For the first time in 15 years, St Otmar St Gallen have been crowned handball league champions after winning the third match in a best-of-three series against Pfadi Winterthur, 29-22.

With the series level at 1-1 before Saturday's decisive final leg, both teams went into the match knowing that defeat would bring to an end all hope of taking the championship.

Narrow victories by both teams in the previous two encounters of the series - 26-27 to St Otmar in the first and 31-30 to Pfadi on the second leg - meant that Saturday's match was always going to be a close contest.

Throughout the first half of the match, both teams matched each other virtually point for point, but St Otmar began to pull ahead in the second half and soon left their opponents with a seven point deficit which proved impossible to make up.

St Otmar's Swedish player-manager Robert Hedin professed himself delighted with the result, which brings to an end a decade and a half-long drought for the club who last won the Swiss title back in 1986.

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