Paris SG Hand, although diminished by numerous injuries, eliminated Montpellier in their home gym (35-32) on Wednesday in the semi-finals of the Coupe de France, taking their revenge for last season.
The Parisians, who will face in the final, on April 20 in Bercy, Nantes, defending champion, where Toulouse (opposed Thursday in the Pink City), had in fact suffered a rout in Hérault last year at this same stage of the competition (33-20, heaviest defeat of the Qatari era).
They gave back to the Héraultais, whom they had already beaten three weeks ago in the championship (31-26), and deprived Patrice Canayer of his probable final opportunity to win a title for the last of his 30 seasons on the bench. This despite the absence of five major injured players (Prandi, Luka and Nikola Karabatic, Tonnesen and Solé).
But they were able to count on Luc Steins (4 goals and 13 assists) and the versatility of Jacob Holm (6 goals from 9 attempts) and David Balaguer (5/6), who successfully took turns at right-back in the absence of a specialist, to win a close match until the end.
PSG took a two-goal lead two minutes from the whistle (33-31) but then finished numerically inferior after the exclusion of Kamil Syprzak, who revived the Montpellier team.
Stas Skube brought them back to within a goal 1 min 30 sec from time but, after a goal from Ruben Marchan, Jannick Green closed the shop for Paris by stopping a shot from Yannis Lenne around thirty seconds from the siren (34- 32).