11 Sep 2009 at 21:06 | Published by: bub74 | Views: 8603 | News search

Lisa Gruber, new player in Austrian Bundesliga favorites Rot Gold this season  (Photo by Hans Bergström 2009, Odense)

This weekend the Austrian Bundesliga starts the new season on the beton course of Koci-Strasse/Vienna. An additional round will be played during winter indoors followed by two weekends in Mai and June 2010.

In the ladies competition the Austrian Federation had some struggles to find 3 teams willing to compete after Knittelfed rejected to nominate a team. This was due to the withdraw of former junior world champion Andrea Hackl and the silver medalist of this year’s world championships in Odense, Lisa Berger-Rella. Also WAT21 and BGC-Wien will not compete in the ladies competition. So the teams are: Rot-Gold (Vienna), Linz-Lissfeld and Bischofshofen. The absolute top team will be the last years champion Rot-Gold because of the absence of Knittelfeld and the reinforcement they got with the 2007 world champion Lisa Gruber. It will be no big surprise if they succeed to perform a perfect season with wins on every single game day.
An interesting fact is that 6 players from the region "upper Austria" will perform their first season. 4 for Linz and 2, the Helm-sisters for Bischofshofen.

On the men’s side it looks a lot better as 7 teams will play in the league. Interesting transfers are Christian Freilach away from WAT21 to a brand-new club, Neusiedl and Robert Konrad back to his "home team" of Steyr. Nevertheless WAT21 will be one of the 2 teams with the best chances to win the title as the also got Adam Fazekas, the 2nd Hungarian top player, who entered the worlds elite this year in Odense. The second team of course is the well settled team of Bischofshofen. For the bronze medal the very young team of Steyr are clear favorites. Followed be the teams of BGC-Wien, Gänserndorf (with some interesting young-guns) and Knittelfeld, where national team coach Christian Gobetz will return after his one season in Mannheim.

The big question mark is the team of Neusiedl. Rumors tell that they don’t have enough players for the first game day, but it would be no big surprise if they come up with an interesting team on the second game day. As there are 7 teams and no really bad teams on the rooster, every game day will bring up other standings and maybe the most consistent team over all days will stand up on the top hill of the podium.

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