Despite 3,730 fans in the Olympiahalle cheering for their team, Austria could not compete with Norway.
The top scorer of the match was Kristine Breistøl with six goals for Norway; three Austrian players scored four times each. Thale Rushfeldt Deila, who scored five times, was awarded Player of the Match, presented by Grundfos.
GROUP E
Norway vs Austria 38:24 (23:14)
- the first half was dominated by the attacking performances of both sides, delivering 37 goals in 30 minutes
- Austria were on a quite equal level with the defending champions for about 10 minutes, then Norway’s goal machine started up; they had already led by 10 goals before the break, and 10 different Norwegians were already on the scoreboard
- in the first 10 minutes after the break, Norwegian goalkeeper Silje Solberg-Østhassel became a decisive factor for her team
- despite the clear deficit, Austria never gave up and tried everything to score, but with Norway’s extremely quick reverse gear, it was hard for them to score from the position attack
- Norwegian goalkeeper Katrine Lunde is missing the rest of the preliminary round to take care of her daughter, giving Eli Marie Raasok her EHF EURO debut in the last quarter of this game
Norway’s express train is on the track
Austria knew before this game that beating Norway would be hard, after losing both EHF EURO Cup duels (22:43 and 22:39) and the 2023 World Championship match (28:45) to the defending EHF EURO champions.
While their hopes were high of at least closing the gap after their gala against Slovakia, the Austrian defence was too weak in the first half and Solberg-Østhassel proved too much of a barrier to the attack in the opening part of the second.
On the other hand, Norway had learnt from the problems in their opener against Slovenia. The Norwegian express train is on the track now, with high-speed as usual. Although some key players are out, the depth of the new-look squad is huge. When the defending champions start their counter attacks, they are almost unstoppable.
In the first game the defence was not as tough as we wanted to be, today we were aggressive from the start. We had a good defence and goalkeeper, that leads to many fastbreaks as well. If we play a defence like this, it is easy for us to score those easy goals.
The first 15 minutes were quite OK, then we could not get this last step or touch in defence. We wanted to cause some problems to Norway, we wanted to make them think, and in some parts of the game it worked. But all in all, we did not show what we can do.
