BY SUNDAY AKINTOYE
President of Nigeria Rugby League Association, Abiodun Olawale-Cole has showered encomium on the Nigeria’ s female national rugby league team after defeating Kenya 22-14 in their first ever women’s world cup qualifier on Thursday afternoon at the NY centre in Nairobi.
Nigeria won their first leg and the rematch would come up on Sunday in Nairobi to decide the country that would go on to represent the continent in the inaugural 2025 World Series.
Olawale-Cole in a chat with our correspondent some hours ago described the victory well deserved and urged the players to remain focused and go for another victory when both countries meet on Sunday.
“Amazing job today, especially for those playing on the international stage for the first time. Rachel was our top scorer and it was only her second game ever playing rugby and she scored twice which was amazing,
“Despite the Kenya’s standing well above us in height and size, you girls cut them down to size. We need to cut out some silly errors with handling the ball and penalties ahead of the second game, let’s rest and heal well and go back again to put African women’s on the Rugby league Map globally.keep on soaring high Green Falcons,” he said.
While reacting to the victory, Nigeria women’s head coach, Bolu Fagborun, said: “It was tough, I knew there would be periods in the game when we’d have to dig deep and credit to Kenya, they stuck in the game.
“We’re only halfway there, we will have two training sessions before Sunday’s rematch and we’re going to work on some things we’ve seen in this first game. I think we’ve got more points in us and we’re going to concentrate on what we did in defence in the first half.”
Nigeria skipper, Rukayat Jimoh, noted: “We have prepared for this for so long. We are very happy that we won this first battle, but we expect the next one to be tougher than this. This is just the beginning, we have more to showcase.” said Jimoh who assured Nigerians victory on Sunday.
On the other hand, Kenya women’s head coach, Antonio Lombardo, admitted “We didn’t do everything we wanted or needed to do at a given moment, but we showed that we could play. We made too many errors in the first half, but we sat down at the break and talked about what we needed to do and just fell short.” she said
Meanwhile, Olawale-Cole thanked their partners such as Chappal Energies, Alaro City, Aerial Robotics and Leadway for their unwavering support given the team during their camping before leaving the shore of the country some days ago.
