Moura’s impressive streak was broken after a 6-1 away win against Vita Hasten last Sunday.
Match Dalala’s team tried to move on after a large portion of the team developed a stomach ailment.
– 15 people spat and then things escalated, says Andreas Haglund, sporting director of Mora.
The in-form Mora had a 16-game winning streak with points in the hockey Allsvenskan. But this past Saturday, the day before the game against Whitehorse, a stomach bug found its way into the team.
– Sunday night derailed. People were throwing up everywhere and it felt really bad. Of course we tried to cancel the match, which is normal when the team is very sick, but we were allowed to play the match, which feels like the last time, says Hägglund.
P4 Dalarna reported earlier in the day that Moura tried by all means to move the match along. Hägglund told Sportbladet that about 75 percent of the team has been affected.
– We just wanted to send the team home to recover. If you have to play a sick player, you don’t know what the health consequences will be. A big compliment to our players for trying. But I don’t know, it’s just weird, he says.
I got sick during the match
Any players who were there yesterday are sick now?
– Yes. Those who fell ill during the match and fell ill after the match. Those who started vomiting are now likely to get better, Hägglund says.
How many patients so far?
– Good question. We locked them up so they weren’t allowed to come here today. But it’s not much better than it used to be. I spoke to some today, no one has eaten their backs in two days. Even if they do recover, it will take a day or so before they come back again.
Hägglund says there were players who played with an active infectious disease.
– We tried to borrow players, but no one wants to come to a team with stomach flu. If everyone who was sick had dropped out, he says, there would be no match, he says.
Was walking more would be the alternative?
– If I didn’t have the wrong information, we would be fined and it would be weird to pay when we got sick.
What does Whitehasten think of sick players?
– They understood our situation. Then they got their only title and I totally respect that. Maybe they wanted to go through with the match, but I don’t think it’s up to the two of us to find out. The decision must come from above.
Vita Hästen’s sporting director Patrik Degerstedt wrote in an SMS that no one in Vita Hästen fell ill the day after the match.
I discussed internally
Hockeyallsvenskan sporting director Erik Ryman describes the situation as unfortunate. He says there have been long discussions about calling the match. But it’s hard to make sure everyone who gets reported sick really is, and from a scheduling perspective, it’s not easy to get a game moving on such short notice.
But Hockey Allsvenskan debated internally whether the regulations could be changed.
– These are the competition regulations for Swedish hockey. We’ll probably be able to discuss and see if another solution can be found if an incident like this happens again, he says.