15.03.2007, 11:46
Illness Threatens Viborg’s Chances

Key players are ill in the Danish team before the quarterfinal, but they may return for Saturday's game.

Illness Threatens Viborg’s Chances

Viborg HK have been seriously handicapped by injuries of key players this season. The Danish team can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The number of injured players has been reduced to one by now. Only the Romanian international right winger, Christina Varzaru remains sidelined for the rest of this season because of a thigh injury she picked up in the Champions League group match in Leipzig back in February. Her problems seem to be more serious than originally expected. It turned out that Varzaru’s thigh muscle was torn. The player needs 12 more weeks to recover, which means that the season is over for Christina Varzaru. It is a great misfortune for the player just before the decisive phase of the Champions League and the Danish championship.

Flu instead of injuries

Kristina Bille Hansen has done a great job to replace the Romanian player and Varzaru’s injury is not a serious handicap for the Champions League title holders.

There’s another problem, however, right before the game against Russian Lada Togliatti: no less than three key players – Rikke Skov, Heidi Astrup (just returned from injury) and Grit Jurack – are ill with flu, and it is still unsure whether they could play on Saturday.

“At the moment I do not know, how many of them will be able to play – if any. I do not expect to know anything for sure until Friday night. But even if they can all play, they will inevitably be weakened after their illness. This will be a severe blow, as we are practically talking about our entire backcourt line,” Viborg coach Tomas Ryde told Eurohandball.com. 

Goalkeepers may be decisive

For the foreign public, Lada is mostly known for two of their stars, Ludmilla Postnova and Irina Bliznova. They were both reported to move to a Danish club before this season, but they chose to stay in Togliatti. According to Tomas Ryde, Lada is much more than the two stars.

“I think they play a little differently this season than they did last year. They make more pressure in the attacking play. But of course, Postnova and Bliznova are important players in the team, and I think that Bliznova in particular has become physically much stronger during the past year. However, I think that we might be able to win the match in the goalkeeper position. I am sure we are stronger there,” Tomas Ryde said

Advancing on the league table

Viborg made use of the break between the group stage and the quarterfinals to move up to second position on the Danish league. First of all they won away 29-25 against the previous number two and Champions League participant Aalborg DH on Sunday. On Wednesday – with all the illness – they had any easy victory (36-15) at home against Team Esbjerg.

TEXT: Peter Bruun