The moment of truth has come: the decisive match between Fabo Montecatini and Del Fes Avellino takes place at PalaTerme
Tonight (Wednesday 12 June) there is game 5 of the playoff final between the Fabo Montecatini and the Of Fes Avellino. For one of the two it will be glory, for the other applause and consolatory pats, soothing for a dream cherished and vanished before the hands. There is no tomorrow in the match that is up for grabs for A2 at PalaTerme (two-ball at 9pm). For an event like this, an evening that that red-blue arena has not experienced for 21 years and 11 days, it is worth mentioning a quote from Williams Shakespeare, taken from his Julius Caesar: “There is an alternating tide in human things, who seconded guides men to port; unknown or despised, throws them miserably onto the rocks. At this moment the impetuous wave is pressing us; and there is strength either to profit from it, or to cease from all hope.” The wave is the one that can bring the rossoblù to A2 at the end of a season in which the president’s team Luchi she set out with the ambition of being among the big teams, but she certainly didn’t have the spotlight on her as the leading candidate to make the jump to the category. The strength of the group and the club’s ability to build a positive and proactive environment around it was the lever that brought Natali and his teammates one step closer to the dream. Close, so much so that they were reflected twice in Avellino in the shiny cup intended for the champions. But at the same time, so far, unable to grasp the last and decisive point of the series to raise the trophy to the sky.
At PalaDelMauro, adding race-3 and race-4, there were 300 people from Montecatini. Tonight at PalaTerme there will be almost three thousand, with the hope that the team will also multiply its strength and energy with the same proportion. It won’t be easy, because the opponent has value and has demonstrated it with baskets, defenses and plays. The Herons came close to winning twice, losing the battles in Irpinia by one point and then by two points respectively. Coach Federico Barsotti he spoke of «doing that centimeter that we lack to bring it home», and it’s right because details were missing in Montecatini, not the performances in the last two races. There are winning players in the team, people who have already done it and who must show everyone the way to repeat the feat once again. By June 12th there is nothing to discover or invent for a group that has been fighting and staying together since August 18th. The rossoblù players will have to give everything they still have inside them on the pitch in this decisive game-5 to try to fulfill a dream that has distant roots and which, ultimately, is also what everyone hoped to be able to achieve on that Friday of the August bank holiday when the segmented ball bounced for the first time among these kids, gathered around the Barsotti lighthouse.
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Even if Avellino has won the last two matches, the spa team will not be afraid at PalaTerme. He won’t have it because on the very few occasions in which the players are able to lift their eyes from the parquet and take their eyes off the game they will see a tide dyed in white that bleeds red and blue, ready to push them towards the goal. The wave that is needed to reach the port, that of destiny, on which to rely to make a dream that everyone has but that no one yet has the courage to shout at the top of their lungs into a splendid reality. The path taken and what has been built is something beautiful, as is that arena sold out for one night. And all this will remain. But now there are forty minutes and winning cannot and will not be like other times: so we have to try, the team together with its people, as long as there is still a second to do it, as long as there is a drop of energy to spend on get closer and finally touch that dream that is the A2.
