Cav's Place

I don’t know how it’ll be from the group phase, but the qualifying rounds for the Women’s EHF European League weren’t on TV, and while I looked up Rapid‘s and Minaur‘s matches on-line last week, after they both lost by six goals, Minaur away and Rapid actually at home, I didn’t even bother to check Rapid’s result yesterday, and in fact even tuned it out when it was mentioned on the radio while I was out, so it wasn’t until I wanted to check the standings in the Champions’ League today that I decided to also have a look at that after all, seeing that they won by no less than 11 goals, away and therefore qualified for the group stage! And this evening Minaur did the exact same thing, albeit at home! And, with Corona Brasov qualified directly in the group stage, there will be three teams there this season, along with Gloria Bistrita and CSM Bucharest in the Champions’ League. And, of course, the national team remains the only one to take part in all editions of the World Championship, and this year’s edition is about to start later this month.
Plenty like to criticize the national team, and also CSM Bucharest, and complain about the amount of public money directed towards them. And the national team is, admittedly, probably weaker than ever, while CSM Bucharest’s results in the Champions’ League have so far been below expectations this season. But at least they’re still there, along with all the rest, with resources and public attention that, despite those complaints, remain incomparably lower than those lavished on men’s football, where the results are significantly worse in spite of that. There was an article some time ago that, if I remember correctly, started from how little time is offered for other sports in the sport news on TV and said that it can’t be any other way when even trying to make a plain classification of the Romanian public’s interest in various sports would be impossible, because realistically it’d be football on the first, second and third spot, and most likely all the way down to the eighth or ninth, where you’d have handball and, maybe, tennis, with other sports only having a chance to draw some occasional interest during the Olympic Games or when Romanian athletes or teams obtain exceptional results, which tends to be the case for rowing when major competitions take place or, in recent years, for David Popovici in swimming.
Yes, that makes those results even more remarkable, especially when you take into account the immense effort required by those sports. But, well, I guess I’ll just prove the point and say that this post is about women’s handball, and about these results in particular, and state once again that, in spite of a second place that’s realistically around the bottom of the top ten if you’d try to compare with men’s football, which would take up all of the higher spots, women’s handball is still doing well and this should be pointed out. And that goes even more for results like these, turning such deficits around. So congratulations Rapid, congratulations Minaur, congratulations to all of you. And don’t mind the noise that rises the moment things don’t go well.