At a time when players of his age start to retire from his sport of handball, 34 year old Fil-Aussie Bevan Calvert debuted in the toughest and highest handball competition in Europe.  Bevan was part of the THW Kiel team which played the first game in the Champions League 20/21 season, against Zagreb.  THW Kiel won the match with 31 : 21 score.

In the article written by Bjorn Pazen, Handball Specialist Sports Journalist who has covered all the 5 world championships that Bevan has played, it devoted a section to acknowledge Bevan. 

"Bevan Calvert first Australian in EHF Champions League

In minute 49, the match in Zagreb became historic: Bevan Calvert entered the court - as the first ever Australian player in the EHF Champions League Men. The 34-years-old wing, who played five World Championships for Australia, regularly is assistant coach of THW Kiel’s U23 team, but now got the chance for his debut in the Champions League. Since 2009, Calvert plays in Germany, since 2018, he plays for Kiel’s second team and now is there assistant coach."

The Right Winger is part of the  Australian men's handball squad and once held the role of Team Captain in the 2012 Oceania World Handball Championship Qualifyer and in the 2013 World Championship held in Spain.

What seemed to be an athlete's fairy tale, Bevan who is a player-assistant coach of THW u23 Team, was given a golden opportunity when the first team THW Kiel asked him to help out in the latter's pre-competition training and games, while its Right Winger was recovering from an operation to a finger.  Bevan has played training games with the team; the first one was against TSV Altenholz where he played for five seasons and scored five goals in this game.

This piece of good luck break for Bevan to be in the Champions League drew much attention from people in the handball world and was commented on social media [Twitter, Facebook], websites and newspapers.

Chris O'Reilly, Freelance Sports Media guy, @ehfcl Commentator, @handballhour & @olympipod Co-host and Irish international handball player tweeted on Sept 17:

"What a story! Hope we get to see Bevan get on court tomorrow and I'll be commentating on it for http://EHFTV.com"

Indeed in his commentary at the start of the game of THW Kiel and Zagreb, Chris shared background information about Bevan.

Team Handball News has also re-tweeted on September 8, the tweet by (Un)Informed Handball Tour the tweet on the latter's podcast and posted on its page about it:

"Latest podcast Includes some discussion on @AusHandball's Bevan Calvert fill in role at @thw_handball".

Handball Australia and NSW Handball Association also feature on their pages the latest media reactions on the Fil-Aus handball sensation.  Morten Hust Petersen also shared the news on the OCHF Handball Oceania page.

What has the man of the hour has to say?  He posted on his FB wall:
" Still flying over the win over HC PPD Zagreb and coming in the closing phase of the game The debut goal unfortunately didn't occur but earnt 2mins and penalised 2mins means I wasn't totally out of the action The game report from the EHF Web Page giving me a nice write up of playing in the game  #thwkiel #ehfchampionsleague #34yearsolddebut "

Bevan's passion for handball from playing in 2001 for Turramurra High School which became the State Champion in the Schools State Championships.  Handball was introduced to Australia by Aleksandar Sasha Dimitric who was an accomplished player in the Yugoslavia era.

The Australian Filipina which once featured Bevan for his pin-up guy appeal in addition to his handball skills, wishes him the best in his handball journey.

Other TAF article on Bevan:
https://www.australianfilipina.com.au/article/bevan-calvert-named-captain-of-national-handball-team


 

 

 

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