It may not have been predicted as the most high-quality game of our season, but there were still clear objectives heading into the league clash against Vasas. A large part of the squad spent the past week on international duty, so beyond securing the win, the sixty minutes also served as an opportunity to regain rhythm ahead of the weekend’s Champions League quarter-final against Metz.

Darja Dmitrijeva, Emily Vogel and Orlane Kanor were all absent, and in the third minute Mette Tranborg received a two-minute suspension after her follow-through struck an opponent in the face. This didn’t help our cause, and the game itself was slow and lacking fluency early on. It took around fifteen minutes for us to break out of that phase. Until then, the lead changed hands, but from that point on, we gradually pulled away from the hosts.

As so often, it was our defence that laid the foundation. We conceded eight goals in the first nineteen minutes, but the next eight came over nearly thirty minutes. By halftime, we held a six-goal lead (10–16), and early in the second half we added four more within six minutes (12–22), underlining our steady improvement.

Petra Simon orchestrated well, even in the seven-on-six setup, Angela Malestein finished clinically, and Anna Szeibert also rose to the occasion with an effective performance. Once the result was no longer in doubt, our defence lost some of its edge and we conceded more towards the end, but the attacking phase was used for practice, while Jesper Jensen also managed the team’s energy levels.

In the end, we secured a comfortable eleven-goal victory and can now turn our focus to the clash against Metz.

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