E.ON Men's Water Polo NB I: Vasas and OSC win important matches

A serious battle unfolded between Vasas and Honvéd in the first Sunday match of the round, where an evenly matched fight took place. In the first half, the home team went up by two goals twice, but Honvéd managed to equalize after being down 2-0 and 5-3. Moreover, at the beginning of the second half, Hessels Benjáminék scored two more goals within one minute, meaning they were on a 0-4 streak, but from there, the red-blues managed to climb back. In fact, after an 8-8 tie, eight seconds before the final whistle, Nikola Dedovic set up a penalty shot which was converted by Bogdan Durdic, thus Vasas started the final quarter with a lead.

What didn't last long, as just like in the previous half, Vasas again scored two quick goals, with Bencz Rolf doubling within 44 seconds, taking the lead back for Honvéd (9-10). Few thought that in the remaining six and a half minutes there wouldn't be any more guest goals - however, Vasas' players from the Balkans stepped up, first Dedovic equalized from a play at 4:23, then Durdic scored a man-up goal, and finally at 1:35, Dedovic secured the victory for the home team with his fourth goal; meanwhile, the guests missed two advantages.

A significant surprise took place at the Nyéki Swimming Complex, where OSC made a strong start in the first quarter, then practically cruised with confidence their 5-2 lead against BVSC. Pre-match clear favorites were the guests, however, on Sunday evening they only displayed traces of the team that has been making one brilliant performance after another in the Euro Cup so far. Their defense failed, Gyapjas Viktor had to be substituted at 7-0, but even Korom Dániel couldn't change much about the course of events. The second quarter continued with an insane flurry of goals, as the home team maintained the lead with 10-7 at halftime.

Then in the second half, the lines at the back settled on both sides, and the significant difference between the two attacking lines became apparent, but OSC's Brazilian goalkeeper, Joao Fernandes, had an incredible day - saving one after another of Tátrai Dávid's shots, so by the final quarter, OSC had a four-goal lead, and three out of it remained until the end. Kovács Róbert could even afford to replace the young Szitás Dávid - when Fernandes left the pool, the save ratio was 16-6, which more or less explains the surprising final result.

The round also brought excitement in the match between Szeged and Pécs, with a somewhat surprising home victory in the end. Initially, Szeged was leading, but after 6-7, there was a significant breakdown, and the Pécs team played very focused, scoring four goals in a row in the third quarter, with a fifth one coming at the beginning of the final quarter, after 11-7, the Szeged team had a very steep mountain to climb. They fought back, but in the end, they couldn't take the match to a penalty shootout: they came back to 13-12 with 54 seconds left, but from their last attack, they couldn't create a threat.

The rest of the matches were quite one-sided, especially defending champions Ferencváros' match against Miskolc on Friday night. The brutal dominance was mostly shown in the shot statistics: 41-23 - shots on goal: 34-11; no wonder the green-whites achieved the most dominant victory of the season.

Szentes surprisingly achieved an eight-goal victory against Eger, who were playing destructively in the televised match on Saturday, Kaposvár, having their first really strong performance of the season led by Balázs Hárai, defeated UVSE away, and Szolnok won very comfortably against the newcomer Debrecen at home.

E.ON Water Polo NB I, Round 9

Vasas-Plaket–Endo Plus Service-Honvéd 12-10

Genesys-OSC Újbuda–BVSC-Manna ABC 13-10

FTC-Telekom–PannErgy-Miskolc 24-3

DVSE-Master Good–Szolnoki Dózsa-Praktiker 8-19

UVSE–Kaposvári VK 7-12

Metalcom-Szentes–DIGI-Eger 17-9

PVSK-Mecsek Füszért–Szegedi VE 13-12