By Yegor Glebov
Although the Swiss club demonstrated no success in its Champions’ League performance, the Belarusians were careful not to underestimate them. Martin Rubin’s team may have no handball stars but it is still persistent. In their first match, Wacker Thun was close to take away the points in their match against Metallurg.
Macedonians narrowly beat them: 23:22. However, the Swiss were smashed later, in the match against Barcelona, 26:45. Meantime, our Dinamo handball team was in high spirits, having no reasons to feel sad, having recently defeated their major national rival Meshkov BHC, (26:20). Moreover, their Champions’ League progress was steady.
At the beginning of the match, Wacker Thun was Dinamo’s equals. Both teams scored twice in the first seven minutes. Later, Damir Doborac scored twice, giving our team the advantage, although initially, Dinamo failed to attack strongly, with most attempts coming from Damir and the captain, Nikulenkov, who earned another point for the team in the 15th minute. Although our guys controlled the match, coach, Boris Denič decided to call a time out to instruct his trainees. Afterwards, Rutenko scored, but when the score was 9:5, it was Martin Rubin’s turn to instruct his players. Sadly, for them, this brought no positive result. Our Ninchevich later added another five points to the Dinamo total and, before the break, Bombac also contributed to the hosts’ lead.
At the beginning of the second round, Doborac’s penalty kick added another seven points to Dinamo’s score and, several minutes later, the player scored again, giving our team a nine point lead. Doroshchuk then brought the score to 18:8. After the break, Wacker Thun failed to attack and there was an impression that the result was academic. However, the home team then demonstrated several failures and, by the 49th minute, our advantage was not so impressive: 19:14. Fortunately, Ninchevich reacted perfectly, scoring twice (+7) in a short period of time. After this, the Dinamo team pulled together and Bombac, Shelmenko, Bundalo, and Stetsyura scored and the Swiss team’s interest disappeared. In the last minute, Wacker did earn a penalty kick, but Markelov successfully defended the goal. This was the young goalkeeper’s first match and he successfully beat off Franić’s shot to preserve the final 27:20 score.
