HC Erlangen reaps rewards for a selfless fighting display

HC Erlangen battled its way to a 32:27 (17:13) victory over HBW Balingen-Weilstetten to capture both points in its first home game of the year on Thursday evening. One of the prime factors in the win was its strong defending coupled with excellent transition play.

The HC’s Head Coach Rolf Brack celebrated an ideal home debut in the ARENA NÜRNBERGER Versicherung. The 66-year-old was visibly relieved in the press conference and pleased with how his team had performed: “Of course, I’m very happy about the result. Even though not everything’s perfect yet, we took to heart what we had worked on in the last training units and were able to improve the speed of our attacks in particular.”

Before that, the HC Erlangen had produced a passionate fighting display over the 60 minutes. Christopher Bissel scored the first goal of the evening and his side was already 5:1 in front after just six minutes. The visitors’ Head Coach Jens Bürkle was therefore forced to call a timeout early on. Even with its opponents short-handed, Balingen was initially unable to unlock the club from Franconia’s strong defense. It did not overcome keeper Katsigiannis again until the tenth minute, whereupon the strong Christopher Bissel struck back to make it 7:2. The home side played courageously in defense and fought for every ball. The 4,753 fans in the ARENA cheered on every steal that was crowned by a goal at the other end. Thanks to the goals on the counter and an unstoppable Sime Ivic, who scored five goals in the first half alone, the HCE went 8:5, 11:6 and then 13:7 ahead and still led by 17:13 at half-time.

After the break, Erlangen repeatedly carved out good shooting opportunities, but the players of Rolf Brack were thwarted on four straight attacks by the opposing goalkeeper, which enabled the HBW to slash the deficit to 17:16 in the space of three minutes. However, Erlangen refused to be thrown off its stride and picked up where it had left off in the first half: by fighting. It added six goals by the 46th minute and again built a small cushion (23:20). With the score at 24:22, Nico Büdel was shown the red card after a foul on Martin Strobel and so had to watch on from the stands for the remaining ten minutes. And since Nikolai Link had also been given a 2-minute penalty a few seconds earlier, Erlangen now had to defend with two players less on court. With four men against six, the club from Franconia conceded just one goal and scored one itself through Johannes Sellin (25:22). Symptomatic of the first home win of the year was the scene when Christopher Bissel produced his third steal and made it 28:24 to decide the game. In the end, HC Erlangen and its fans celebrated a deserved 32:27 home victory in the ARENA NÜRNBERGER Versicherung.