At the Stadion am Böllenfalltor in 2. Bundesliga action on Friday evening, the hosts came away with the victory in the last few seconds of the match as they defeated Eintracht Braunschweig by a final score of 1-0.
In a very physical first half of play, both sides looked to attack up and down the pitch, but the quality in the final third was poor from both sides.
With just six minutes off the clock, a header following a corner from Nik Omladic went straight into the hands of Christian Mathenia. Then, in the 12th minute, Eintracht Braunschweig got their best chance of the first half as a header from the Swiss central defender, Saulo Decarli, looked destined to find the back of the net but Mathenia was up to the challenge once more and produced a fine save to keep the score level.
Darmstadt grew as the match went along and became more confident the longer they kept the clean sheet. Gondorf had a go from well outside the box and forces Rafal Gikiewicz to make a good save as the match reached the 20th minute. After a little bit of sloppiness from the home side in their attacking half of the pitch, the ball finally rolled to Gondorf who let fly from some distance only to see his effort skip to the right of the goal.
The second of the match was more of the same, except Darmstadt was starting to really control the ball. It seemed as though Gondorf could only shoot from long distance and he did it again in the 57th minute, but his shot was hit into the center part of the goal where Gikiewicz was able to catch the ball easily.
That was really the last action of the evening as neither side could really threaten the opposition goal keeper. However, Darmstadt would somehow pull out a winner at the death through the substitute, Jan Rosenthal. The initial shot from Stroh-Engel was blocked just inside the 18 yard box and the ball rolled to the match winner who fired it into the bottom right corner of the goal from about 20 yards out, stealing all three points for Die Lillen.