Season Summary: Hungarian championship

 

In our second season summary article, we will look back at the K&H League.

 

After 2007, it was the first time that Telekom Veszprém did not start the Hungarian Championship season as defending champion. The ultimate goal was to get back the first position in the domestic competition.

 

 

The “Építők” started the K&H league season 2018/19 at home against Csurgói KK and had a confident 15-goal victory (32:17), leaded by Dragan Gajic who scored 9 goals. After that three wins in-a-row were coming until 17 October when our team – already coached by David Davis – lost in Tatabánya (26:24). Unfortunately, we suffered another loss after that when we were hosting our big rival MOL-Pick Szeged (27:32). We could get out of that bad period in Mezőkövesd (22:29) on 6 November. After that we won eleven games in-a-row. Then we faced Szeged again, this time away, and lost both points (25:23). But we could win all the remaining games from the regular season and finished it in the second position and qualified to the finals where MOL-Pick Szeged was waiting for us.

 

 

In the finals, the first game was in Veszprém on 23 May. However, the Szeged was leading by one in the end of the first half, we produced an incredible second half and won by eleven (35:24). It was a very confident lead for the rematch in Szeged. But we did not travel to Szeged to lose three days later. The result was a draw not just at the end of the first half (14:14) but in the end of the second one as well (27:27). It meant Telekom Veszprém regained the throne of Hungarian men handball and gathered its 26th championship trophy. The top scorer of Veszprém in the first game was Dargan Gajic with his nine goals while in the second one Manuel Strlek netted five times.

 

Here are some interesting statistics, collected by Zoltán Lang: