Sad news for Dutch handball team, but also whole women’s handball community in the specific moment at the beginning of the Olympic year.
Team Esbjerg’s biggest star, Estavana Polman, tore the cruciate ligament in her right knee by accident during Thursday’s training and is in all probability out for the entire upcoming season.
The soon-to-be 28-year-old world champion with the Netherlands was scanned late Friday afternoon, and the result on Saturday confirms the worst suspicions that she herself, shocked teammates and head coach Jesper Jensen had after the accident.
– I could immediately feel that it was serious. That’s the risk of playing handball, and I can do nothing about it. Now I make a plan and aim to have surgery as soon as possible, and then lots of hard work with rehabilitation awaits. “Shit happens,” says Estavana Polman.
In the coming week, she will undergo a study with Professor Uffe Jørgensen, Privathospitalet Kollund, Fredericia, but this will hardly change significantly in the prognosis.
– We are first and foremost wildly bored of it on behalf of “Essie”, and then it is of course a hard blow for us and our ambitions to place ourselves at the forefront of Danish and European club handball. We are now going to the market to find a replacement, but a player of the extraordinary class is not replaced 1: 1, says Jesper Jensen.
Chairman of the board Bjarne Pedersen confirms that the club will find the finances to get a class player for the back chain as soon as possible.
– Estavana’s accident is a shock for the management of the club as well. Team Esbjerg were together with Odense Handball big favorites to win the Danish championship, but now the situation is different. We will now do everything to find a good replacement for “Essie”, so we can continue to be a companion to the Danish championship. We have been affected by so much in the last six months – the interrupted league and the cancellation of EHF Final4 – but with southwest Jutland unity, we want to show that we can rise on top of even our best player’s misfortune, says Bjarne Pedersen.
Before the accident, Estavana Polman’s mother and father had planned to visit their daughter and her family in Esbjerg next week, and they do not regret that timing. They will be able to provide moral support at a time that the protagonist himself is looking forward to with great realism.
– When the operation is over, I will do everything to be there and help the team in the coming season, says Estavana Polman, who was on her way to play her eighth season in Team Esbjerg when the accident occurred.