After a long break Pick Szeged yesterday played the first match of the semi final of Hungarian League
against Csurgó who finished third in the regular season. The home team were the odds-on favourite
but the guests who had 4 former Szeged players (Herbert, Katzirz, Simon, Oláh) and one of the pivots
of the Hungarian National Team (Szöllősi) on their side wanted to cause big surprise. Neither team
had any injured players.
The match itself didn’t really excite Szeged residents as the sports hall was only about half-full. The
match started with vicious Szeged attacks, the guests were unable to show much resistance and
Szeged quickly gained the lead (5th minute 3:0)
The number of goals didn’t change in the next five minutes however. World-class goalkeeping by
Roland Mikler greatly contributed to Szeged’s perfectly working defence but in the same time
their attacks became ineffective. At around the 15th minute Csurgó’s coach substituted both of
his shooters and the guests started to close in non Szeged (20th minute 8:6). Szeged could only
crack Csurgó’s tight defence near the end of the first half mainly thanks to improved shooting
performance. The first half ended with Pick’s confident lead (13:8)
Pick’s coach Skaliczki kept both of his left handed shooters on the bench at the start of the second
half as Buday played in the right-back position. Csurgó’s defence became tougher and tougher but
the referees didn’t really approve and the number of 2-minute suspensions began to increase. Pick
couldn’t always use these extramen situations to their advantage but the difference slowly began to
grow mainly because of weak attacking by Csurgó. (40th minute 17:10). Skaliczki changed both his
wings for the final phase of the match. Kekezovic and Lasica scored several goals, Tatai continued
Mikler’s great performance, his long passes were put to score by the wings. In the end the home
team won the match confidently (29:18). The second match, surely to be more difficult for Szeged,
will be played on Thursday in Csurgó. Two matches need to be won to advance to the final.
Best scorers: Sulc, Lasica, Prodanovic, Larholm (4) / Oláh (4)
In the other semi final: MKB Veszprém-Tatabánya 35:22
Text: Gábor Várkonyi, Péter Butty
Photo: www.szegedma.hu
