Oldenburg Knights cling to Cottbus Crayfish relegation

All’s well that ends well? The Oldenburg Knights secured their place in the GFL2 with a 36:29 win in a catch-up game against the Cottbus Crayfish. There was gleaming, there was nervousness, there was cheering.

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Oldenburg/Cottbus – Almost a decade and a half after their founding, the Oldenburg Knights have avoided the first relegation in their history at the last minute. On Saturday, head coach Sebastian Blase’s team beat the Cottbus Crayfish, who had already been relegated, 36:29 in the GFL2 catch-up game, leaving the last place in the table of the second-highest German American Football League (now 6:14 points/6th place) and leaving the Bielefeld Bulldogs (6:14/7th) with Cottbus (4:16/8th) in the Regionalliga.

Hauke Richter

Bernd Teuber

cottbus

“We managed it several times on our own, even though we only had half as many imported players as last year and we relied more on new players from the region,” summed up Blase. As was the case throughout the season, the team had to be nervous about staying in the league until the very end, even in the last game.

Just like in June, when the duel in Cottbus was abandoned due to a storm with the score at 21:0, the Oldenburg team quickly took the lead. Tammo Vroom finished the first offensive move with the first touchdown, and Isaiah Grice added the second after Jannik Birk won the ball in his second offensive appearance. Cottbus reduced the deficit to 7:14, but the Knights pulled ahead to 28:7 before halftime thanks to visits to the end zone by Grice and Nico Dutschke, including extra points three and four by kicker Darrian Naujoks.

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

“Perhaps we felt too confident,” said Blase, carefully describing the careless mistakes his team made after the break. The game turned around, with five and a half minutes to go Cottbus was leading 29:28. Just like a week ago in Lübeck, where a 26:18 win kept the chance of a third GFL2 year alive, the Knights did not let their heads hang. A stronger attack ended with a touchdown by running back Kodi Koechli, who scored the final score with a two-point conversion for Vroom. “We never gave up,” said Blase.