SV Kampong produced a powerful performance to reach the EHL KO8 and end HC Bloemendaal’s long winning streak in the competition with a 2-1 victory in Barcelona.
Mats Marree and Jip Jansen got the breakthroughs either side of a Casper van der Veen rocket to take the spoils, setting up a date with Western Wildcats on Sunday evening for a place in the FINAL8.
After a scoreless first half, the Utrecht side used a series of brilliant right-wing overlaps to cause the big problems. One of those went to Marree whose intended cross went in off the padding of Maurits Visser.
They continued to control most of the game with Lars Balk outstanding in the middle of defence, picking off interceptions and then launching attacks.
Visser did brilliantly to deny Duco Telgenkamp from a huge chance for a second and then, within seconds, Bloemendaal got their equaliser out of the blue.
Jasper Brinkman’s pin-point overhead into the circle was brought down by van der Veen who then lashed a backhand baseball-style shot that was too quick for David Harte.
But Kampong stayed cool and won a corner within a minute. Janssen applied the force and it ricocheted into the net for 2-1. They duly gave up little to no space for Bloemendaal to weave their magic and their unbeaten run in the EHL – dating back to 2015 – was over.
