New champions certain in Germany

The final of this season's German "Bundesliga" will be different this year: In the last four years, the two teams from rugby town of Heidelberg played in the final - but in this weekend's semifinals saw ASV Köln beat the current German champion Heidelberger Ruder Klub, winning a spot in what will be the 30th German Championship final.

The women from Cologne will face the German championship record-holders SC Neuenheim next Saturday (13th May) at Fritz-Grunebaum-Sportpark in Heidelberg.

SCN has played a dominant season: Lead by coach Marcus Trick they topped the regular season table with +348 points difference, with ASV Köln right behind them on +144. SCN's dominance has been such that Köln have been the only team to score against them all season, when SCN  won their clash last December 15-12.

However the final is not a foregone conclusion. In the last four seasons, SCN have been constantly strong during the league games, but have never able to perform at their best in the final against their usual rivals HRK, resulting in some highly competitive matches and a title for HRK last year.

Current national 7s champions ASV Köln have had some big ups and downs this season. Uncer head coach Marco Sermersheim they have benefited from the addition of national-players who transferred to them from HRK. But it has never been easy for ASV to maintain large numbers of players for training or on gamedays, and injuries of key players made it difficult for the team at the end of the season.

But as the semifinal has shown, ASV had prepapted well for this end of the season and were able to generate a lot of power! After loosing to HRK 40-0 two weeks ago, ASV Köln turned things arounf and beat the same opposition in the semifinal 20-19!

For the German rugby community it will be interesting so see a different team in the finale, and to have a different German champion - especially in a "Bundesliga“ with only five teams after the team from Hannover "Germania List" resigned from the league mid-season due to a lack of players.

The final of the German Bundesliga, between ASV Köln and SC Neuenheim, will be held on the 13th of May at 2:30 pm in Fritz-Grunebaum-Sportpark in Heidelberg.

Pl.

P

W

L

F

A

PD

Pts

1

SC Neuenheim

8

8

0

360

12

+348

39

2

ASV Köln

8

5

3

267

123

+144

26

3

Heidelberger RK

8

5

3

173

148

+25

25

4

FC St. Pauli

8

1

7

66

303

-237

5

5

SG Rhein-Main

8

1

7

45

325

-280

4

Regular season results:

SC Neuenheim:

H: 46-0 v ASV Köln; 36-0 v Heidelberger RK; 41-0 v SG Rhein-Main; 90-0 v FC St. Pauli

A: 70-0 v SG Rhein-Main; 30-0 FC St. Pauli; 15-12 v ASV Köln; 32-0 v Heidelberger RK

ASV Köln:

H: 22-0 v Heidelberger RK; 60-0 v SG Rhein-Main; 12-15 v SC Neuenheim; 78-7 v FC St. Pauli

A: 0-46 v SC Neuenheim; 31-10 v FC St. Pauli; 64-5 v SG Rhein-Main; 0-40 v Heidelberger RK

Semi-finals

SC Neuenheim 101-5 FC St. Pauli

ASV Köln 20-19 Heidelberger RK