Competition overhaul in Hungary as season start approaches

The summer is almost over and that means that all eyes turn towards the domestic competitions again. From a Hungarian perspective, it has been a summer to quickly forget and move on from. When Tibor Benedek took over at the Hungarian national team from his legendary predecessor Dénes Kemény, Benedek and his staff started a track that should lead to Olympic success in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Few expected the storming start of the campaign with World Championship gold in Barcelona in 2013. The Hungarians are probably wondering now if this victory did not set too high expectations for the following years. In 2014 the Hungarians reached 3 major finals, only to lose all 3 to their main rival Serbia. However, at least they could still boast 3 silver medals. In 2015 an unexpected and unexplainable downfall set in. With only minor changes in the team compared to the squad that beat Montenegro in Barcelona to become World Champions, the Hungarians finished at a disappointing 6th place in both the World League and the 2015 World Championship. With only one year away from the 2016 Olympics in Rio, the final destination of Benedek’s 4 year campaign, there is a lot of work to be done. 

With this in mind, the Hungarian competition underwent yet another overhaul and this time the federation got really creative. Focus point of the new competition schedule was to give the National Team plenty of space to work on their training program and focus on the first big target, the 2016 European Championships in January hosted in Belgrade. This tournament is critical for the Hungarian national team because, due to the poor results in 2015, Benedek’s team is yet to qualify for the upcoming Olympic tournament. 

To work out this new competition schedule, the Hungarian Federation decided to increase the number of teams in the OB1 Top Division from 14 to 16. This meant that Miskolc (winner of 2015 OB1/B Second Division) promoted together with runner-up Tatabánya and even 2015 OB1 red lantern carrier PVSK was allowed to stay up.

These 16 teams were split in 2 groups of 8 of which each team will play against their group twice. This comes down to 14 games in the regular competition. After this regular competition is completed there will be a split.

Each team in the top four of their group will play against the other top 4 teams of the opposite group. The same will happen for the bottom 4. This makes for another 8 games. All teams keep their points from the first 14 games, and add more points from the final 8 games. Finally, when these 8 games are also finished, the numbers 1 and 2 (with the most points) will decide the 2016 Hungarian Champion in a best of 5 games final. The numbers 3 and 4, 5 and 6, 7 and 8 , etc - will determine the rest of the rankings in best of 3 games.

The above construction makes it possible for the Hungarian Federation to keep April pretty much free of league games. This is also in anticipation of the national team. In a worst case scenario, if the Hungarians fail to qualify for the Olympics at the European Championships, they would have to participate in Olympic qualifiers in April.

Altogether, it makes for an interesting competition. Whether it is a good decision to add 2 teams of the Hungarian second division to the mix remains to be seen. The gap between the top 3 and the rest of the competition, especially the bottom 4, is big enough already. By adding another 2 teams at the bottom the difference is only increasing. Of course, Miskolc and Tatabánya are hungry to prove otherwise.

Below you will find the groups as they were drafted last week, including the Hungarian domestic cup schedule.

OB/1 GROUP A	OB/1 GROUP B
Szolnok	OSC
Eger	Ferencváros (FTC)
Szeged	Honvéd
Kaposvár	Vasas
BVSC	Debrecen
Szentes	UVSE
PVSK	KSI
Miskolc	Tatabánya

The league will start on September 23rd with the following matches.

Group A.

Szolnok - Miskolc

Eger - PVSK

Szeged - Szentes

Kaposvár - BVSC

Group B.

OSC - Tatabánya

FTC - KSI

Honvéd - UVSE

Vasas - Debrecen

Magyar Kupa.

The cup competition will be held on the weekends of October 31st and November 21st with the semifinals on December 12th and the final a day later on the 13th.

Group A (Nagykanizsa)	Group B (Pécs)	Group C (Miskolc)	Group D (Kaposvár)
OSC	Ferencváros	Eger	Szolnok
Vasas	Szeged	Honvéd	Kaposvár
Debrecen	UVSE	BVSC	Szentes
Tatabánya	PVSK	Miskolc	KSI
Kanizsa		Cegléd	Ybl