Ivic saves a crucial point for Zagreb

A roller coast ride ended as a real thriller. The final shot of the match needed to decide the crucial duel of Orlen Wisla Plock vs HC PPD Zagreb. As the Polish side failed at the end of a defence-orientated battle, the Croatian side took a well-deserved point after being ahead most of the game.

After the opener of Round 10 of Group A, Zagreb kept their one-point advance ahead of Plock and an intermediate six points cushion on the seventh position.

GROUP A

Orlen Wisla Plock (POL) vs HC PPD Zagreb (CRO) 23:23 (11:12)

The first half was a pure defence fight with finally the close but better end for Zagreb as their defence was lightly more focussed.

The good news for the Croatian side was the comeback of Domagoj Pavlovic after he suffered heart problems and had to miss the match against Besiktas JK.

After leading 3:2, Plock made too many technical mistakes and missed chances against the stable defence of the Croatian side, who then forged ahead by a 4:0 series, causing a time-out of Manolo Cadenas.

The roller coaster changed its direction intermediately as now Plock had the momentum on their side.

But the visitors stroke back to be ahead 17:12 after a 8:3 series until minute 34.

Like in the win against Besiktas, Stefan Vujic (six goals in total) was the key in attack for Zagreb, but also Pavlovic and Horvat (five in total) scored crucial goals.

Plock did not give up, boosted by their fans and the strikes of their Potuguese Tiago Rocha, best Wisla scorer with six goals together with Jose Guilhermo de Toledo who also netted six times.

With still 14 minutes to go and a 18:21 on the scoreboard, Cadenas took another timeout, mainly to re-instruct the attack.

His team took the profit of a two-man advantage, scoring twice, followed by an immediate Veslin Vujovic timeout.

The hosts missed the great chances to level the match earlier by failing twice in only three minutes from the penalty line – first Rocha, then Marko Tarabochia.

In this period, goalkeeper Filip Ivic became Zagreb’s tower of power, keeping his team on track. But even Ivic could not prevent his team from the equaliser four minutes before the end.

Everything was open again at 22:22.

Both sides tried to hide their nervousness by extreme patience in attack in the final minutes.

Plock had the last chance, when the score was 23:23, but again failed against Ivic. Zagreb ran towards the hosts’ goal with three seconds left, but their shot came too late.

Head coach of Plock, Manolo Cadenas expressed his thoughts on the game: "We started this game very nervous, I don’t know why.  A couple of days ago we played very good game in Pulaw and on training we looked very good.  We missed couple of penalities, Zagreb were better organised, played faster and they got couple goals advantage. The one positive thing is that we managed to get back to the game losing with five goals. We had better last 15 minutes and I think that the draw is fair result for both teams."

Left wing for Zagreb, Lovro Sprem comments: "Congratulations to both teams. I don’t want to and I don’t like talk about injuries but we had great problems preparing ourselves properly for this game. We knew, that it will be big challenge to get points in this game, but we did it."