IKF u21 European Championship day 5
Friday, 13 May 2011 14:00
On day 5 there were still two matches that were interesting beforehand. Hungary and Catalonia fought out a very tense battle. During the first half both teams were in complete balance with their scoring. Though Catalonia was already the team who played the best korfball, it was heart-warming to see how the Hungarians were fighting. After the 9-9 half time score they started to get away from their opponents. At 16-13 there was a very crucial phase in the match. The Hungarians missed two penalties in a row and instead of 16-14 it became 17-13. But Hungary did not surrender; they showed to their enthusiastic supporters what fighting spirit looks like. When the score was 18-18 with less than two minutes to go it seemed that Catalonia could again lose a match shortly before the end. But this time they were on the winning side; with one minute to go they scored the decisive goal to win 19-18.
Photos by Marco Spelten (www.actionphotography.nl)
The Czech Republic still had a theoretical chance to become the number two in their pool. Therefore they had to beat England by at least six goals. In the beginning it seemed possible because the English side did not start very well. But as time went by they took over the match. After 30 minutes the score was 11-7. In the second half they always had the upper hand although the Czechs did their utmost to overcome the English. At the end it was 20-18. In the other matches Portugal beat Slovakia 32-10, Belgium was too strong for Poland, winning 39-8 and the Netherlands had no problems with Turkey, winning 37-7.
Here are some figures from day 4 and 5. In the 10 matches there were 69 penalties given, of which 11 were missed. With 16% that seems a rather high percentage. In the same 10 matches there were 76 free passes given. Of that 76, 20 resulted in a goal which is somewhat more than 26%. In the Korfbal-League in the Netherlands that percentage is about 34%, so for this level of athlete this isn’t a bad figure.
