13.04.2014, 11:30
Our hunger for success was our secret

FEATURE: Camilla Andersen recalls the 2003/04 season, when Slagelse earned their first European title.

Our hunger for success was our secret

An enormous hunger for success and will to win was the secret behind Slagelse FH's first Women's EHF Champions League triumph in 2004.

At least, this is Camilla Andersen's explanation to Slagelse's first win out of three, and the only triumph which involved the versatile back court player herself.

Three years earlier she had joined Slagelse from the Copenhagen based club FIF, and winning the Champions League in the 2003/04 season was the culmination to her career at club level.

“We were the first Danish team ever to win the Champions League, and it was the only trophy which Anja (Andersen, head coach) and I were still missing.

“It was so much more important to us to win the Champions League, as we had just missed the Danish championship that season by losing to Viborg in the final, so we felt that we were a bit under pressure to get a title,” Camilla Andersen tells ehfCL.com.

“The pressure was not exactly reduced by the fact that we only won the first leg of the final (against Krim Ljubljana) by one goal at home (25:24). However, we went down there and won by four (36:32) and that was a great effort,” recalls Camilla Andersen who scored seven goals in the second leg of the final.

“I do not remember how many goals I scored, but I remember one of them in particular. I scored from zero degrees on the left wing against Cecilie Leganger,” she remembers.

“We won partly because we had a lot of extremely good players in our team, but also because we all had an enormous hunger for success and will to win. I was not able to talk to several of my foreign teammates, simply because I did not understand what they said, but we had this common will to be successful which drove us all on. Furthermore, we had a very good coach, of course (Anja Andersen),” 40-year-old Camilla Andersen explains.

Combining company and top handball

Already while playing on top level in Slagelse, she was part owner of the travelling company Travel Sense which she and two others founded in 2002. Combining a business career with a career in top sport is usually not easy, but she managed.

“It functioned because I had some very liberal conditions in Slagelse. Usually I worked in the company in Copenhagen from 7.00 to 16.00, before I drove to Slagelse to train, and then I sometimes returned to the office to work some more after training. Furthermore, I often took my work with me when travelling with the team.

“However, it became too hard in the long run, and that was the reason why I ended my career in Slagelse after the 2003-04 season and ended my career completely in 2005 after a season in FCK,” explains Camilla Andersen who has put her own handball career behind her, but who has still got quite a bit to do with handball through her job.

She is still running Travel Sense which is specialising in sports and events journeys, and handball trips also play a part here.

Although her own active career is way back by now, she still follows top handball closely.

“I think the game has become more physical than when I was playing, and there are more substitutions between defence and attack, but then again, it is hard to compare with a time spell of ten years, and it is beyond any doubt that the top teams of today are extremely good,” she finds.

FINAL4 increase the hype

The MVM EHF FINAL4, which is introduced this year, as a great new thing in Camilla Andersen's opinion.

“There is no doubt in my mind that it will give more hype to the tournament. It is also likely to increase the interest from the media, and I think it will increase the motivation from the players even more, as the fact that things are decided over a weekend will make the FINAL4 feel like a national team championship.

“It will also be good for the economy of the participating clubs. Drawing a Russian opponent in the semi-final could be an expensive adventure for a club from Western Europe and vice versa. Such problems are avoided now that the semi-finals and the final are in the same place in the same weekend,” finds Camilla Andersen.

TEXT: Peter Bruun / br