Ten years of Ramlingen

Both teams will be celebrating a small anniversary of sorts on Wednesday. The Reds will be meeting opponents SV Ramlingen/Ehlershausen for the tenth time. A game against the Oberliga Niedersachsen outfit has become a permanent part of the 96er’s season preparations since 2000. Even before the friendly-decade, the Reds met Ramlingen four times, remembers club chairman Jürgen Stern. Through his personal contact with 96-President Martin Kind he was able to clinch a friendly against his team, and he is now looking forward to the next encounter: “I have made a bet with one of the members of staff, Thomas Westphal, that this time we won’t lose by more than three goals”, predicts a positive Stern. He’s going with 4:1 to the Bundesliga club.

That would really represent a huge success for the Oberliga team. Up until now manager Kurt Becker’s team have going somewhat downhill on their results-rollercoaster: 0:5, 1:9, 3:5, 2:5, 1:6, 2:5 are the results from previous meetings. However, they did manage to stay within two goals of their opponents on one occasion, which, if everything goes well on the day, could mean that the chances of their manager’s prediction rining true may just be good.

- Daniel Moore

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