BLOG: Little duels; little jewels

Slovenia , Match of the week; it’s freezing cold and snowing. Did no one tell them that it’s late February. The weather and the season were completely out of sync and unfortunately so were the teams. Kielce and Gorenje Velenje played out an uninspired game with both teams playing as if there was nothing on the line.

Theoretically, this was true as both had qualified for the knockout phase in the first and third positions they held in Group C (assuming Metalurg would overcome Silkeborg), but there was pride at stake. Kielce had a chance to take a 100% record into the next round and Gorenje Velenje had an unbeaten home record.

Bogdan Wenta himself told me before the game, that he didn’t want to travel back to Poland (a 900km journey), on the Kielce bus, having lost. He also spoke about the psychology of winning.

What followed was not the greatest handball match we have ever seen and in certain ways the coaches used to game to try different formations and formulas on the court.

I like to think that I am well prepared for games and have an idea where and when players will play, but in this game the coaches used their entire bench to either give experience to players (in the case of Ovnicek, an 18 year old for GV, who replaced Bezjak) or to see what combinations might work in the absence of certain players. It was difficult to keep track of the substitutions, I must say, but also interesting to watch coaches mix and match in a way that wasn’t seen in previous rounds.

But there were lots of moments of high drama. There were little duels all over the court; none more so than Losert versus the wingers of GV. He is 36, has played forever, it seems, yet he pulled off save after save. Gajic did the same, keeping GV in the game, but even he seemed to have no answers to the power of Kielce with 10 minutes to go.

Jurecki looked a class above his teammates and in the classic “large versus little” duels; he came out on top, scoring whenever he felt like it. Gams had a day to forget in attack and defence on left wing against Olafsson, who always seemed to be free to score. Tomczak on the other hand filled in very nicely on the left wing for Kielce, in place of the absent Strlek and Jachlewski.

Among the little duels, there was a little jewel; Bezjak, he sparkled. On the day, his teammates, bar Cehte, failed to take advantage of his play and a lot of his excellent work wasn’t capitalised upon by GV.

Amid the snow, hell didn’t freeze over in the “Red Hall” and Kielce ploughed on to an easy victory. Their 100% record is truly a wonderful achievement. Unfortunately neither team lived up to its potential on this day. Going forward, Kielce will welcome back some of their bigger stars and should do well in the last 16, but GV cannot afford to play like this in the knockout stages, if they don’t want to be frozen out of the competition.