DDR. Perhaps the most predictable championship in Europe by now, so the big news for this season could be only that it was the last season of big, divided into 5 groups, Second Division. It was going to be reorganized into 2 groups and reduced by 24 teams in the next year. Little was heard of the East German second level and little important came out of it since 1971, when the strange format was introduced. Generally, only a handful of former top league members won it, only to return back in one or two seasons at the bottom of the upper level. So, in the last season of existence of the large format most clubs were largely concerned with securing a place in the new leagues, having not a thought about promotion. That is, the big problem remained intact: the Second Division contributed next to nothing to the development of East German football. As a rule of thumb, very rarely 2 teams competed for the top spot in any second division group – this season their was competitive race only in Group E – three teams tried to win the championship. BSG Motor (Suhl) eventually prevailed with 31 points, leaving BSG Motor (Nordhausen) 2nd with 30 points and Gluckauf (Sondershausen) 3rd with 29 points.
Motor (Babelsberg) – 2nd in Group B.
Chemie (Premnitz) – 8th in Group B. Well, enough of a glimpse inside the Second Division: clubs with scary industrial names played there. Motor was going to play in the same level the next year, but Premnitz was going down to the third division. They were never to come back to second division football.
BSG Stahl (Henningsdorf) – 9th in Group B. Like Chemie (Premnitz), going down, but unlike Chemie they eventually climbed back.
After the regular season the group winners played a mini-league championship between themselves for the 2 promotional spots. This season distinguished itself of the only season when a group winner either withdrew or was not allowed to play in the promotional tournament. The reasons are unknown, but the winner of Group A,
Vorwaerts (Neubrandenburg) was replaced with second-placed Dynamo (Schwerin). Dynamo was either caught by surprise or was quite weak, for they were outsiders in the ‘league of champions’. Which was supposed to be dominated by BSG Sachsenring (Zwickau), the only former first division member among the candidates for promotion this year and also the most confident Group winner. Alas, it was not to be.
Dynamo (Schwerin) (Group A) finished last with 5 points from 8 games.
BSG Sachsenring (Zwickau) (Group D) was 4th, also with 5 points. Back in the 1970s they were stable first division members and even played in the European tournaments, but now were in big decline. May be it was good Jurgen Croy did not play anymore: arguably the all-time best East German goalkeeper would have been very frustrated if playing second division football.
Vorwaerts (Dessau) (Group C) ended 3rd with 7 points. Not really a candidate for promotion.
BSG Motor (Suhl) (Group E) took the 2nd place with 10 points. Playing cautious game – they tied half of their matches, 4 – they managed to get promoted. It was grand success – they never played top league football before.
BSG Stahl (Brandenburg) were confident winners of the ‘champions league’ just like they were confident winners of Group B. 6 wins, 1 tie, 1 loss, 21-7 goal-difference and 13 points. Standing from left: Horst Kölsch, Frank Jeske, Rainer Fliegel, Michael Schulz, Christoph Ringk, Winfried Kräuter, Peter Schoknecht, Holger Bahra, Christian Knoop, Co-Trainer Eckhard Düwiger, Siegfried Ziem.
Crouching: Andreas Lindner, Physiotherapeut Gerd Meißner, Eckart Märzke, Gerhard Kraschina, Hubert Gebhardt, Karsten Heine, Siegfried Malyska, Thomas Arendt, Holger Döbbel.
Just like Motor (Suhl), they never had played top league football, so it was their best season so far. As for the future… hardly anybody expected newcomers to last in the first division, let alone to change the status quo. Stahl was seen only of having better chance for staying longer than a single season among the best than Motor.