Hoofdklasse transfers
Thierry Brinkman surprised with a move from Bloemendaal to challengers Den Bosch
The Dutch Hoofdklasse will get underway in the weekend of 14 & 15 September.
Champions Kampong start with a home game against Klein Zwitserland and a virtually unchanged team. No need for coach Tim Oudenaller to change a winning team onbiously.
Challengers Rotterdam also had not much reason to change a lot. Jeroen Hertzberger adds yet another season and will no doubt further reinforce his position of all time topscorer in the Hoofdklasse. Harry Martin (ENG) leaves Rotterdam to join Hurley.
Play Off team Oranje Rood will see several changes starting the new season. The club’s management decided first to replace the coach Jeroen Baart. Even if he brought them back to the top of the table for the first time in many years. Next they also decided they did not want to continue with striker and drag flicker Sam Lane (NZL). Even though he was topping the top scorers table in the Hoofdklasse when they made the decision. Finally the club also thought it would be a good idea to replace goalie Pirmin Blaak. Even though he had just been elected best goalkeeper of the world and since then won gold for the men in Orange in Paris.
The new goalie will be a young talent from the club Nieki Verbeek, supported by the experienced Tobias Walter (GER) coming over from Braxgata, Belgium. Their new striker they found in Madrid: Borja Lacalle. An unexpected and very late transfer is the drag flick specialist Maksymilian Koperski (POL) coming over from Harvestehuder in Germany. He replaces the unfortunate home grown talented defender Gijs van Merrienboer who will focus on his battle against a tumor found in his leg this August. The new coach is Omar Schlingemann who coached Klein Zwitserland before.
Bloemendaal will be coached by Michel van den Heuvel once again. Until Paris van den Heuvel was head coach of the Belgian men. He will replace Rick Mathijssen going to Amsterdam. The renowned club has lost some major players in Thierry Brinkman (to Den Bosch) and Arthur Van Doren (to Braxgata in Belgium). But will welcome one of few Australian internationals who has not chosen to play in the Bundesliga next season with Nathan Ephraums and two young talents from relegated HGC: Lucas Veen and Jan van ‘t Land, both sons of famous hockey fathers.
Thierry Brinkman, captain from Bloemendaal and the Olympic gold winning team, is probably the most surprising transfer this season in the Hoofdklasse. He announced his move to Den Bosch, a challenger for the play off positions.
Some noteworthy transfers from the other teams include Pinoké losing their corner man Alexander Hendrickx who will be playing for Gantoise in Belgium. As well as Amsterdam who see Valentin Verga return to the club where he started Almere and welcome Lee Morton (ENG) from Old Georgians and the South African Cassiem brothers moving over from HDM. Nijmegen, just promoted to the Hoofdklasse, has hired Kookaburra Jake Whetton as well as fellow Aussie Luca Brown from Brisbane.
It will be a tight battle for the top positions once more is probably the only prediction we can make for this league.