Sunday in Lugo Breogan and Girona will meet again in an ACB match. 28 years ago, the former Valvi saved the category against the Galicians in a play-out of strong emotions that ended up being decided in Fontajau in the fifth and final game. To get there, point guard Ricardo Aldrey played a key role, converting two essential free kicks for the Girona team just seconds from the end. Breogan, who had won that game would have been saved (dominated 2-1), had time to make a desperate three-pointer from midfield that was of no use (68-69). Everything would end up being decided in Girona, in a pavilion in Fontajau overflowing with, say the chronicles, 7,500 spectators.
Aldrey played two seasons at Valvi, 1994/95 and the following. Today, aged 58, he is the coordinator of the base of the low ferrol, works as a municipal councilor as an independent within the PP and works as a nurse. He fondly remembers the stage he spent in Fontajau, even though he admits that he hasn’t set foot in Girona’s regions for “eight or ten years”. “I remember that play-out against Breogan very well. Think I had a lot of friends in Lugo. He had disappeared Clesa Ferrol and many of us who were there moved on to other ACB clubs. Shortly after saving the category I went to a wedding in Lugo and everyone was reminding me of those free throws”, says the former player, who played 288 games in the elite of Spanish basketball.
At 58 years old, he is the coordinator of the Baxi Ferrol base, is a councilor at the City Council and works as a nurse
The free throws he refers to are the ones he converted with a few seconds left in the game to put Valvi up 4 (65-69). A defeat would have meant relegation. It was April 23, 1995 and a week later, in Fontajau, the people of Girona certified the permanence. “The match was marked by the elimination of the American from Breogan Maxey, which was quite decisive, and by those free kicks of mine. They were the free throws with the most pressure in my entire career, because you can already imagine how tight the pavilion was. But they came in and we secured the game… imagine if one of them had failed and they would have won or forced extra time with the triple…”, he underlines. Although nearly 28 years have passed, Ricardo Aldrey is fresh from the tie. That Valvi was led by Quim Costa and Dusko Ivanovic was the second. In the template, Ruf, Solana, Lockhart, Curry i Pardo, others. He finished with 15 points that St. George’s day. “I knew we played a lot, but the truth is that throughout the play-out the club had given us peace of mind, both the president Joaquim Vidal and the manager Albert García Rafanell”. With the victory, and having saved the hecatomb, “we knew that in Fontajau we could not fail, with our people, and also, with the loss of Maxey to the rival”. And so it was (77-67).
That was Valvi’s second consecutive play-out in Fontajau’s first two years (the previous year Husca had been eliminated) and from that moment the club began to look upwards, especially with the arrival of Trifon Poch on the bench in the middle of the following season. Aldrey remembers that stay fondly “because my family and my son, who is already 29 years old, very small, were in the stands”. The former base follows the ACB and has returned to Lugo to watch the derbies Breogan-Workshop several times. He does not rule out going there on Sunday to see Marc Gasol’s new Girona. “The city is on fire, with Uni, ACB and football”, he exclaims.