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Robert Mayer has a chance to win the club’s first championship title with Servette. It would be so many things for the goalkeeper. The pinnacle of his career, a satisfaction, a confirmation of his qualities. Because the 33-year-old has never had it easy. Neither in hockey nor in life.
Mayer was only four years old when his mother moved with him and his older brother from what was then Czechoslovakia to Chur in the canton of Graubünden. It is difficult for him to integrate in school. Only on the ice can he forget all his problems once he puts on the mask. As a teenager he moved to Kloten before disappearing from the Swiss hockey scene in 2007.
Mayer plays abroad for seven seasons. Two years in the Canadian junior league, then in the AHL and EHCL. In the spring of 2014, the dual national (Sz/Tsch) made his debut in the Swiss national team – and the then head of sports and coach of Geneva, Chris McSorley, signed him. The Canadian says today: “If he feels that victory is possible, he is one of the best.” In Geneva, the goalkeeper finds a real home for the first time.
But opinions differ on Mayer’s performances. In the quarter-finals of the playoffs in 2015 and in the fall of 2019, the emotional goalkeeper received a match suspension because he hit an opponent with his blocker. He is also notorious for risky trips out of the box with fatal goals.
Serious motorcycle accident in Canada
In the summer of 2017, disaster struck brutally off the ice. Flashback, mid-July: Mayer is on his motorcycle in Saint John, Canada, a day before his return trip to Geneva. Then the fateful moment: the national goalkeeper falls with his 600 engine and hits his back. He gets up and drives home in shock. “I changed there. The pain was probably tempered by the adrenaline,” he said after the accident.
To be sure, he goes to the hospital. There’s the shock diagnosis: internal bleeding, collapsed lung, six broken ribs, two broken vertebral processes. Mayer is lucky in the accident. Although he has to stay in intensive care for three days, surgery is not necessary. Two and a half weeks after the fall, he flies to Geneva and starts light training.
In Blick’s 2019 playoff extra, Mayer says, “The motorcycle accident changed my thinking about death immensely and further developed me in my life. After the accident it remained silent. With emotions and thoughts whether to give up or fight. I felt an extreme energy to continue living.”
HCD makes him a scapegoat
Mayer fought. On and off the ice – although this should by no means be placed on the same level. He has recovered from the drama of the accident as impressively as he has from the low point of his career. In 2020 he will move from Geneva to Davos on a four-year contract. After losing the first pre-playoff game against Bern, HCD coach Christian Wohlwend labeled him a scapegoat. Davos wants to get rid of him.
After a stopover in Langnau, Mayer returns to Geneva this season. To his house. He’s under house arrest, started a family. He looks more balanced between the posts. In the quarter-finals against Lugano, after being outnumbered in the first three games, he was only the third goalkeeper to score a goal. In the semifinals he guided Geneva against Zug to the final. The title is just four wins away.
Source : Blick
I’m Emma Jack, a news website author at 24 News Reporters. I have been in the industry for over five years and it has been an incredible journey so far. I specialize in sports reporting and am highly knowledgeable about the latest trends and developments in this field.
