Thanks to a 29:24 victory on Wednesday night in Torshavn, Austria have won the first of two “must-win matches” against the Faroe Islands in group 2 of the Women's EHF EURO 2022 qualifiers.
After Denmark beat Romania 35:28 earlier in the evening, head coach Herbert Müller's side are now level on three points with Romania — but they still need to win the second match on Saturday to remain firmly in the race for their first EHF EURO participation since 2008. The hosts remain bottom of the table after their third defeat.
GROUP 2
Faroe Islands vs Austria 24:29 (12:15)
- surprisingly, Faroe Islands led 5:2 after making the better start and were ahead until Patricia Kovacs levelled the score at 5:5 — but then Austria slowly gained the upper hand
- the 12:9 score was the first three-goal lead for the visitors. Until then, Austria's top scorer Patricia Kovacs had already scored six of her eight goals in the match
- when Johanna Reichert netted to give Austria a 25:17 lead in the 46th minute, the match was decided
- the match seemed on course to produce as clear an outcome as when both sides met in 2016 (29:20)
- but when Austria started to decelerate, the hosts showed their morale and reduced the gap to four goals, 23:27, forcing Austria to call a timeout, but the visitors were not in any danger
- Jana Mittún top-scored for the Faroe Islands with six goals
Austria finally make it to Torshavn
Austria wanted to arrive in Torshavn as early as possible to have an additional training session in the playing hall.
Therefore, Herbert Müller's team left Vienna on Monday morning — but they got stuck in Copenhagen. Due to the bad weather on the Faroe Islands, their flight was cancelled and they had to stay overnight in Denmark.
Fortunately enough, Austria found a training hall in Copenhagen, and their plane to the Faroe Islands departed on Tuesday morning.
