Oldenburg Knights remain “The Unrelegables” like VfL Bochum used to be

For a long time, the Oldenburg Knights were in danger of being relegated for the first time in their history. However, the season’s final push to avoid relegation from the GFL2 was crowned with a dramatic victory in Cottbus.

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Oldenburg/Cottbus – Many people find it hard to believe today, but there was a time about three decades ago when VfL Bochum football fans could not or did not want to imagine that their team could be relegated from the top division after more than 20 years in the 1st Bundesliga, and coined the term “The Unrelegables”. The American football history of the Oldenburg Knights, which led them from the top and regional leagues to the second highest German league, is much shorter, but since this Saturday it has also been enriched by a chapter of avoiding relegation.

Bernd Teuber

Jan To Bruges

Oldenburg

Hauke Richter

Bernd Teuber

cottbus

Everything pushed

In a season in which they themselves, the competition and other influences had ensured that for a long time there were many signs of the first relegation in the almost 15-year history of the club, they managed to stay in the GFL2 league with a 36:29 win in the catch-up game against the Cottbus Crayfish. “We have not fallen back into the bad habit of hanging our heads when something goes wrong,” said head coach Sebastian Blase, looking back on the attitude that had broken the team’s neck in some of the season’s games and which now looked much more positive in Brandenburg, as it did most recently in the 26:18 win in Lübeck: “The whole team pushed forward.”

Same

The Oldenburg team (now 6:14 points/6th place) needed a win in the catch-up game (the first duel was abandoned in June when the Knights were leading 21:0 due to a storm) against the Crayfish (4:16/8th), who had already been relegated, in order to displace the Bielefeld Bulldogs (6:14/7th) from the non-relegation place of sixth. Despite the long journey from very early on Saturday morning, the Blase team was immediately wide awake after the kickoff at 4 p.m. Tammo Vroom and Isaiah Grice made it 14:0, including extra points from kicker Darrian Naujoks. After the score was reduced to 7:14, Grice and Nico Dutschke, in conjunction with Naujoks, made the score 28:7 after passes from quarterback Joshua Cartwright.

Joint team photo: After the duel, the youngsters of Oldenburg Knights (green jerseys) and Emden

Embedded: Knights player Nils Bünger (centre) before the game was abandoned in June in Cottbus between Crayfish defenders Marco Olivas (left) and Steven Andersen

Bernd Teuber

Jan To Bruges

Oldenburg

Badly caught

“In the first half we did what we wanted to do and what we had already done in the first game in Cottbus,” said Blase, whose team coped much better with the strong wind. Unlike the Brandenburgers’ 45:23 victory in the duel in Oldenburg at the end of August, which was extremely sobering for the Knights, the Crayfish receivers were unable to get a proper grip on their quarterback’s balls this time.

Finale cheered

“We ran with the ball and controlled the game – dominated the opponents,” emphasized Blase. After the 13:28, however, there was nervousness and individual errors. After a fumble by Dawson Pierson (“A wrong decision – not the only one, by the way,” criticized Blase) and the resulting 21:28, the game tipped. With a good five minutes to go, Cottbus led 29:28, but a touchdown by running back Kodi Koechli and a two-point conversion by Vroom finally gave the Knights the chance to celebrate – the Oldenburg footballers were spared the fate of a yo-yo team, as the Bochum footballers have long since become.