DWhile having his first experience in the Asobal League two years after leaving handball, David Chapela rejoins Swan. The Pontevedra club asked the former player for this favor. is the plague of his wounds. Since the start of the league, Gabriel Cavalcanti, Gualter Furtado, Bruno Vzquez and Marko Ojeda, center Romn Arbeloya, winger Dani López and central defender Andr De Moura have all fallen.

Despite The Galician team has won half of the matches they have played so far, Including the last one at Cuenca and enjoying a comfortable eighth position, the coaching team and board considered Chapela a possible reinforcement. They suggested this by giving him opportunities to combine his studies with practice sessions and matches. He thought about it and finally sat down last week.

“I hadn’t touched a ball in two years and even though I was fit, I got caught on the first day,” he admits. He dedicated himself for two months until the Championship was interrupted by the Men’s World Cup. and the Swan saves the troops. “I’m coming back because it’s them. It’s like a family member asked you for help. I wouldn’t have done it any other way because I retired from handball,” Chapela explains.

I’m going back because of them. It’s like a family member asked you for help. Since I retired from handball, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

his early withdrawaloccurred and happened due to certain circumstances. They were in force in Galicia, as in other autonomous communities, in the second wave of the pandemic, 15 days confinement for just contact with an infected person, even if they did not test positive. The Cisne team had already experienced this situation at the beginning of the season. Chapela had opened a personal training and injury rehabilitation center that had to close for two weeks due to one of the quarantines. He could not afford to come again for the same reason, and had to choose between his job and handball.

“I balanced one and the other and had to choose. There was also a bit of panic. It was a very difficult decision, but I don’t regret it because it was the right decision. It made me sad to leave the team. There was one less in the middle of the competition, but I had to take this decision as much as it hurt me.” she remembers. His casualty was not another. Cisne coach of the time, Javier Fernndez ‘Jabato’, saw David as an important player.

It saddened me to leave the team with less in the middle of the competition, but as much as it hurt, I had to make this decision.

Since then, his relationship with handball has been limited to a follower of his former team. “They’re close to me and I’d stop by the club for a coffee,” she says. He didn’t really think after a while that this trusting relationship would get him back on the track, “to help in training and, if the coach so decides, whatever form it takes in games.”

Of these Two years in which Swan was downgraded and promoted again to Asobal last seasonChapela had not felt the ‘morria’ of handball. Except for one time. “When we were first promoted, it bothered me that he wasn’t on the track because competition was suspended due to the pandemic. This is the second time they’ve been able to celebrate. But I never thought about playing again. I believed it.” My stage is over,” she says, not knowing what fate will bring for her now. “I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for my illusions. I’ll try to enjoy it.”