent.

Q: You are still in contention for the Playoffs as a result of this win. How are you feeling?

Rishank Devadiga: With this win, our chances of qualifying for the Playoffs have gone up. We have decided to play all our remaining matches as a sink-or-sail situation. To have a chance of qualifying, we now need to win all our six games, so we cannot afford to take any game lightly. This will be the target in our future matches as well.

Q: What changed in the leadup to today’s game?

Arjun Singh: We had a break of 6-7 days prior to this game. This gave our raiders enough time to recover from their niggles. Our strategies changed since we were now considering all our matches to be sink-or-sail matches. Had the defence had a better first half, we could have won the game by a greater margin.

Haryana Steelers

Q: What do you have to say about today’s game?

Rambir Singh Khokhar: We committed a lot of mistakes today. While we were trailing, we tried too hard to regain the lead and ended up losing more points. Our defence gave up too many points as well.

Q: How does this loss affect your team?

Rambir Singh Khokhar: The team’s morale does go down. Even if we cannot qualify to the next stage, we have a few more games to go where we will try and give our best. This game was evenly contested. We were in the contest up until the last minute. The last raid was very important, and we could not get the desired result out of that raid.