Decimated HC Erlangen loses 27:21 to THW Kiel after a great fight

In a game postponed from the first matchday, HC Erlangen traveled with a decimated squad to the far north of Germany to face THW Kiel, the club that holds a record number of German championship titles, on Sunday afternoon. Despite missing Steinert, Mappes, Haaß, Theilinger and Schröder, the HC sold its skin as dearly as possible in the Sparkassen Arena and helped produce an exciting encounter in front of 10,258 spectators. Thanks to sensational saves by Nikolas Katsigiannis between the posts, it even cut the deficit to three goals shortly before the end. However, the HC finally went down by 27:21.

HC Erlangen began with a goal from Johannes Sellin, right after which Nikolas Katsigiannis parried the first seven-meter penalty of the afternoon to prevent the equalizer. After a two-minute penalty against Nico Büdel, the HC was short-handed in the fourth minute, but the club from Franconia handled that situation cleverly and did not concede any further goal. After Link lost possession, Bilyk snapped up the ball to make it 3:1 in the 8th minute. Nikolai Link then deftly outplayed Kiel’s offensive 5:1 defense to reduce the gap to 3:2. Despite its sparse squad, HC Erlangen was stable in defense, captured possession and keeper Nikolas Katsigiannis tied the scores with a throw into the empty net from a distance of 40 meters. Without a left-hander in attack, HC Erlangen played long attacking moves and again found Jan Schäffer free at the crease in the 12th minute: The man from Nuremberg equalized after a pass from Büdel (4:4). Dahmke, Wiencek and Rahmel stretched the lead to 7:4. After the home side made it 8:4, Head Coach Aðalsteinn Eyjólfsson called a timeout in the 16th minute and gave his team a pep talk for the remaining 15 minutes of the first half. The HC got itself repeatedly into good scoring positions, but all too often was thwarted by the world-class goalkeeper Wolf. Yet it did not give up and kept on believing that it was in with a chance. Thümmler and Bissel added goals five and six. Katsigiannis kept his team in the game with his strong saves, but the club from Franconia missed too many chances in attack and so was not able to cut the deficit by any decisive margin. After eight minutes without a goal, Katsigiannis parried yet another seven-meter penalty, this time from Magnus Landin. Trailing by 9:6, 10:7 and then 12:7, the visitors went into the break five goals behind.

After the restart, the home side immediately produced a 3:0 run to extend the gap to eight. Nico Büdel scored the HC’s first goal in the second half and cut the deficit to 14:8 with a shot from the backcourt. Kiel’s physically strong defense meant that HC repeatedly ran the risk of being penalized for passive play. The fact that the gap was not any higher was due to Nikolas Katsigiannis, who picked up where he had left off in the first half and saved the throw from the free Dahmke. Büdel and Sellin put the ball past Wolf in the 39th minute and Bissel then made it 16:11. The HC lost possession too often on the next attacks and so the THW was able to pull away to 18:11 in the 42nd minute. Nikolas Katsigiannis not only prevented goals, but also put the ball in an empty net again shortly afterwards. Young star Benedikt Kellner had reason to celebrate: After a pass from Büdel, he scored his first-ever goal for HC Erlangen. That annoyed Head Coach Alfred Gislason so much that he called a timeout in the 43rd minute with the score standing at 18:14. The HC even sensed that it might pull off a minor shock when Kellner made it 20:17 shortly before the end. However, Kiel then moved into turbo drive and sealed the game by making it 25:18 with two minutes remaining. The HC’s final goal of the encounter also sparked a great deal of pleasure: Jakob Hoffmanns, on his debut in the DKB German Handball League, hit the mark from the backcourt (25:21). In the end, the injury-weakened club from Franconia lost by 27:21 after putting up a fine fight.

Aðalsteinn Eyjólfsson was proud of his side despite the defeat: “I'm very satisfied with how my team played, all the more so when you think that we were a match for the THW for a long time despite our decimated squad and even got within three goals at the end. We always believed we had a chance and never gave up fighting. That’s what I want to see from my team.”

Quelle: www.hc-erlangen.de