Miscellaneous

TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt, currently fourth in the table, is in pole position as the race to qualify for the TTBL Final4 enters its final stages. In this interview, Bergneustadt’s top player Benedikt Duda discusses his team’s journey into the play-off zone, their remaining fixtures and the club’s squad planning.

Benedikt Duda, with five consecutive wins, your TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt is the second-best team in the TTBL’s second half of the season behind Borussia Düsseldorf, thereby occupying the fourth and final Final4 spot. Your lead over your closest rivals, TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen and Borussia Dortmund, stands at four points. How do you assess the situation ahead of the final five regular-season matches?

The situation is still tense because we still have five important matches to play, and opponents against whom we have lost every time recently. That’s why we need to focus fully on these opponents, prepare well and then take it one match at a time. Because a four-point lead – that could still go either way. After the first half of the season, we were four points behind Ochsenhausen ourselves, and by early February we were four points ahead of them. These are also five tough and difficult matches, so we need to focus fully on them and not just hope that Ochsenhausen or Dortmund lose their matches.

Bergneustadt’s remaining fixtures include away matches against relegation-threatened rivals TSV Bad Königshofen and ASC Grünwettersbach, and to round things off, a home match against title favourites and Champions League winners 1. FC Saarbrücken-TT. Could it have been any tougher?

It could, of course, have been even tougher. But our remaining fixtures aren’t exactly a walk in the park as it is, because, above all, we have all the crucial matches away from home: in Bad Königshofen, in Grünwettersbach, in Mühlhausen. These are all very, very tough matches, especially because the home crowd always really gets behind the home team. That’s why it won’t be plain sailing in the last five matches. We need to be at 100 per cent for these matches and perform well right until the end.

Do you expect only the three-way battle you’ve described to continue until the end of the main round, or do you also think TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell and PSV Mühlhausen are still capable of getting involved in the race for fourth place?

At this stage, I also believe Fulda and Mühlhausen are capable of competing for the Final 4 places, because there are still five matchdays to go. Any team could go on a run and even win all of the last five matches. That’s why it’s important that we simply do our homework, try to win our matches, and ultimately secure those victories. If we manage that, our fate is entirely in our own hands.

With eight games since the start of the year without a single defeat, you’ve played a major part in your team’s rise into the play-off zone. What other factors have been important so far?

I think the lads first had to learn to understand that, as a team, you have a shared goal, that you work towards it consistently and don’t just hope it will happen by itself. You simply have to deliver every match day, and we didn’t do that in the first half of the season, but it improved in the second half. We simply got off to a good start, but we were also lucky that, for example, Ochsenhausen played against us without Shunsuke Togami – otherwise it would probably have been a different game. The fact that the lads then practically won against Ochsenhausen with just two players, without Adrien Rassenfosse and without me, was, in my view, a decisive game for us on the road to the Final 4.

Since its promotion to the TTBL twelve years ago, your club has only reached the play-offs once, in 2019. Beyond the purely measurable success, how important is this year’s qualification for the final four for Bergneustadt?

In fact, we’ve only made the play-offs once so far. In the years before and after that, we simply didn’t have the squad to be among the top four teams. That’s always a crucial factor, of course. The players first had to develop in that direction to really become a team capable of competing for a place in the top four. Success for the club this season would, of course, be fantastic, because we have so many volunteers who arrive several hours before every home match to set up the whole hall, and then stay for several more hours after the match to take it all down again. They all take this for granted. But I believe it would be a huge success, particularly for the fans from Bergneustadt.

With a record of 20 wins from 26 matches so far, you are currently the most successful player in the TTBL, but also the busiest. Kirill Gerassimenko of Werder Bremen, the second-busiest player, has played ‘only’ 23 matches. How do you cope with such a heavy workload combined with your responsibilities as the number one?

I don’t really give it a second thought. Obviously, I’ve played a great many matches now, because I’ve almost always played as number one in every match, which simply shows that I’m the team leader and want to lead the way. It’s simply my job to always try my best to win two points, even if I don’t always succeed. Nevertheless, I’m not currently worrying about the workload. It’s naturally high, especially with the international tournaments, but that’s our job, and I have to do my job.

Earlier in the season, you publicly called on your club to consider signing a fifth player to ease the burden on you personally. You and your three teammates have signed contracts for the new season. Is anything else happening in terms of squad planning?

Unfortunately, I’m not currently aware of whether anything is happening regarding a fifth player. I’ve been away for too long and haven’t had much contact with the club. That’s why there’s still a question mark over it.

Thank you very much for talking to us, Benedikt Duda.

Florian Manzke