Badminton England defends World Championship preparations
Last updated on .From the section Badminton
Badminton England has defended its World Championship preparations following apparent criticism from their top player Nathan Robertson.
Robertson and Jenny Wallwork suffered a disappointing first round mixed doubles loss at Wembley on Tuesday night.
He later said on Twitter: "Today's quote: 'World class performance needs world class support; average treatment gets an average outcome.' End quote..."
But a Badminton England official insisted planning had been thorough.
Chief executive Adrian Christy, who has guided the governing body through a turbulent past year, said: "In the last few months I have sat back and watched the most intense preparation period we have put into place for a long, long time.
"I am not interested in what happened 12 months ago. We have learnt an awful lot of lessons and come through it really well.
"The coaches of these guys are putting in huge amounts of effort to ensure the players get the best possible preparation. I think they have had that.
"They [Robertson and Wallwork] had a bad day at the office but they will have good days as well."
Robertson, who won silver at the 2004 Athens Olympics with Gail Emms, and Wallwork are considered Great Britain's best hopes for success at London 2012 having climbed to eighth in the world rankings.
The duo had a lengthy debrief with coaches and support staff last night and three areas of concern have been identified.
National coach Julian Robertson said: "I'm not going to tell you what those three things are but it is going in the right direction.
"Our debrief was about 40 minutes long. They were both gutted. It was never going to be an easy match but they were just not quite at the level they wanted to be at yesterday. They were both slightly off.
"There are some things that we need to work on as a group. We need to focus on those things and give it time.
"They're not quick-fix. They are things that we need to spend a lot of time on, on court and off court."
