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Viborg beat Slagelse

As the schedule for the Main Round was announced, no one would have believed that the last match in Group 2 between the two Danish teams – and the CL winners of the previous two years – Viborg HK and Slagelse DT would be completely unimportant.

Nevertheless, this was the situation as the Danish rivals met in front of 1.288 fans in Viborg Stadionhal on late Saturday evening. After disappointing performances, both teams had already lost their chance of qualifying for the semi-finals. And while Anja Andersen, head coach of last year’s CL winners Slagelse, had realised long ago that her team had no chance to repeat that triumph this year, the outcome of the group is a huge disappointment for Viborg. The greens had a clear objective to take the trophy back this season.

No doubt about the result

Back in January, Slagelse sensationally defeated Viborg 30-28 in a domestic league match in Viborg. However, this time the visitors were never even near to creating another sensation as Viborg won 31-22 after leading comfortably during almost the entire match.

The handicapped Slagelse team could do absolutely nothing against Viborg that seemed determined to end their Champions League adventure in style. Even without their injured left back and defence specialist, Rikke Skov, Viborg started by taking a 5-0 lead. They soon extended it to 7-1 and 8-2, and this meant that there was never any doubt about which team would win the match – not even when Viborg relaxed a bit towards the end of the first half and the difference at half time was only four goals – 15-11.

Jurack in superb form

In Skov’s absence, Grit Jurack and former Slagelse player, Bojana Popovic, were the main threats in Viborg’s backcourt line.

Jurack in particular made a show similar to her performance in the German national team at the World Championship back in December. She scored 10 goals, several from counter attacks where Jurack often proved to be the fastest player on court…

As the Viborg defence also did really well during most of the 60 minutes, it was no wonder that the home team could increase their lead continuously as the second half progressed. Viborg reached a 10-goal difference at 30-20, a few minutes before the end. Finally the match ended with nine goals between the teams.

Viborg content

Viborg HK were satisfied with ending their Champions League campaign with an acceptable result:

“We played a fairly good match today. We had some problems with scoring in the first half, but we solved they for the second. Furthermore, I think that our defence worked better together than in the previous matches,” line player Lene Lund Nielsen said after the win. The two points mean that Viborg end third in Group 2 with 6 points, while Slagelse finish fourth and last with no points – the only team in the Main Round.

While Grit Jurack scored 10 goals for Viborg, Christine Krogshede, Maja Savic and Louise Pedersen scored 5 each for Slagelse.

TEXT: Peter Bruun