Mannheimer HC won an epic tussle with Hampstead & Westminster to reach the FINAL4 of the men’s ABN AMRO Cup in Terrassa, joining Waterloo Ducks, Rotterdam and Club Egara in the semis.
For Mannheim, it was a real rollercoaster in their trilogy game against Hampstead, their third meeting since 2019 with each one an epic contest.
The German club raced into a 3-0 half-time lead with goals from Teo Hinrichs, Justus Wiegand and Mario Schachner before the English raced back into contention, gutting the gap by two in the third quarter.
They missed a stroke but did get level from the very last play with Teague Marcano making it 3-3. Mannheim, though, settled the nerves and eventually won the shoot-out 5-4.
MHC’s Jan-Philipp Fischer was at a loss for words afterwards: “Yeah, to be honest I’m not sure what happened, they created a lot of pressure, but we will certainly have to watch back the video and do our analysis. We are happy to be in the semi-final and will start our preparation tonight and over the next day.”
They will meet Waterloo Ducks on Sunday in the FINAL4 after the Belgian side were too strong for Grange with Victor Charlet scoring four times in a 7-0 victory.
Waterloo’s Gauthier Boccard captain when asked about how Charlet’s corners impact the game, he replied with a chuckle: “A lot! I think he is working very hard on them and we see the results.
“It took us a while to get into the game, but we settled in the second quarter, with a bit more physicality and assured on the ball which made it easier to score.”
Hosts Club Egara won the opening game of the competition, getting their campaign started with two goals from Marc Recasens inside the first three minutes against newcomers Post SV.
Peter Kaltenböck got one back but second quarter efforts from Xavi Gispert and Lluis Mercade put Egara out of sight at half-time and they went on to win 8-1.
On Egara’s performance, Marc Recasens said it was a good day but they remained focused on a big task ahead: “The score line showed that it was good start for us, but as to being favourites, I don’t think there are any here as there are some very good sides. We will go now game by game and see what happens!”
Their next opponent is HC Rotterdam who won 6-0 against Three Rock Rovers with two goals each for Tjep Hoedemakers and Pepijn van der Heijden with Jeroen Hertzberger and Tristan Algera also scoring.
Rotterdam and Egara meet on Sunday at 12.00 (CET).
Saturday sees the first of the classification series with Three Rock playing Post (15.00 CET) and Grange facing Hampstead & Westminster (17.45 CET).