28 Feb 2009 at 12:36 | Published by: bub74 | Views: 7674 | News search

Austrian Bundesliga, men’s class, started with a minor shock to the titleholder. WAT21 was only 3rd behind the biggest competitor (Bischofshofen) and the very young home team of MSC Steyr. Still WAT21 is the big favorite to win in the end again since they have an intact team and some other teams lost some leading players to foreign teams. The excellent German player Stefan Kellersohn left Bischofshofen to play for Mannheim (GER). Rumors also tell that Erik Schweinzer also will not compete 2009 for Bishofshofen in the “Bundesliga”. Nevertheless with Reinhard Schuster and Rupert Westenthaler, Bischofshofen will probably be the biggest challengers to WAT21 for the title.

Last years bronze medal winner BGC-Wien lost Markus Berger to Tantogårdens BGK (SWE) but still have a lot of national team players in their team. One example is Jürgen Bertel (see picture) that showed his great talent and form at Bundesländercup 2009 by playing the best result of all competitors.

Also Knittelfeld lost a player to Mannheim. The new Austrian head coach, Christian Gobetz decided to play in Germany. One of the reasons for Christian was also to have the possibility to closer follow the top players in the Austrian League, instead of playing by himself. But Knittelfeld still will have chances to improve their standings, not only because there will be two “Game Days” played on their home ground.

The biggest question mark is maybe Steyr. The youngest team in the league did an awesome job on the first day by finishing second. Missing experience may lead to “bad” days as well, but the potential of this team is really high. Therefore they can be seen as an outsider to the podium positions.

Nobody is expecting a anything to be decided on these early days but it is an good chance to collect points for the medal race.

SHARE Share Tweet