Bundesliga Saturday: Polo and Mannheim level at the top after a wild day, Peillat back in the squad

Double weekend Saturdays don’t come much better than this. Thirty goals in five men’s games, a shootout in the top match, a hat-trick on Friday night, and by the end of it the top two are level on points with a head-to-head waiting on Sunday. German club hockey is showing off.

Club an der Alster 4-4 Mannheimer HC (Mannheim won the shootout)

The game of the day, and it wasn’t close. Leaders Mannheim built a 4-1 lead in Hamburg and still couldn’t shake Alster off.

Marius Leser put Mannheim ahead in the 24th minute, Lasse Mink levelled three minutes later, and Mannheim went in front again at 33 minutes through a goal the official report leaves unattributed. Ben Hasbach then scored twice, in the 41st and 45th, to stretch it to 4-1, before Alster produced the comeback of the weekend: Jeremy Hayward in the 50th, Till Brockmann in the 51st, and Nikolas Wellan in the 58th to make it 4-4.

Into the shootout it went, and Mannheim took it, the official result recorded as 6-8 n.P., for two points to Alster’s one.

And Gonzalo Peillat? He was back in the Mannheim squad, wearing No. 2, almost a year after his cruciate ligament injury. The official report doesn’t attribute any goal to him by name, and the one unattributed Mannheim goal, at 33 minutes, can’t be confirmed as his from the report. So the honest line is this: Peillat is back on a Bundesliga pitch. The goals column can wait.

Mannheim move to 17 points. So do Polo. Sunday, the two of them meet in Hamburg.

Hamburger Polo Club 5-1 TSV Mannheim

If Mannheim thought they’d done the hard part, Polo’s result will have landed badly. The second Mannheim club came to Hamburg and got dismantled.

Timothy Brand scored in the 1st and 6th minutes, and a game TSV needed was basically gone before it started. Laurens Halfmann made it 3-0 in the 40th, Niklas Plattenteich scored in the 41st and again in the 54th, and Louis Rowe’s 48th-minute goal for TSV was a footnote.

Polo join Mannheim on 17 points, second only on goal difference, and Sunday’s top match at Polo is now a straight shootout for top spot. TSV stay on 13 and go to Alster on Sunday with no room left for another bad day.

The rest of the men’s card

DSD Düsseldorf 3-4 Rot-Weiss Köln. The wildest game of the day. Jakob Brilla scored twice in the first 14 minutes for Köln with Felipe Andreotti replying in between, Raphael Hartkopf made it 3-1, and DSD still reached half-time level at 3-3 through Niclas Schickenberg and Maximilian Bergs. The second half had one goal in it, Henrik Siegburg’s winner in the 34th minute, and it was Köln’s. They move to 16 points, third. DSD, bottom of the table, scored three at home and got nothing. Cruel game.

Harvestehuder THC 5-1 Berliner HC. Four straight defeats coming in, and Harvestehude picked today to remember who they are. Alec von Schwerin scored twice, Anton Pöhling, Nqobile Ntuli and Jonas von Gersum got the others, and Michael Hummel’s goal was all Berlin had. The losing run is over, loudly.

UHC Hamburg 4-1 Münchner SC. UHC backed up last Sunday’s win over Mannheim with another one. Niklas Bosserhoff scored in the 3rd minute, Elian Mazkour added two in four minutes either side of half-time pace, Tom Alexander Blümmel replied for München, and Leopold Harms finished it. Two wins running for UHC.

Friday: Uhlenhorst Mülheim 2-3 Crefelder HTC. The weekend started with a Masi Pfandt show. Pfandt scored in the 20th, 54th and 56th minutes for Crefeld, a hat-trick, with Jannik Enaux and Robert Duckscheer replying for a Mülheim side stuck near the bottom. Crefeld move to 14 points, fourth.

The women’s Bundesliga on Saturday

Five women’s games too, and Mannheim’s women did what their men couldn’t quite do in regulation. Club an der Alster 1-3 Mannheimer HC: Pahila Arnold put Alster ahead in the 16th, then Carolin Seidel, Alice Arnott and Stine Kurz turned it for the visitors. Großflottbeker THGC 5-1 TSV Mannheim, 5-0 up by half-time. Harvestehuder THC 1-0 Berliner HC. Düsseldorfer HC 3-2 Bremer HC after a shootout. UHC Hamburg 2-3 Münchner SC.

Sunday settles it

Mannheim 17, Polo 17, Köln 16, Crefeld 14, TSV 13. On Sunday: Polo v Mannheim for top spot, Alster v TSV, UHC v Berlin, Harvestehude v München, Crefeld v Köln, Mülheim v DSD. Saturday was the warm-up act.