Moral demonstrated

In the away game on matchday 27, the Lilies didn’t want to waste any time and played courageously forward from the first second. After just four minutes, Tim Skarke pushed the ball over the line after a cross pass from Oscar Vilhelmsson – but the supposed lead didn’t count because Vilhelmsson was offside in the buildup. A short time later, Vilhelmsson appeared again in the Bochum penalty area, but was prevented from finishing at the last second. The better chances in the initial phase went to the South Hesse team. It wasn’t until after a quarter of an hour that the home team had a good opportunity, but Passlack hit the ball clearly over the box from a tight angle (15′). Bochum gradually took more control of the game, but mostly without putting Marcel Schuhen in serious trouble. However, VfL took the lead from a set piece: Hofmann scored from a corner to make it 1-0 on 30 minutes after Schuhen had done well to save an initial effort. After the goal, the Darmstadt team needed a few minutes to recover from this setback. Only shortly before half-time did the 98ers manage to develop some danger again. Nevertheless, we went into the break with a narrow deficit. The second half began extremely unluckily for the Lilies: only three minutes had been played when Hofmann made it 2-0 for Bochum on 48 minutes. Schlotterbeck crossed and the striker was able to glance home a header. After a while, the SVD tried again, but Mathias Honsak’s long-range shot flew past the box with 55 minutes on the clock. The home team now increasingly took control of the game, but in the middle of this phase we scored the next goal: After a strong one-two with Julian Justvan, Skarke scored from the edge of the penalty area to make it 1-2 just past the hour mark. Torsten Lieberknecht then made an offensive change and brought in two new strikers, Sebastian Polter and Aaron Seydel, and his courage was rewarded in the 76th minute: Justvan sent Vilhelmsson into the penalty area. The Swede who was in fine form during the international break levelled the score. A firm effort was pushed into the net by Reimann, who looking back will have wanted to do better. In the final minutes, the Darmstadt team pushed for a late winning goal, but were also in debt to who Schuhen reacted strongly twice in stoppage time. So in the end the points were shared with VfL Bochum.