Shooting Stars Coach Ogunbote Impressed By Turnout Of Spectators

Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC)’s transformational Coach Gbenga Ogunbote has confessed that he has not experienced the kind of crowd he’s seeing at the home ground of his new club watching Nigerian League in his more than 12- year sojourn as a team handler.

The Ogun State born gaffer disclosed this while speaking after their hard earned victory against El-Kanemi Warriors of Maiduguri at the Lekan Salami Sports Complex Ibadan.

His words: “If I must confess to you, for the past 12 years that I have been into Nigerian League, I have not seen the kind of crowd I’m witnessing here at Shooting Stars’ home matches; the stadium is always filled to capacity.

“What I noticed is that, it seems the fans were not happy because the team was not doing well before, and now that they have seen the improvement, everybody is ready to contribute their quota and that is really helping the team’s performance too.

“The boys cannot afford to fail when they see the crowd, even when the opponents score us first, the fans still exhibit the belief in us that we will come back and you can see the kind of ovation that welcomes our equalizer, that sinks into the players’ head that, they need to get the winning goal. I’m happy that this is happening while I’m here.

Ogunbote, however, added that despite the financial challenges facing the team presently the management still struggles to maintain the winning mentality, and he equally gave kudos to the General Manager of the team Rasheed Balogun who he described as a driving force that keeps the team going.

“I would like to thank our GM for his efforts and zeal to keep the team going, we knew we must camp ahead of this match and the GM made it possible that we camp the players immediately after our away match despite the acute lack of funds from the government”, he noted.

The former Sharks of Port Harcourt Coach further explained that the target given to him while taking over here was the team not to drop from Premier League, but added that if continental slot comes along the line he would grab it with his two hands.

When asked what he’s doing to change the tide at the club that was only fond of winning only at home and losing during away matches, he said that “I have been able to play ten games now and we were able to pick two points at away, so that has shown that there has been an improvement in that regard.

“I want to tell you that it is not as easy as people perceived, how I wish you people follow us to one of our away matches, if we can be getting a level playing ground at every venue 3SC’s away results would have been much better”.