After the lighter was thrown against VfL goalkeeper Patrick Drewes, the Bundesliga game between 1. FC Union Berlin and VfL Bochum was scored 2-0 for the visiting team. This judgment was made by the sports court of the German Football Association in Frankfurt and thus upheld the objection of the Bochum team, who had taken action against the score of 1:1. An appeal against the verdict is still possible before the DFB Federal Court.
“Decisions at the green table are always the last resort, but here we are dealing with circumstances that gave us hardly any other option,” said Stephan Oberholz, chairman of the sports court, after the oral hearing: “For a special acting performance by Mr Drewes or we didn’t get the relevant clues for a plot or a spoof.”
The game was interrupted for more than 25 minutes shortly before the end on December 14th after Drewes was hit by a lighter thrown from the Union block and had to leave the field. The game continued and ended without Drewes after the incident and the interruption by referee Martin Petersen. Since Bochum had already exhausted its substitution quota, attacker Philipp Hofmann briefly went into goal. Both teams then simply passed the ball back and forth to end the encounter. VfL keeper Drewes was later examined in hospital. A test for concussion was unremarkable, a VfL spokesman said at the time.
He was hit “in the top left front” of the head, Drewes said during the three-hour hearing in the Golden Goal room on the DFB campus. “That was a goal that I noticed.” The Bochum team only went back onto the pitch after the game was interrupted in protest.
In the table, the previous bottom team Bochum now has eight points and is close to the safe places again. An objection can be lodged against the DFB Sports Court’s ruling to the association’s Federal Court within one week. Union said it had investigated the lighter thrower, filed a complaint and issued a three-year stadium ban.
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