First Two EHL FINAL8 Qualifiers Now Known
By Colin Pike
Belgian club Royal Leopold and Dutch club Bloemendaal were the first qualifiers for the FINAL8 at Easter next year after winning their Euro Hockey League KO8 matches at Sugden Road on Friday.
Royal Leopold and Bloemendaal will join Spain's Club Campo de Madrid; Belgium's Gantoise HC; England's Old Georgians and SV Kampong from the Netherlands.
Royal Leopold beat French club Lille 4-0 on a sunny day in Elmbridge, but the final margin of victory wasn't evident at the end of a goalless first quarter.
Lille had to face four penalty corners in a four minute spell in the second quarter, but only the first award was converted, Tom Boon carrying on from where he left off against Banbridge the day before with his fifth goal of the tournament in the 21st minute.
Lille trailed by the single goal at half time, but Royal Leopold doubled their lead in the 33rd minute, Jose-Inaki Lafuente making a double save before he was finally beaten by Arthur Verdussen.
The fourth quarter saw both teams lose their right to a video referral, Royal Leopold having a video referral upheld to earn a penalty corner before seconds later having their referral rejected trying to earn another penalty corner.
Lille were also initially successful in pursuit of a dangerous ball ruling before Royal Leopold increased their advantage to 3-0 in the 54th minute, Nelson Onana finding the net from open play.
Lille finally lost their video referral with just 6.7 seconds remaining challenging a Royal Leopold penalty corner and with only 1.9 seconds on the clock, succumbed as Tom Boon scored his sixth goal of the tournament to secure a 4-0 win, Royal Leopold's place in the FINAL8 and ending day two as the tournament top scorer.
Bloemendaal beat German club Mannheimer 3-0, but under the Sugden Road floodlights and with a large crowd in attendance, the match was an entertainment classic.
Bloemendaal went close in the first minute but the first quarter ended goalless in spite of fast paced counter attacking hockey which saw both defences make key stops to keep the scoresheet blank.
The game was still goalless at half time after Mannheimer defended four penalty corners in the second quarter in a very competitive match.
The deadlock was finally broken in the 32nd minute by a superb finish into the net by Nathan Ephraums.
Mannheimer tried to equalise from two successive penalty corners two minutes later but their failure to convert was punished in the 41st minute as Dennis Warmerdam doubled Bloemendaal's lead from their fifth penalty corner.
In the fourth quarter, Mannheimer took off goalkeeper Adrian Rafi, but Bloemendaal took full advantage, Warmerdam running towards goal before slotting the ball into the empty net to make the final score of 3-0 look slightly more convincing than it was.
The first match of the day was a ranking match with Ireland's Banbridge beating Switzerland's Grasshopper Club from Zurich 3-0. John McKee's first quarter brace with open play goals in the 6th and 15th minutes set Banbridge on their way whilst the Irish side's goalkeeper, Luke Roleston woke up the spectators in the main covered stand with a hefty kicked clearance.
Philip Brown, who had scored both Banbridge goals against Royal Leopold the day before, put the icing on the cake with a 22nd minute penalty corner conversion.
Banbridge thought they'd scored a fourth goal in the 47th minute after Fabian Starsich failed to prevent the ball going in the goal but a 23 metre restart was awarded instead.
In the other ranking match, the biggest cheer of the day came when AHTC Wien of Austria scored their first goal but Real Club de Polo of Spain ran out 4-1 winners.
Wien had fallen behind early when losing 8-0 to Mannheimer the day before and they found themselves 2-0 down after just 9 minutes, Benedikt Schwarzhaupt converting a penalty corner in the 8th minute and Max Laplaza adding a second from open play a minute later.
When Inaki Zaldua scored Polo Club's third just 57 seconds into the second quarter, another heavy defeat looked possible, but to Wien's credit, they fought hard and were rewarded when Adrian Fink scored from open play to make the score 3-1.
Schwarzhaupt scored Polo Club's fourth goal with just five minutes to play, but Wien should be proud of their much improved performance.
The second batch of KO16 matches start on Saturday.
Germany's Hamburger Polo Club meet Austria's SV Arminen at 1045. HC Rotterdam of the Netherlands take on TJ Pizen-Litice of Czechia at 1300.
Then it's the turn of both English teams as Wimbledon have a battle of Britain with Scotland's Western Wildcats at 1515 with hosts Surbiton having a rematch with Belgium's Waterloo Ducks at 1730 as Surbiton look for revenge for their shootout defeat in Eindhoven in 2019.
More information can be found at the Eurohockey Altius website here