IKF U21 EKC day 6

The sixth day was semi-finals day with cross pool matches.

The semi-finals for the medal places were the last two games of the day. Both games showed a big gap between the top two countries – The Netherlands and Belgium – and the rest. Belgium beat Portugal 31-11 (h/t 15-6) and The Netherlands beat England 29-10 (h/t 17-5).

In the other matches, Poland against Turkey should be easy for Poles on paper. Poland started better concentrated, keeping Turks on distance and was ahead at half time 9-5. The second half, however, was not as easy as expected, The Poles went down and the Turks felt the chance, but Poland held on winning by just one goal 13-12.

Catalonia vs. Germany was better started by the Germans, but they didn’t continue in that way and at the end of the first half were losing 7-10. In the beginning of the second half Germany was in a better mood and they came back to 11-12 in the 28th minute, but it was end of Germany’s revival as the Catalans recovered and held on for a 17-15 victory, a big disappointment for the Germans.

The other game, between the Czechs and Russia was expected to be fight between the best scorers of tournament – male (Petrukhin) on Russian side and female (Kolářová) on Czech side. The Czechs started well, but Russia was able to equalize at 2-2. Nobody expected, however, that this was all from the Russians. The Czech captain Denisa Kolářová started her shooting performance followed by the whole Czech team. Half time 11-5 and an end of game score of 21-9 clearly confirmed Czech dominance in this match and made home crowd happy.