It’s been a while since I have written a match report for you all with the New Year holiday taking place. Also I snuck away to Maastricht for a few days and that is why this report is a few days overdue!
2014 has brought about a renewed focus on the purpose of this Odyssey to the Netherlands. As a result the start of the year has been as I am to continue, korfball focused. As I write this, the Europa Cup is taking place in Papendrecht with the top club teams from all over Europe competing against each other. It is this kind of regular external competition that we miss in New Zealand, being so isolated from the rest of the korfball world. Fortunately we can all enjoy the live stream of the Europa Cup on the Internet.
It is now only eight months until our New Zealand team heads to Hong Kong in a bid to qualify for the 2015 World Championships. This also gives me less than four months left here in the Netherlands to soak up as much korfball knowledge as I can before returning to join my teammates. I will try to experience as much korfball as I can through training, playing, watching and studying korfball. Also on the agenda is planning how we can grow the sport in New Zealand through developing coaches, referees and increasing our player base, particularly with school age children.
Unfortunately the injury situation at DOS ’46 has not really improved over the holiday break, leaving teams scraping for players for each game. It was a win itself for our fourth team to even have enough players to head to Dronten for our game against ASVD 2. However, that was where to good news ended for our team. We had hoped that we could be competitive against our opposition but it quickly became apparent that the lack of training and cohesion for DOS ’46 4 had taking its toll on the team. I started from the bench and it was certainly not an enjoyable game to watch as ASVD found the going all too easy. Defensive errors resulting in easy shots or penalties hurt our team throughout the duration of the game. ASVD 2 we also shooting well from medium distance, taking full advantage of the opportunities they were able to create. At the other end of the court someone must have covered our korf in glass that we just couldn’t break. The shots were just not dropping and as a result, ASVD were able to force us into lower percentage shots that limited our ability to control the ball for longer durations. During the second half there was no change to the flow of the game. I came on a few minutes into the second half and managed to score a couple of distance shots. The game sank to another low when Niek was given a second yellow card resulting in a red card for mouthing off at the referee too much. That made life pretty impossible for our vak trying to continue to play with three people. In the end the final score was a rather dismal 25-8.
For the rest of the senior teams at DOS ’46 the start to the new year was not a successful one either. DOS ’46 3 losing to DeetosSnel 2 25-16; DOS ’46 2 also losing to SCO 2 18-16; DOS ’46 1 having an 18-18 draw at SCO 1. Both of the results at SCO were a bit of a surprise considering in the first round DOS ’46 won both these games by over 10 goals. The juniors at DOS are shining the way at the moment with A1, B1 and C1 and winning and keeping themselves among the top teams in the country for their age groups.
The korfball immersion continued on Sunday with the first KIDs (Korfball Institute DOS ’46) session for the year. This is a coaching programme for junior players every Sunday for six weeks where each week they get taught more in depth skills about an area of korfball, often from a guest coach. The younger children learned how to hone their basic skills in passing and shooting while the older children were taught how to attack against a defender by Gerald Aukes, the head coach at korfball league club KZ/Hiltex. I plan on also going along and watching these session every week to take some more ideas back to New Zealand that we can use to develop our young korfball players skills.
Another korfball bonus for the weekend was attending the Korfball League game at LDODK on Sunday. With 950 spectators the atmosphere for the game was pretty electric, especially with a vocal home crowd supporting their team. As the home side quickly ran out to a 7-0 lead over their opponents KZ/Hiltex, it was obvious that the level of play in the Korfball League was quite a step up from that in the Hoofdklasse. While KZ boasted a couple of Dutch internationals in their ranks it was the brothers Zwart from LDODK that dominated the game. Erwin and Andre scored all those seven goals mentioned above. At the end of the game they both had reached double figures for the game. Despite a late charge from KZ they were never able to make up the ground they lost at the start of the game, 30-25 the final score.
As the countdown towards Hong Kong continues, it will take a lot of hard work to put us in the best position to secure a place at the world championships. Let’s hope with a bit of hard work the fortunes at DOS ’46 also improve quickly.
Tot Ziens,
Lorenzo
2014 has brought about a renewed focus on the purpose of this Odyssey to the Netherlands. As a result the start of the year has been as I am to continue, korfball focused. As I write this, the Europa Cup is taking place in Papendrecht with the top club teams from all over Europe competing against each other. It is this kind of regular external competition that we miss in New Zealand, being so isolated from the rest of the korfball world. Fortunately we can all enjoy the live stream of the Europa Cup on the Internet.
It is now only eight months until our New Zealand team heads to Hong Kong in a bid to qualify for the 2015 World Championships. This also gives me less than four months left here in the Netherlands to soak up as much korfball knowledge as I can before returning to join my teammates. I will try to experience as much korfball as I can through training, playing, watching and studying korfball. Also on the agenda is planning how we can grow the sport in New Zealand through developing coaches, referees and increasing our player base, particularly with school age children.
Unfortunately the injury situation at DOS ’46 has not really improved over the holiday break, leaving teams scraping for players for each game. It was a win itself for our fourth team to even have enough players to head to Dronten for our game against ASVD 2. However, that was where to good news ended for our team. We had hoped that we could be competitive against our opposition but it quickly became apparent that the lack of training and cohesion for DOS ’46 4 had taking its toll on the team. I started from the bench and it was certainly not an enjoyable game to watch as ASVD found the going all too easy. Defensive errors resulting in easy shots or penalties hurt our team throughout the duration of the game. ASVD 2 we also shooting well from medium distance, taking full advantage of the opportunities they were able to create. At the other end of the court someone must have covered our korf in glass that we just couldn’t break. The shots were just not dropping and as a result, ASVD were able to force us into lower percentage shots that limited our ability to control the ball for longer durations. During the second half there was no change to the flow of the game. I came on a few minutes into the second half and managed to score a couple of distance shots. The game sank to another low when Niek was given a second yellow card resulting in a red card for mouthing off at the referee too much. That made life pretty impossible for our vak trying to continue to play with three people. In the end the final score was a rather dismal 25-8.
For the rest of the senior teams at DOS ’46 the start to the new year was not a successful one either. DOS ’46 3 losing to DeetosSnel 2 25-16; DOS ’46 2 also losing to SCO 2 18-16; DOS ’46 1 having an 18-18 draw at SCO 1. Both of the results at SCO were a bit of a surprise considering in the first round DOS ’46 won both these games by over 10 goals. The juniors at DOS are shining the way at the moment with A1, B1 and C1 and winning and keeping themselves among the top teams in the country for their age groups.
The korfball immersion continued on Sunday with the first KIDs (Korfball Institute DOS ’46) session for the year. This is a coaching programme for junior players every Sunday for six weeks where each week they get taught more in depth skills about an area of korfball, often from a guest coach. The younger children learned how to hone their basic skills in passing and shooting while the older children were taught how to attack against a defender by Gerald Aukes, the head coach at korfball league club KZ/Hiltex. I plan on also going along and watching these session every week to take some more ideas back to New Zealand that we can use to develop our young korfball players skills.
Another korfball bonus for the weekend was attending the Korfball League game at LDODK on Sunday. With 950 spectators the atmosphere for the game was pretty electric, especially with a vocal home crowd supporting their team. As the home side quickly ran out to a 7-0 lead over their opponents KZ/Hiltex, it was obvious that the level of play in the Korfball League was quite a step up from that in the Hoofdklasse. While KZ boasted a couple of Dutch internationals in their ranks it was the brothers Zwart from LDODK that dominated the game. Erwin and Andre scored all those seven goals mentioned above. At the end of the game they both had reached double figures for the game. Despite a late charge from KZ they were never able to make up the ground they lost at the start of the game, 30-25 the final score.
As the countdown towards Hong Kong continues, it will take a lot of hard work to put us in the best position to secure a place at the world championships. Let’s hope with a bit of hard work the fortunes at DOS ’46 also improve quickly.
Tot Ziens,
Lorenzo