Macedonian SEHA - Gazprom derby did not bring anything new with Vardar once again managing to defeat their biggest rivals Metalurg 32:23 (16:11) opening the season in the best possible way. Reigning champions proved they have a solution prepared for every Metalurg’s attacking option even without Luka Cindric and Rogerio Moraes who were sidelined due to injuries as well as duo Nedanovski - Oncev who were left out of the match-day roster. There was by them also no need for Arpad Sterbik to get any playtime today.

Metalurg were this time able to stay leveled only until 3:3, mostly due to their ‘seven versus six’ attacking option which did not serve them as well as it used to in previous encounters. ‘Red&Black’ were already 5 goals up after first 30 forcing coach Cervar to rotate the team finding answers with youngsters Martin Serafimov and Mario Tankoski. Hosts were in the second half able to stay quite close announcing a close finish at 18:21 but unfortunately for their fans that was as far as they could go with Vardar slowly enlarging the gap from that point on.

Timur Dibirov was once again leading Vardar on the offensive side of the court scoring 5 while on the other side Pesevski went 5/5 being the biggest threat for reigning champs in this one.