RTV Basel and Suhr-Aarau shared the spoils on Saturday evening in the NLA, the final whistle bringing a 23-22 scoreline that felt closer than the margin suggested. To be fair, neither side could lay claim to a comfortable performance, and the result kept both sides in the lower half of the table where they have been all season.
Basel remain nine points off the top with zero wins from three games, three draws leaving them on the same number of points as their opponents. Suhr-Aarau sit eighth after that solitary victory and two draws, but the two-point gap between them and Basel tells a thinner story than the standings imply.
The visitors arrived with slightly better recent form, having edged past St Gallen 32-31 earlier in the week, while the hosts had dropped points in each of their opening fixtures. Basel's previous three games all ended in draws — 28-30 against Bern, 29-35 with Zurich, and 29-38 against Wacker Thun — so this result was nothing new for them.
By then, the pattern was clear enough. Suhr-Aarau had also been hard to beat, drawing 24-33 with Pfad Winterthur and losing narrowly 20-28 to Schaffhausen Cadets before that win. The match followed a similar template: tight defence, few clear chances, and a finish that could have gone either way.
What the scoreline hides is how evenly matched these sides have been all season. Three draws for Basel, one win and two draws for Suhr-Aarau — the difference between them is now just two points after three rounds of fixtures.