Men’s EHL Ranking Cup
M16: KHC Dragons 5 (F Denayer 2, N Della Torre, M Cobbaert, R Rubens) KHC Dragons 1 (E Mazkour)
Felix Denayer put on a showcase to delight the home Dragons crowd as they closed out the men’s ABN AMRO Ranking Cup weekend with a 5-1 win over Rot-Weiss Köln.
Both sides were shy some of their big stars with Simon Gougnard and Florent van Aubel out injured for the hosts while Rot Weiss chose to rest some of their big stars.
Their young guns, though, started really well with Elian Mazkour storming through the middle and picking up Caspar Laschet’s backhand cross from the left wing. It helped spring the game to life early in the second quarter, a powerful shot on the run.
Dragons awoke and soon started running up their corner count. From their second set piece, Nicolas Della Torre found a low road through the Rot Weiss defences to get level within just a couple of minutes.
Matthew Cobbaert cleaned up a corner rebound to put Dragons in front for the first time to make it 2-1 at half-time. Denayer slammed home two penalty corners in the second half to stretch out an imposing 4-1 lead.
And the closing goal came with nine minutes to go, Denayer producing some magic on the right baseline before picking out Robbert Rubens who controlled and flicked home. It closed out a cracking weekend of EHL hockey in Brasschaat with Dragons taking the ranking points for fifth and Rot-Weiss settling for ninth from this event.
Umpires: M Boxma (NED), B Bale (ENG)