Hammarby prepare with defeat

Swedish champions, Hammarby Handboll, the only representative of Sweden in the Men’s Champions League this season, suffered a huge defeat on Thursday night.

The test match against Danish KIF Kolding (did not manage to qualify for the Champions League this year) was lost 45-31 (20-14 at half time).

“It would not be fair to judge Hammarby’ s chances in the Champions League on the basis of this one match only,” said Kolding coach, Ulf Sivertsson. He is a Swede himself and has been in charge of Kolding for six years. Not only did he qualify for the Champions League with his team every year, but they also regularly went on from the group stage.

Apelgren missing

“We played extremely well tonight, but the most important reason of the great difference is that Hammarby were missing a key player, Michael Apelgren,” Sivertsson told Eurohandball.com after the match played in Vamdrup, a suburb of Kolding.

“Hammarby played some fine matches in the Champions League last season, and also had some good test match results this season. They have a fine home ground, but they are, of course, in a very tough group,” Ulf Sivertsson added. Hammarby are in Group B with Champions League winner THW Kiel and French number two, Montpellier HB. The fourth team will be the winner of the qualification game Romanian HCM Constanta vs Belgian KV Sasja

Kolding coach is definitely right that Hammarby have done better at previous training matches than on Thursday night. They finished third at a strong training tournament in Kiel defeating Danish Aarhus GF, among others.

The Swedish champions will stay in Denmark for a couple of days to take part in a tournament in Silkeborg this weekend. The opponents will be Danish Bjerringbro/Silkeborg, Sandefjod from Norway and Haukar Hafnafjördur from Iceland.

On the way home, Hammarby will stop in Copenhagen to play one more training match – this time against FCK Håndbold.