Hosting team Al-Sadd had recovered from the clashing 19:32 placement round defeat against Al-Rayyan the day before. Thanks to a clear improvement after the break the Qataris secured the seventh place in the final ranking of the IHF Super Globe 2013 in Doha. Like in the preliminary round they left Australian side Sydney University chanceless by a 30:18 victory. So the “Aussie students” like in 2012 missed their final goal to return home with at least one victory –despite a strong performance before the break.
Placement match 7/8:
Sydney University (AUS) – Al-Sadd (QAT) 18:30 (10:14)
Arrouche Lakhdar shouted very loud during the halftime break, trying to bring his players of Al-Sadd back on track. And they understood the significance of the coaches’ words. In the first 15 minutes the Qatari team had clearly dominated the first placement match of the final day at the IHF Super Globe 2013. Al-Sadd were away by 8:2 after only 12 minutes, as Selvedin Omahic could not be stopped by the Australian defence. But then everything changed rapidly: Al-Sadd relaxed and lacked concentration in attack, while Sydney grabbed their chances to reduce the gap to only two goals at 8:10, as their shooting efficiency clearly had increased. When Al-Sadd had a two-man advantage they extended the result to four goals at the break – and then the Lakhdar’s invigorating speech paved the way of a full change of attitude of the Al-Sadd squad.
It took only seven minutes after the break, before the IHF Super Globe host had forged ahead to 20:11, overrunning Sydney by needle-pin counter attacks. The Al-Sadd defence had improved, putting pressure on Sydney and causing mistakes. Who else than Omahic then scored for the first double-figured result at 25:15 ten minutes before the end after an intermediate increase of performance of the Australian side.
And after the final whistle the Al-Sadd players threw their Spanish goalkeeper Jose Javier Hombrados up in the air, as a sign of “thank you for your help”.
Statements after the match:
Arrouche Lakhdar, coach Al-Sadd: We needed to win today, as we wanted to finish the tournament successfully. After we had lost closely against Hamburg in the final encounter of the preliminary round we had a clear break in our performing level. But we take some good points from the IHF Super Globe for building our new team for the future.
Abdulla Alghamdi, player Al-Sadd: It was mostly a good game of our team. In general, we took useful experience during this tournament, which will help us to improve in the upcoming competitions.
Philipp Enders, coach Sydney: In the first 10 to 15 minutes we have shown an extremely amateur performance – though we are amateurs, this was nothing. I was very disappointed, but then we clearly improved until the break, as we played what we wanted to. In the second half everybody saw that our team has problems having five matches in six days, as they were completely tired. If we would have performed in a better way, the result would have been much closer.
Eric Charpentier, player Sydney: I am very disappointed about the final result, as we had hoped for more. But we improved during the week in Doha and hope that we will manage to return next year.