Not all has been said and done in the 2007 SELAF season, but for now, the Budapest Wolves have been the dominant team in the league. A huge part of their team and offensive success has been fullback Péter Cseperkáló who, against many odds, finished the first part of the season as the league leading rusher. He carried the ball only 25 times, yet that was enough the edge out another Wolf, but from Belgrade, Uroš Milić.
“My profession is database administrator, so what I do has nothing to do with sports, but I always did something where I could compete. From the age of 14 to 23 I wrestled but due to my family, I am married and we have two kids – my daughter Dóra is 7, and my son Márkó is 4, I had to quit competing, so I started to do bodybuilding, where I could manage my time better.”
Like with a lot of football players in this part of the world his start was more by chance than anything else.
“We were in Tunisia with my wife in 2004 and I met Attila Árpa. the president of the Budapest Wolves, and he invited me to the trainings as they had just founded the team and were recruiting new players. When I showed up on the first training I did not know the rules, the positions and basically anything about football, but I liked very much what I knew about it — it is a hard, fair, and very much entertaining sport. As I was relatively big, first I started to practice at guard, but when our first head coach István Varga saw that my speed is also not too bad, he moved me to fullback position. And I enjoy it very much.”
What were your expectations before the SELAF season started?
Our head coach, Lee Hlavka always expects us to win, but this season, I think we truly had everything to accomplish our goals. So Lee’s expectation and the team’s expectation was to win both the Austrian league and SELAF, even though we did not know our opponents in SELAF, except the Gladiators, who we know is a tough opponent.
How much of a problem was playing such a tight schedule, with SELAF and the Austrian League?
Well, personally, I love it. Before the season started, many players thought that it is going to be too tight, we will not have time to regenerate and prepare for the next game, but now everybody thinks that the best practice is to play. Hopefully we can find out something for the next season to have a schedule like this!
It’s hard to find many faults for the way the Wolves have played so far. Is there anything you could’ve done better?
Of course, we had many-many mistakes, and we have to learn from our mistakes. If somebody thinks we played without mistakes he should join us to watch our game video with Lee, and he’ll realize that there are a lot of things that we screwed up. But of course we have a great coaching team, so we continuously fix these mistakes.
You knew the Gladiators from the Austrian league, how did the new teams match up to your team, especially Novi Sad which made the game close early on?
It was hard to prepare for Novi Sad, as we did not have a good quality video from their game, so what we knew about them is the impressive stats we saw on SELAF.COM. And as we expected, they played hard and it was a very-very close game, they led at first half. Talking about mistakes, this was a big mistake, and I believe this was one of the factors that led us to say goodbye to the Austrian Silver Bowl – we often start the games sleepy. We have to be mentally prepared before the game!
Talking about Novi Sad, the first thing that someone sees is Csaba Juhas is a great QB, but it’s not only him, the whole team plays great.
Was that loss in the Austrian League playoffs disappointing and will you try to make up for it in SELAF?
Yes, it was a big disappointment for everybody. We have beaten every team we played in the group matches phase; we have a loss to the Vikings, but we have beaten them back in Budapest, so we expected to win the following two games as well. But this was a playoff game, where the previous results mean nothing, and even though we had the chance to turn the game until the very last second, on that day, the Invaders were the better team; they deserved to play for the Silver Bowl.
9-0 isn’t exactly 17-0, but will you try to finish the season in SELAF without a defeat?
As Lee’s expectation is to win every game we play, and my expectations are the same, all I can say is we will do everything we can to win every game in SELAF as well.
The first step toward that goal would be the game in Belgrade against another team called the Wolves (in Serbian Vukovi). Would you say having a similar name means the rivalry is going to be more intense?
It was planned in 2006 that we would play a preparation game against the Belgrade Vukovi, but unfortunately, it did not pan out. We know that they are a good team, and we will have a hard time, but it will turn out who are the real Wolves.
In the SELAF season preview, your teammate Marton Ivanyi said the Wolves used to be more of a running team, but are more balanced now. Did that help you personally?
Yes, of course! Now that we have Jordan, and some great receivers the opponents can’t afford to have eight men in the box against us. It would cost them a lot.
I know you’re going to say what the team does is most important, but are you hoping to finish the year as the leading rusher?
OK, of course what the team does is more important, but I will try to give my best to help the team, and as a fullback, there are two ways I can help my team: blocking hard and running hard. I hope to be the best blocker and leading rusher in SELAF but first I hope to win every game we have in the autumn!