EHA Cup finals this Saturday

CRYSTAL Palace National Sports Centre is the venue for England Handball’s finals day this Saturday, a great chance to see some of the best handball the country has to offer!

Four great matches have been lined up, and for the participants it will mark the end of a long season of handball action which has seen them reach the final hurdle.
The EHA Men’s Plate will see Deva and Olympia do battle at 11.30am, with the presentation to the winner at 12.40pm.

The Under-18 Girls Cup final sees North East Manchester Hawks take on Wirral at 1.20pm, with the presentations following at 2.20pm.

The Hawks are also in the Under-18 Boys final and face Warrington at 2.35pm, with presentations at 3.55pm.

Finally, the EHA Women’s Cup final will see London GD take on Ruislip Eagles at 4.50pm, with presentations at 6pm.

The final of the EHA Men’s Cup will take place at Bethnal Green on June 30 between Salford and London GD.

Wolves clinch EHA Cup quarter final spot

LIVERPOOL Wolves booked their place in the quarter finals of the EHA Men’s Cup with a 32-21 victory over Deva at the Greenbank Sports Academy in Liverpool on Sunday.

The Wolves started with an aggressive 5-1 defence which brought good results, allowing them to catch Deva on the break and obtain a comfortable six-goal lead throughout the first half.

Goals were coming from both teams, however, and Liverpool started stalling towards the end of the first half thanks to a deep defence from Deva which impeded Liverpool from moving the ball at a fast pace.

The second half started with Deva playing an aggressive 4-2 defence, followed by quick breakthroughs, and they managed to edge as close as four goals down. This could have gone very wrong for Liverpool, but somehow the Wolves managed to stop the tide against them and slowly, started to get over Deva's defensive efforts.

Once the technical faults on Liverpool's part started to fall, Deva could not get fast breaks, and struggled against the solid 5-1 defence. The physical strain started to show in both teams, but maybe due to inexperience, this lead to late tackles from the Deva defence, and a continuous six minutes with at least one man down. Liverpool utilised the chances and the score difference kept increasing until the final whistle, giving a clear victory for Liverpool in the end.

* This weekend, the National League play-offs resume with three matches being staged at the new SportHouse facility in Barking.

The key clash of the afternoon looks set to be the top-two match-up of London GD v Salford, while the other matches are Ruislip Eagles v Leeds Hornets and Cambridge v Manchester.

Salford Crowned Northern Champions

Salford Handball Club secured the northern league title for the second time in successive seasons with an emphatic 43-14 win over Deva at Pendlebury on Tuesday night.

In their first meeting Deva played the plucky underdogs to run Salford to a closer scoreline than many other more experienced teams in the north. However, Salford clearly weren't going to let that happen again and were well prepared for the return clash.

Such preparation being evident in the final score, with Salford winning the game by a massive 29 goals at 43-14.

From the start of the game the writing was on the wall for Deva. After 10 minutes of play Salford had already scored eight goals with Deva only managing to score one in return.

Once again Salford's defence was to be their biggest asset, making it extremely difficult for the Deva attack to formulate any organised routine. Three late goals in the first half did at least allow Deva to go in at half time only 12 goals down at 20-8.

The second half offered no let up for the Cheshire side. With 10 minutes gone into the half Deva still hadn't managed to increase their half time tally, such was the dominance of the Salford defence.

In the same period Salford had notched up another 9 goals and there was no sign of any let up for Deva either. It was only a strong performance from Tom Robertson in the Deva goal that gave some resistance to the Salford onslaught. Even that though wasn't enough to stop Salford notching up their biggest win of the season so far.

Top goalscorers for the game from Salford were Aden Woodall (pictured), Stuart Latchford and Ste Clarke, all with six goals each. For Deva, Ben Tyler scored five and Ste Jameson three.

Salford coach Bill Baillie said at the end of the game: "The result tonight was tantamount to all the hard work the players have put in from July last year.

“This victory was well deserved, but it’s the continued level of performance and dedication that has been put in since pre-season training last year that has been most impressive. Whilst the title for the north is now secure, there's no time to let up and relax.

“We need to keep momentum and concentration for our remaining games to put us in the best possible position for the playoffs to come. We need to make sure were keep our eye on the bigger picture and our longer term objectives."

Deva Give Salford Rough Ride in National League

A PLUCKY Deva side took on Salford, the current leaders of the northern section of the England National League, on Sunday.

Whilst the final score of 38-29 shows a comfortable win for Salford, congratulations must go to Deva for scoring quite so many goals. Indeed, a result that looked pretty unlikely at half time as Salford led by 11 goals.

This time though the usual Salford gear change failed to materialise. Instead of pushing on in their usual manner to open up an even greater lead, Salford simply seemed to coast along.

Deva sniffed their chance to capitalise and took it. Keeping neck and neck with Salford all the way through the half, indeed for a while the young side from Chester even managed to close the gap a little before Salford once again took it back to nine goals, finishing the game winners by 38 goals to 29.

All in all the gap between the teams never got lower than 7 goals, so the result was never in doubt. However, Deva will take lots of positives from the game and will now go in to their remaining fixtures with a much deserved confidence boost.

In other Northern Section action, Liverpool Speke Garston continue to improve as they gave Nottingham University a hard match at Greenbank before the students ran out 35-31 winners.

Both teams were strong in defence in the opening eight minutes of this encounter as both teams defended keeping the score to 0-0. The less experienced Liverpool Speke Garston team matched Nottingham goal for goal and only by squandering a number of clear shots at goal went in at the break down at 14 -11.

The second half proved entertaining, Campillo for Liverpool Speke Garston found his shooting arm along with his counterpart, Nottingham’s Mardaras, who scored nine.

Liverpool efforts were rewarded when they took the lead and opened a two-goal difference late in the second half, they held on until the final six minutes but a two-minute time suspension to Davies turned the game in Nottingham’s favour who capitalised and pressed home the advantage ruthlessly and ran out winners at 35-31.

In other action, Manchester came out on top against University of Manchester 25-23, while Leeds Hornets also secured a narrow win, 27-26 over Liverpool Wolves.

* In the southern section, London GD and Olympia battled out a 30-30 draw, while Ruislip beat Oxford University 37-22.

Salford go Top of the Table

SALFORD retook top spot in the early National League (North) table when they secured a big 38-15 victory over Liverpool Speke Garston at Greenbank Academy in Liverpool on Sunday.

With a ten-goal victory for Deva in the previous round denying them top spot, Salford came out on Sunday determined to regain their status as top club in the North.

At half time, Salford already had a comfortable lead and went in 14-7 up. Some excellent goal keeping from Speke's Paul Langton keeping the gap somewhat respectable given the gulf between the two teams.

However, in the second half, and despite Speke's Peter Roscoe scoring seven goals, Salford pushed on and scored 24 more goals to Speke's eight.

Notable performances from Salford came from Jack Hennessey and Stuart Latchford who scored 8 goals apiece, and from Stephen Clarke who maintained his 100 per cent shots to goals record from the two games played so far.

In other league action, the University of Nottingham won 26-15 against the University of Manchester, with Guillaume Bodet scoring ten of their goals.

And Deva came out on top 34-31 against league newcomers Leeds Hornets. Tom Kensall scored nine for Deva, while Wojtek Biecios scored nine for Leeds.

Deva Win Nottingham Tournament

DEVA Handball Club were crowned Nottingham Tournament champions 2011 after a thrilling event at the city’s university on Sunday.

With most of their players all being home-grown and under-23, Deva battled well in the event at the Sutton Bonnington campus and proved that the future of handball in England is in safe hands.

With six teams playing in a round-robin format, it was not until the penultimate clash of 15 games that the title was decided.

Newcomers to the National League this coming season, Leeds Hornets provided Deva with some stiff opposition, and the fate of the match was in the balance right to the final whistle of the 25-minute game which Deva eventually won 11-10 after an end-to-end match.

While Deva’s top-scorer was Tyler, the play of the tournament was Leeds Hornets’ goalkeeper Lukasz Narel, while the Fair Play Award went to the South West Select side which was made up on players from Bath, Bristol and Cardiff.

Other teams who took part of played a vital part in making it such a success were Liverpool Speke Garston, Nottingham University, Deva, Manchester University and an East Midlands Select side featuring players from Lincoln and Peterborough.

Next year’s event looks set to be bigger and better, with organisers aiming to make it a two-day international event.

Dozens of photographs from the Nottingham Tournament - take by Michele Davison - are available to view here

Univ of Manchester overwhelm Deva in National League

UNIVERSITY of Manchester overwhelmed newcomers Deva 36-13 in their English Men’s League (North) clash at the Greenbank Sports Academy in Liverpool on Sunday.

After a slow start to the season which saw them without a win for the first three weeks, the University of Manchester notched up their second consecutive victory to move up to third in the early league table.

Eight goals from Rudolf Balta led the way for the students, while Patryk Homa, Lucasz Berezowski and Andreas Papelia all added six each to keep the score ticking over.

Elsewhere in the North, Liverpool Speke Garston beat Wirral 24-19 in the day’s other match at Greenbank.
The Wirral side had only six players, but battled well against a strong and determined Liverpool Speke Garston team.

The game was goal for goal throughout the encounter and, when pushing to try and bring the game equal, the Wirral team were caught with a number of fast breaks which meant that Speke Garston pulled away in the closing stages to take victory.

In the Southern Section, Ruislip Eagles beat champions Great Dane 29-28,, while Olympia beat Cambridge 25-19.