The Netherlands won the IKF u21 European Championship with a 22-13 win over arch rivals Belgium.

The Dutch made a very strong start and really had the match won by midway through the first half by holding an 8-0 lead. Belgium halved the deficit in the next 10 minutes but the Netherlands went in at half time five goals ahead at 10-5. In the second half scoring was quite equal between the teams but Belgium could not make inroads into the deficit and with nine minutes left it was still six goals, at 16-10. However, in the next four minutes the Netherlands scored four unanswered goals to lead by ten. Belgium tried hard to narrow the score but the final 22-13 score in favour of the holders of the trophy proved to be the widest winning margin in the history of this event.

Photo by Marco Spelten - www.actionphotography.nl

For the other results of the final day click read more.

 

The final day started with two thrilling matches and was followed by a repeat of last Thursday's match between Portugal and the Czech Republic and then the medal matches. The bronze medal match between England and Germany was the game a lot of people had looked forward to but they were badly disappointed. Both teams started to fight but forgot to play korfball. The English team was the first to find something of their normal level, therefore their lead was not surprising. It was only at 6-0, after 17 minutes and 45 seconds, that the German scored their first goal. After a 12-4 scoreline at half time you could hope that things would get better in the second half. But it wasn’t; on the contrary, it became even worse. Play continued to be far too physical which prevented almost any scoring. Germany came back to 12-7 before England scored their first of the half in the 45^th minute. It proved to be their only one in the whole second half. Because the Germans managed to score only twice after that, the match ended 13-9, which meant that England won the bronze medal, their first since 1990.

In their earlier match this week Portugal had an easy win against the Czechs. Since then the Czechs have improved from match to match so beforehand everything seemed possible; but after some good performances the battery now seemed empty. Only during the first 20 minutes did the Portuguese have some trouble; later on they were totally dominant. Their woman especially were much too fast for the Czech girls. After a 13-10 score at half time it became a very clear 23-15 win in the end. This meant that Portugal may qualify for the IKF u23 World Championship in Barcelona should Africa not field the correct number of teams in their Championship to qualify for two places.

Poland and Turkey fought out the most tense match so far. It was good to see that Turkey had improved a lot during the tournament. For a long period against the Polish Turkey believed that they would win but halfway the second half the Polish managed to take over. Turkey fought back and at the end we were to see, at 15-15, the first golden goal of the event. Poland was the lucky one after Turkey had a goal disallowed.

In the second match we saw the replay of Thursday between Hungary and Catalonia. After an early lead for the Catalans, Hungary dominated the play for a long period of the match. After somewhat more than 40 minutes they even had a four goal lead at 15-11. But then there was a period in which Catalonia scored six times in a row. As expected Hungary fought back but Catalonia won in the end 20-19, the winner coming less than 30 seconds from the end.

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