Györ to face Viborg, Zagreb and Sävehof in group matches

Györi Audi ETO KC, the defending winners of the Women's EHF Champions League will start their quest to win the third straight title in Group C playing against Viborg HK (DEN), RK Lokomotiva Zagreb (CRO) and IK Sävehof (SWE) after the draw has determined the composition of all four groups of the group matches in the new season.

Michael Wiederer, EHF Secretary General and Leopold Kalin, the Chairman of the Competition Comission conducted the draw at the Gartenhotel Altmannsdorf in Vienna.

"It is an interesting group with two Scandinavian teams. Both Viborg and Sävehof will make us run a lot in our games. Lokomotiva finally stop the hegemony of Podravka in Croatia and it will be no easy opponent," the president of Györi Audi ETO KC Ernö Kelecsenyi said after the draw.

"We start with the group matches in the university arena, but we hope we will be ready to host the last match of this phase in our new Audi Arena at the end of November. It would be an opening game of the hall, which will later host also the EHF EURO preliminary round," Kelecsenyi added.

Group B could easily turned out to be a melting pot of three MVM EHF FINAL4 participants from the previous season if FC Midtjylland win their qualification group and join Buducnost and WHC Vardar SCBT. The fourth team in the group are German champions Thüringer HC.

"We can easily call this group as the group of death," commented Srdjan Markoc from Buducnost.

In Group A the four-time winners of the EHF Champions League Hypo Niederösterreich will meet the top seed Krim Mercator from Slovenia, Russia's champions Dinamo-Sinara Volgograd and the winners of qualification group 1, while 2011 winners from Larvik HK will play together with an ambitious Romanian club HCM Baia Mare, France's Metz Handball and MKS Selgros Lublin from Poland in the group D.

The first round is scheduled for 17-19 October, the sixth round will conclude the group matches 21-23 November.

Three best teams of each group will qualify for the main round which will commence in January 2015. All teams will start the next phase with points and results from matches against other qualified teams.

Group A

RK Krim Ljubljana (SLO)

Dinamo-Sinara Volgograd (RUS)

Hypo Niederösterreich (AUT)

Winner of Qualification Group 1

Group B

WHC Buducnost (MNE)

Thüringer HC (GER)

WHC Vardar SCBT (MKD)

Winner of Qualification Group 2

Group C

Györi Audi ETO KC (HUN)

Viborg HK (DEN)

RK Lokomotiva Zagreb (CRO)

IK Sävehof (SWE)

Group D

Larvik HK (NOR)

HCM Baia Mare (ROU)

Metz Handball (FRA)

MKS Selgros Lublin (POL)

Semi-final pairings of the qualification groups:

Group 1
FTC Rail Cargo Hungaria (HUN) vs SERCODAK/Dalfsen (NED)
HC Leipzig (GER) vs BNTU BelAz Minsk Reg. (BLR)

Group 2
FC Midtjylland (DEN) vs WHC Radnicki Kragujevac (SRB)
Byasen Trondheim (NOR) vs HC Podravka Vegeta (CRO)

Order of the right to host tournaments: Row 4, Row 3, Row 2, Row 1

Read more about the qualification draw here

Playing dates of the group matches:

Round 1: 17-19 October 2014
Round 2: 24-26 October 2014
Round 3: 31 October - 2 November 2014
Round 4: 7-9 November 2014
Round 5: 14-16 November 2014
Round 6: 21-23 November 2014