Werner Graves

Werner Gräber (born November 18, 1939 , † November 3, 1995 ) was a German football player. For Hannover 96 he played 89 games in the Bundesliga from 1964 to 1968 and scored 13 goals.

career

Werner Gräber went through the youth department of Meidericher SV . Young colleagues as well as later players in the football upper league West were Werner Lotz , Heinz Versteeg , Werner Krämer , Dieter Danzberg , Hartmut Heidemann and Manfred Müller . In the catch-up game on April 12, 1959, the young player made his debut in the league as a left wing at the home game against Preußen Münster under coach Helmut Kronsbein . In the 1-0 defeat, he stormed alongside Werner Krämer, Werner Lotz, Heinz Versteeg and Kurt Nolden. Since he only made 15 appearances in the league with two goals in three rounds, 1958/59 to 1960/61, he took a step back over the next two years and joined the traditional club Duisburg 48/99 in the south of Duisburg of the 2nd League West. In the Fugmann-Kampfbahn, where ex-national player Willy Busch had experienced the better times of the black and whites, he reached the runner-up in the last year of the old first-class upper division system and the substructure of the 2nd division, 1962/63, and made with his performances the ambitious representative of the Lower Saxony state capital, Hannover 96, attracted the attention. Gräber moved to Hanover for the 1963/64 round and played with the “Reds” in the North Regional Football League . The goalkeeper Horst Podlasly came from Hamborn and the center forward Walter Rodekamp from Schalke 04 . Coach Helmut Kronsbein reached the runner-up with the 96ers - Gräber, he played mostly as a half-forward and scored eleven goals in 28 games - and thus moved into the first round of promotion to the Bundesliga.

Against the southern champion Hessen Kassel, the western champion Alemannia Aachen and the southwest vice FK Pirmasens, Hanover prevailed in the promotion round in six games. Gräber played all six games and scored four goals, including the two on the first matchday, in the 2-1 away win in Kassel and the winning goal on the third matchday, in the 2-1 home win against Aachen.

Gräber and his promoted colleagues started with a 2-0 away win at Borussia Dortmund on August 22, 1964 in the Bundesliga. The first Bundesliga home game took place eight days later in the Lower Saxony stadium against the premier Bundesliga champions, 1. FC Köln . In front of 78,000 spectators, Werner Gräber scored the two goals for a 2-0 home win against the “billy goats” from Cologne, led by Leo Wilden and Hans Schäfer . At the end of the round, the climber finished fifth with 33:27 points and Gräber had scored five hits in 24 missions.

Under coach Horst Buhtz - 1966 to February 12, 1968 - the half-forward was again in the regular formation with 27 appearances and four goals in the 1966/67 season. When Jupp Heynckes and Josip Skoblar, two well-known strikers came to Hanover for the 1967/68 round , the man from Duisburg ended his career in the Bundesliga after another 21 Bundesliga appearances with two goals in the summer of 1968. His last appearance in the Bundesliga took place on April 6, 1968 in a 2-1 home win against VfB Stuttgart. In the trade fair cup , his three appearances in the 1965/66 round against FC Barcelona stood out. The home game against the Catalans was won 2-1 goals, lost at Camp Nou 0-1 and the play-off ended on March 2, 1966 in Hanover 1-1 after extra time. Barcelona went one round by drawing lots and later prevailed in the finals against Real Zaragoza.

In the summer of 1968, Gräber moved to Wuppertaler SV in the West Regional Football League for one season . His previous coach Buhtz also took up his new post there and with him also moved from Hanover Hermann Straschitz to the stadium at the Zoo . In addition, Reza Adelkhani , Heinz Bonn , Jürgen Radau , Rainer Skrotzki and Herbert Stöckl came to Wuppertal. At the end of the lap it was enough to make a good fifth place, but the three teams at the top of the table, RW Oberhausen, RW Essen and VfL Bochum, had a clear lead. Gräber played in 32 games alongside top performers Emil Meisen , Erich Miss and Manfred Reichert , but broke his tent in Wuppertal after only one round. He was drawn back to Hanover, where from 1969 to 1971 he tied his boots for SV Arminia Hanover for two years in the Football Regionalliga Nord (31 games - 5 goals).

literature

• Lorenz Knieriem, Hardy Grüne : Player Lexicon 1890 - 1963 . In: Encyclopedia of German League Football . tape 8 . AGON, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 .
• Dembowski, Piesczek, Riederer: In the zebra territory. The history of MSV Duisburg. The workshop, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89533-307-7 .
• Hardy Greens (Ed.): The ball. The lawn. The Reds. 100 years Hannover 96. Agon, Kassel 1995, ISBN 3-928562-77-0 .

Web links

• Werner Gräber at Kicker online
• Werner Gräber on footballdata.de