Valcea win Group D

With a 31-29 away win over Viborg HK on Wednesday night, Oltchim Valcea made sure to win Group D with one match day remaining. Both teams missed many key players due to injuries, illnesses, etc. Viborg could not count on Grit Jurack, Bojana Popovic, Christina Várzaru, LeneThomsen and Jane Schumacher as well as one of their goalkeepers, Louise Bager Drue. On the other side, Valcea left their first-choice goalkeeper, Luminita Dinu, as well as Ionela Gilca Stanca, Valerie Bese and Valentina Ardean Elisee in Romania.

All these absences were detrimental to the quality of the match, but the visitors seemed to adapt better to this situation. Valcea started much better and in a hurry they were leading by 7 goals at 11-4, 13-6 and 14-7. Viborg managed to come a bit closer, but the Romanians – loudly end enthusiastically supported by 45 fans – could take a 20-16 lead to half time.

Viborg’s comeback

In the second half, however, the 1,293 spectators saw Viborg’s revival. The hosts managed to come closer and closer and at 26-26 the hosts equalised for the first time in the match. The main reasons for this remarkable achievement was the that some of the Valcea players seemed to get tired, while Viborg finally managed to make their defence work.

In the last minutes, though, Valcea were the smarter and cleverer team and managed to secure a 2-goal win that gave them the first place in the group

“I think we dominated the match from the start until the end, and I’m happy to win our group. I’m proud to defeat such a team as Viborg, that probably have a budget six times as big as ours,” Oltchim Valcea’s head coach, Gheorghe Tadici, told Eurohandball.com after the match.

“I think we were good at handling the pressure – also thanks to our supporters,” added Tadici, who is also the Romanian national coach.

“It is really no excuse that we were missing quite a lot of players. So were Valcea,” Viborg’s coach, Tomas Ryde, said after the defeat. “Our defence did not work at the beginning and it was decisive,” found Ryde, whose team can not yet feel sure to qualify for the main round.

Ramona Maier was the best scorer of Valcea – and of the match – with an impressive count of 16 goals, while Ida Bjørndalen scored 6 for Viborg