Wednesday 11th April saw a bad water polo team beat a slightly worse water polo team. More through weight of numbers rather than skill and ability, the Narwhals were triumphant 16-8 against Blue Marlin. Apparently it was the first game of the summer league – but someone should have told the weather…
Despite the fact the fixture lacked any appeal – long drive, shallow pool, late night – the pub afterwards is quite nice, so we were in danger of fielding a full 13-man squad. However we managed to strategically avoid this – the Lord of Limoncello was collecting the dowry for his daughter whilst Andy W picked up a match day maddy for a late cry-off. Equally worrying was John “Punchy” Holah’s disappearance – requesting a lift from Finch Snr but not turning up. Our suspicion is that he spent 24hrs in Portuguese Police custody.
I can’t remember much of the game, but all the classic moves were there. Sensational blocks from messers Gamble and Loveless both resulted in own goals, Rob “woody” Loveless continued to bother low flying aircraft and Finch Jnr picked up his customary middle of the pool major. Gary “Duke of Edinburgh” Bowen made a triumphant return, picking up 3 majors for his troubles.
Slightly more worrying was our inability to set up a 3-3 attack for a man-up. Below is how it should have looked, and then how we did it…
or something similar to the Narwhal trademarked 2-1-2-1 formation…
For those of you who are interested, someone did a better tic-tac corner than me. (http://www.waterpoloplanet.com/HTML_Dave_pages/dm11_water_polo_tactics.html)
Equally, for a team who lack any real motivation to do much swimming, we were very good at swimming back to halfway – despite the ask being for a full press. I am sure we can work on that at our next training session… boooooooooooooppppppp.
Man of the match went to Nick “not so selfish” Shute for grabbing himself 4 goals and for uncharacteristically passing to other team members to let them score. He also won moment of the match for an audacious attempt to do a back flick thing towards the goal. I can’t remember it, but he got 4 votes for it… so well done.
Fluffer was a close run thing this week. Shute was close to getting the triple crown for not passing to Charles. In contrast to the reasons he won man of the match, he decided to shoot and score rather than let Charles escape the Portuguese police. That being said, I would have voted him fluffer if he had helped Charles avoid that flight to Lisbon – so swings and roundabouts. Gamble and Loveless were also close with their dramatic own goals, but the winner this week, for his delightfully well worked call for a time out is Matt “1 second to go” Finch. Calling a time out with 1 second to go in the 4th is superb even by his own very high standards. Congratulations.
The Narwhals continue you their march on against Enfield next week. Hopefully we have mastered the 3-3 by then…
Forza Narwhali!!