Victory for Eagles

Handball

Imperial Eagles 29 Newham Flames 16

On Saturday, the Imperial Eagles set out to play their first competitive match in the Development League. The planned opening game betweenBy now, several changes to the league schedule were undertaken after Olympia II pulled out of the division, which meant that instead of facing the Ruislip Eagles II, Imperial had to face the Newham Flames, who were often praised for their extensive youth development and link to the GB U16 squad, where some of their players receive very extensive training - or so we thought.

During the warm up period, the lack of skill and variation in the admittedly very young teams game was becoming more and more obvious and they failed to surprise a well-trained Eagles site in decent form.

The Flames showed great spirit and never stopped fighting for what would have been their first ever competitive victory, but, despite catching the Eagles’ defense off guard on several occasions, failed to match the scoring and goalkeeping abilities of their very handsome opponents.

Newham tried to move the ball fast in attack, but could not exert much pressure on IC team, unless their physically intimidating centre-back set out to storm towards the 6-metre line, with which he was successful on a few occasions. Neither of their wingers was able to stretch the game and create space for an over-motivated pivot, which narrowed their attack down to their berserker and a marfanoid-looking left-back, who despite of his impressive height of over 2m, was unable to make a real impression on Imperials veteran goalkeeper, Stefan Bauer, who is slowly rediscovering his true form after a good pre-season and managed to save an impressive 3 penalties in a row.

In attack, the Imperial Eagles were lacking the patience to play well renown schemes like “Wurst” and “Heidi”, leading to some hasty and unsuccessful shots. However, superior counter-attacks and some individual skills meant that Newham would concede 29 goals by the end of the 60 minutes.

At this point, it is important to point out that our president, Kolja Ortmann, scored a counter attack, which should be an indicator of the level of resistance Imperial had to face.

All in all, this game was a good way to ease players back into the routine of the Development League before IC is set to face stronger opponents, such as Great Dane II, Ruislip Eagles II and arch enemies UCL, who have yet to beat Imperial in a league match.

However, considering that some of the Newham Flames’ players are hailed as England's Handball hope, everyone would have hoped for a more challenging game.