Cav's Place

Last month, I was saying that, with CSM Bucharest not even taking it a little easy when losing to Gloria Bistrita would have also sent Gloria through without affecting them in any way, Rapid also scraping through, albeit only thanks to Vipers going bankrupt, and SCM Ramnicu Valcea and Dunarea Braila winning their respective groups in the European League, Romania should probably continue to have three teams in the EHF Women’s Champions’ League, but after this weekend I can’t support that statement anymore. I mean, CSM played against Rapid and crushed them both times, but they’re now the only team left in any European competition, since both Dunarea Braila and SCM Ramnicu Valcea were knocked out… And, while I like to think that they wouldn’t have had problems if they’d have ended up playing against Buducnost instead, it’s not exactly certain that we’d have had even this one team left if it wouldn’t have been for this situation of two of them playing each other.
Still, I would get back to Dunarea Braila and SCM Ramnicu Valcea now, because they failed to make it through in such a frustratingly dramatic fashion. You may say that it was worse for Dunarea who, after losing by two goals in the first leg, recovered in the second leg from as much as six goals down to lead by two goals, then had Ikast draw level again, the score yet again being equal with less than a minute and a half left only for Dunarea to score twice in less than a minute and once again draw level overall, but then Ikast scoring once more with a few seconds left to end up winning by one goal overall. But there’s a lot to be said about SCM as well, who seemed to have no chance after losing the first leg by six goals and at one point being led by three goals in the second leg as well only to end up leading by seven goals and therefore being one goal ahead overall before Thuringer seemed to pull themselves back together to some extent, yet SCM still led by five goals and was therefore only one behind overall with five minutes left, but then Thuringer scored once more before almost three minutes without goals by either team, and when SCM had to risk it all at the end Thuringer scored two more unanswered goals, so the fact that they ended up winning by four goals overall doesn’t tell the whole story in the least.
But I guess that, in the end, it’s the result that matters, and we can’t justify still being one of what at the moment are only two countries with three teams in the top competition when by this date a single one is left to compete at the European level at all. And Germany still has a strong case for getting at least a second team there, since on top of the single one they have this season still being in the competition, two of the three they had in the European League have made it through, HSG Blomberg-Lippe having joined Thuringer in doing so. Admittedly, Norway may well be reduced to a single team and that spot may come from there, and Denmark can’t have four even if their results might, in themselves, justify adding yet another to the three they had this season, but there may be other countries that would still be more deserving of an additional one.