Observations & Opinions / Week Ten
From Harold Abrahams – Special Correspondent for TSS
Bern, Switzerland
COMPOSERS’ GRIT … RIFLERS MISFIRE … WHEAT LEAGUE CHAOS
In Week One, the 152nd season of Wiesespiel opened with the Armed Bears of Bern traveling to Trento and handing the Dolomiti a 10-1 loss, as the Italians managed one Donn. As the season moved to its pulsating second half, these same teams met in the Swiss capital, and Trento’s offense proved to be unable to crack the rigid Bears defense, headed as always by Otto Von Steiger. Nevertheless, when Nico Bertolini claimed a Donn with 4 minutes remaining in the opening stanza, the Dolomites carried a 1-0 lead into the changing rooms. Bern, desperate to stay ahead of Matterhorn and other squads and claim that 3rd Playdown spot, battled mightily in the second half but could only knot the score with 8 minutes remaining. Both teams had to repay their own sound efforts this day with a draw in a game that had the 8500 Bernese faithful in attendance applauding the honest day’s work submitted by both teams. This 1-1 classic saw the teams walk off arm in arm, European neighbors made friends by their gritty endeavor.
If the Armed Bears rued the lost two points in a draw that they anticipated being a home win, they would have been equally pleased when the results from the Veneto region turned their way; the Black Eagles had travelled from Zermatt and thrashed the home-standing Riflers in Cortina d’Ampezzo, 18-5. While each week in the Austrian League offers new chapters in the massive tome chronicling the unpredictability of this sport, Cortina’s collapse greatly surprised this observer. With Mikaela Shiffrin and other skiing royalty among the thousands watching the match, and with Cortina spit-shining itself into even more dazzling shape as it readied for the World Cup Skiing race next weekend, the energy in the Riflers’ camp and meadow this week presaged a powerful display from the second-place team. But other than an elusive and cagey Skot from substitute Franki Mollino, the Riflers fired blanks.
For their part, Zurich did not waste Cortina’s poor showing, treating Grenoble like a college development squad in a 27-9 rout in the French Alps that gave the Financiers a 1-point lead at the top of the Tyrol League one week past the season’s halfway mark.
The Match of the Week involved the Team of the Season, as the Composers established a commanding 17-9 lead at halftime in Kitzbühel that mirrored the precise and almost mechanistic manner in which the Mozarts have dismissed opponents since Week One. But the Hahnenkamms showed all the fight-back that you would want to see from an Original Eight team defending their own meadow, forging a 17-17 tie with 6 minutes left when the Kamms’ talisman, young Claus Binder overpowered two Composers and willed himself to a Skot that few others would have engineered. Two minutes later, a Donn pushed Vienna into an 18-17 lead as the massive crowd urged their heroes on to a grand finish. Remember, the Kitzbühel faithful seemed to say, you won the Tyrol Cup last spring – we’re the Champs!
Binder, among others, heard this stirring cry, saw the Victory Banners waving in the azure Tyrolean sky, and dragged a Viennese schleissman across the line. 21-18, two minutes to go, the Kamms heaving with effort, jerseys muddied and sweat-soaked, their fans ready to declare them rulers for life if they could just cling to –
But, no. Vienna is unbeaten for a reason, and Didi Leiner’s 25-meter Skot pushed the Composers into the 22-21 lead that became affixed to the antique scoreboard a minute later, caused the Victory Banners to droop to the snow and mush all around the meadow, and silenced the Kamms fans. So, yes, second-tier Alpine League or not, 10-0-0 and a +73 is 10-0-0 and a +73, friends, and Vienna is the Team of the Year so far.
The briefest of notes regarding the zany ten-ring circus that is the Wheat League. As of this writing, with the Zillertal Red Greens bumbling away a lead against Chur with inept second-half play as the Winemakers claimed three points with zest, and with Eisenerz throttled at home by a scrappy Lugano Hounds team that plays the ‘Swiss Miss’ missing-gate defense that has been around for 120 years – and plays it effectively – and with Chamonix abandoning all recognizable formations, plays and defensive stratagems in a gruesome 11-0 home loss, and with the Bad Ischl Salzkammer prying the slimmest of wins away from the downtrodden Imst Bell Men, the Wheat League is a tangled, unknowable, wild mess with 7 teams within 4 points of the top spot … and 5 within a point of the third-place position that means the chance to win the 2-3. Which teams will earn those three Playdown spots? I’ll tell you with absolute confidence … just as soon as Week 18’s games are played out. Until then, remember what the Mayor says in Jurgen Derrodich’s 1954 comedy Die Bergleute: “Aye, Gretchen, you can plant wheat, and you can grow wheat, and you can harvest wheat, and you can grind wheat, and you can bake with wheat … but you cannot bet on the Wheat League.”