Again giving away 2 goal lead, again swallowing a silly goal, again in the last minute, again on a stoppage time… The story of this season. We don’t write it easily, but this is frustrating. After the game, hardly anything was said in the dressing room, as this came hard again.

KVC Westerlo

A writer can delete his text, a cartoonist can wipe out his story, for can a football team? Forget this season as soon as possible and hope this was an accident de parcours. The balance of joy and sorrow tilts too much to the wrong side, un-westerlo too. The Kempish yellow-blue heart bleeds. But let us remain optimists and say it with a Kempish sobriety: after rain comes sunshine. Because the biggest mistake you can make is to be afraid of making one.

Raf Smekens was a lucky boy, though. The young promise was offered his first playing minutes, rest assured that Raf will never forget this. Griffin Yow was also decisive again, 1 goal from the eleven-metre mark – as regular penalty taker Nicolas Madsen was in the stands – and 1 assist on Lucas Stassin’s goal. With a total of 7 goals and 4 assists, Yankee Griffin is one of the discoveries of the season.

OHL home has always been a tough assignment. The last 4 meetings at the Kuipje were also all lost. Now coaches and players are not at all concerned with such matters, and when the question is then once asked it is a clichéd answer: statistics are there to be broken.

Let me mention that our youth teams are doing great: the U16, U18 and U21 have all already won the championship and our ladies also won the title last week. So the Pearl of Kempen continues to shine.

OH Leuven

The Leuveners could not secure a ticket for these play-offs until the very last second of the competition. Unscripted drama as the Pro League likes it. With 2 fine home victories in a row against Ghent and Sint-Truiden respectively, it is fair to say that they have the right form to hand, especially when you take a closer look and they only had to lose out once in the last 5 games.

Most likely, Spanish coach Oscar Garcia will bring the following 11 names to the kick-off: in goal Tobe Leysen, Schingtienne – Schrijvers and Ricca as the defensive central trio, Sagrado and Akimoto on the flanks, Banzuzi and Schrijvers as controlling midfielders and the most forward players will be Maertens, Maziz and Thorsteinsson. OHL is also a team without a real target striker. Top marksman Maziz is currently being played out there, but he is actually more of a 10 or 11.

Then again, they like to score in the first quarter (26%) or in the last quarter (29%) of the game. This season they could win twice away from home: the first was in September 2023 at Mechelen (1-2) and the last was at … Westerlo (0-3) almost 3 months ago now.

Wesli De Cremer

Wesli is a regular referee in our Pro League. He has already been appointed to act as match referee in 20 matches this season, both in the regular league, Croky Cup and Play Offs. In total, this brings him to 138 matches in our patriotic league.

By the way, Westerlo (19) and OH Leuven (18) are the teams that have played the most matches, with our opponent having a very good statistic. No fewer than 12 of those 18 duels they were able to win. We did so only six times with him, as many as five times in our own Kuipje. In 2017, this affiche was already on his CV, that Saturday afternoon our Kemphans won 1-0 after a goal from Jens Naessens on an assist from Benji De Ceulaer.

Text and statistics: Peter Boons