Cardiff B's in Nationals

This year Cardiff B team has entered into the National Division 4 Canoe Polo League. So this means we're all lucky enough to have to play even more polo. Luckily I have nothing to do with the organising of this tournament, or any of the Cardiff B stuff to be fair, so all I have to do is turn up on time on the day.

Arriving at Cheltenham, which is where the tournament for the South West is held, I was actually feeling slightly excited, even though that morning I was in no way up for polo. I liken the experience to a prostate exam; even though there is a thrill and exhilaration to having a finger up the bum, pre and post finger is full of nerves and regret. I.e. Canoe Polo is fun while you're playing, but before and after it's as though you don't wanna go or you regret going.

So we got into the polo, and watched the first game. Well I say game, when you see a bunch of incompetent chumps paddling in an erratic display of cluelessness you can't really call it a game.

Chump shot 1

Luckily we were on the next game. Again I say game, I dunno what it was, possibly the fact that seeing a bad game made us play badly, but we were just as crap as the rest of the chumps in the pool. Its like the Canoe Polo association had managed to seal in a good proportion of morons, Cardiff included, but never managed to eliminate the lot through a good old terrorist-like attack. Fortunately we did win this game, although probably undeservedly.

Bridgend played after us, and as always they were actually a good team that could play well together. But our second game was against them. This really showed up how poor our polo is. Obviously we lost, mostly because we play like a rabbit in the headlights.

Chump Shot 2

Above is Meridian vs Bristol (or something like that), and our next game was against Bristol (greens). Now this turned out to probably be our best game. The first half we managed to use tactics, which is generally out of our realm. But it was working, we were 1-0 up. In the second half there was a drawing goal scored, so the decision was to play 5 out. We didn't play this very well, as man marking is not the forte for the team, but we got a goal to win the game, so a positive outcome from a good first half and scrappy second.

An actual goal

Our last game was against some team, I don't remember their name, but they weren't exactly good. And this is where my heart sinks, because we lost. (we didn't actually lose, it was a draw. But drawing to a shit team is basically losing. It's kinda like saying stalemate in chess is a draw. It isn't, in chess everyone losses, esp. in the event of a draw)

So that sums up a pretty crappy set of games by Cardiff B's. Hopefully we'll learn from this and actually try in the next comp.

Till then...

First South West

Sunday 23^rd September saw the first day of the South West division for Cardiff Canoe Polo Club this season. With Andy Francis dislocating his arm at the last competition I have yet again had to write for Polo The Consequences. I very much hope this doesn’t become an ongoing theme, as I am not overly keen for the polo discipline, and obviously I hope Andy gets better or whatever. However, as I have to put up some info on the games, it gives me the opportunity to display some photos from my new DSLR camera. There has also luckily been a Kayak The Consequences blog recently if you would like to read and watch a video.

On the Monday before the weekend, I received a phone call from Blondie, one of the A-team players, asking me to play on the Sunday. I begrudgingly agreed, even though all I wanted to do on the weekend was chill out, mostly because I didn’t have any excuse to say no.

The weather on Sunday was terrible, I really was not in the mood for polo, even though it was an indoor comp, any climatic condition doesn’t exactly make polo interesting. Then I was told we only had four players; Either we had to try and convince a B-team player to stay on from their morning games, or play a man down against teams better than us. Luckily on arrival Morgan Williams agreed to stay on, which was a gain for us and a massive call from him.

So with my new Nikon D3200 I got into my photographer mindset. Unfortunately I’m none the wiser as to what I am doing with a DSLR, so a few of the photos came out dark, and some blurred. However the majority of the blog will be photos, and mostly of the Aberfan team, due to the fact that they were playing every other game, and I couldn’t exactly photograph our team! What the team, and the blog, ideally need is a chump to come along and take photos for us, but until that happens I will be fulfilling the chump roll.

The first game we had was against Bareforrest, and they gave us a decent pasting. I would attempt to give more detail, but really when it came down to it, they just scored a lot, and we didn’t.

Avon B was second, and this was a game that we could win. Playing reasonably well in the first half, I believe we were up. Yet in the second half we were playing as though it was still a draw, and with a break on us, Avon managed to get the goal for a draw. But it didn’t stop there, with Avon getting yet another goal to take the score in their favour by one. This was a disappointing loss, as we were playing as though we should have won.

With Cherwell as our third game, we were expecting a similar defeat as we saw against Bareforrest, but in the first couple minutes we scored. We played exceptionally well in the first half, getting to half time at 2-2. This was good, but our tiredness showed in the second half, and the final score was 4-2.

By this time Morgan was showing signs of physical and emotional drainage, which after an 08:00 start and 8 games under his belt I can understand why. With Aberfan next it wasn’t as though it was going to get easier. A 7-1 loss ensued, and getting a goal against them was enough of a victory for me.

The final game was Penzance, which is one that we could actually win. We played well, but there was a distinct lack of energy in the game. I cannot remember the score, but it was a Cardiff Victory, which meant we came 5^th out of 6 during the day.

Now for some photos:

Cardiff B's rocking it

Cherwell putting on the pace

Cherwell vs. Avon B sprint

Aberfan vs. Bareforest sprint

Elan Winter putting on the pace

Aberfan with the ball

Elan Winter avoiding being pushed over (crafty)

Rob Lineham with fast hands (Too fast for my camera, unless I unwittingly put on some slower shutter speed)

Welsh League Finals

The Welsh League is normally over and done with by May or June, but this year the weather was so bad that the final weekend had to be called off and rearranged for September.  Cardiff A went into it mid-table having played remarkably average in the first 2 tournaments.  I wasn’t at the earlier tournaments but this is what I was told.  

The Uni, on the other hand, went into the tournament bottom of the league, but this was because they couldn’t make the previous 2 tournaments due to exams and other student stuff, so they hadn’t played any games yet.  This meant they were going to have to play every team twice this weekend, so they had 10 games on and off the whole day!  They were going to be more tired than a Mexican who had just finished his first day of work.

Cardiff B were looking for promotion and had brought along their internation Iranian ringer to help them out...  With him in their team would have probably beaten the A team, but they didn't want to swap any player around just to make sure they were promoted.

They won their first game 20-0.  A score which was embarrassing more for them than the team they were playing against.  

This photo is Rob beating a Cardiff Uni girl in the sprint, but it looks pretty close.  The girls were all just too excited about the Iranians abs to care about the score!  It is a different class of polo player who does push ups between the games...

We had to play Rhonda A, Aberfan A and B, Cardiff Uni twice and Dragon.  Straight away it was obvious that the weekend had clashed with another event, as the teams we were due to play would have struggled in the baby leagues.  It felt like a waste of time even turning up, but if we aren’t going to support the local league then who will?

The day was looking pretty standard, we had our first game with the uni, which we won fairly easily, we had a fiery game against Rhonda, where we were accused of cheating many times!  This wasn’t the case, we were just poor and they were worse, but we ended up winning.  We then played the Aberfan teams which were the hardest games of the day but we won both.  

It all kicked off in our second game against the Uni, they decided that they didn’t want to play fair and pushed me over into an oncoming boat.  One dislocated shoulder later and they manage to scrape a draw against us.  This called for a short but exciting trip to A&E with Helen behind the wheel of my car.  Bearing in mind she hadn’t driven a manual car since the day she passed her test, I was fairly happy with just the one stall on the way there.

I found out later that we came third overall so I should get a sweet medal.  The B’s won the league and got promoted, so it should be fun next year playing against them!

London International

The weekend of the 11^th & 12^th August saw the London International Canoe Polo Tournament in Danson Park, and Cardiff entered a team into the third division (of four).

Andy Francis, who normally writes for Polo The Consequences, couldn’t play this tournament, as he was watching the Olympic Canoe Sprint finals, so I (Rob Haley of Kayak The Consequences fame) will be writing this post. My style is a little more blunt than Andy’s, but as he is the lead of this section of the Stuff The Consequences team I will endeavour to ensure my post is in keeping with his previous ones. I.e I will stick to the facts and not lower the tone too badly.

Getting out of work on the Friday afternoon, packing and loading the boats onto my Citroën Saxo Desire (Joanna); Max, Jonny and I were ready for the journey to the other side of London from Cardiff.  Getting to the M25 was relatively painless in terms of traffic, but as Joanna has no air-conditioning it was boiling inside her.  I mean the three of us were sweating more than an innocent black man defending himself in front of a white South African jury.  It was uncomfortable, and the start of the traffic on the M25 was not helping.  By the time we arrived at Danson park we were feeling the heat, but as the journey wasn’t as long as originally expected, we got the tent up and were able to get to the marquee to have a couple beers.

Jonny went to get the playlist, and following one of the Bristol Uni guys, Max and I trusted he could complete this simple task.  For everyone who hasn’t met Jonny, he has the time keeping skills of a intellectually stunted goat and little in the way of awareness of his surroundings.  So when the chap from Bristol Uni returned with his teams’ playlist, it wasn’t unexpected that Jonny was nowhere to be seen.  Luckily he turned up a while later, albeit without the playlist because apparently this was too difficult of a chore, to say when we were playing first.  A 07:30 first game; Who against, what pitch and information of the rest of the day did not come back with him.  Jonny’s brain, much like the aforementioned goat, can’t carry too much data all at once.  The idea of an early morning sucked, as I was hoping for a few drinks that evening.  So an early-ish night was decided upon, and we headed to the tent before midnight.

The morning came too quickly, and our first game was against Avon C.  Knowing the size of the Avon club, we prepared for a tough game.  To our surprise we were doing very well against them, and won the game 9-0 (I think).  This gave us a boost, and also the feeling that we may be in a division below where we should be.  But a win is a win, and I am more than happy to lay the smack down when it comes to a competition.  The following game against Manvers went to a similar tune, with another win under our belt.

Figure 1: The team mid tactic talks

With a decent break between games, we chilled out.  Jonny and I needed to work on the tans, Jonny especially as without his good looks he would be fairly screwed, and as the weather was amazing the decision to de-top was taken.  With a whole load of manliness being displayed from ourselves, lesser men seemed threatened and were quick to follow suit.  Before long there was more skin on show than a tubby girl in a tank top.

The next game was against Liverpool, and both Jonny and myself required the use of the facilities.  Unfortunately we hadn’t factored queuing time into this, and I was late to get onto the pitch, arriving when we were 1-0 down.  Luckily, when we were back to full strength, Cardiff managed to get into form and make the most of the previous two games practice to score some more goals.  Liverpool weren’t exactly finely tuned in ability, but they hit hard and weren’t afraid of putting everything they had into the game.  However the final score was something along the lines of 3-2 to Cardiff.  This meant that if we beat St. Albans Ladies in our last pool game, we would be top of the pool and have another game on the Saturday evening.

So we geared up for the final pool game.  Now you may have read St. Albans Ladies and thought that surely this couldn’t be the hardest of games, but when it comes to canoe polo the ladies can be just as quick and skilled as the men.  This proved even more true on the pitch, when the scores were close.  For some reason there was one bloke on their team, and none of us could really understand his place on a ladies side, but he was a tasty player.  I assume that he was some sort of tool used to stop all of the girls’ periods syncing and screwing up their chances.  The game was hard fought, and unfortunately Cardiff lost relatively convincingly.  I know Figure 2 shows them shooting against Canada, but it was similar to them shooting against us.

Figure 2: St. Albans Ladies shooting

This sucked as it meant a 08:00 start on the Sunday instead of another Saturday evening game and a lay-in on Sunday.  However I had already set my sights on having a few drinks that evening, so this small blip in the plan wouldn’t change that.

That evening we hit up a pub then curry house, which was very pleasant (although not on my diet plan), and had a few drinks.  Apparently I have lost my tolerance, because after the first shandy I was feeling tipsy straight away.  Having had food and getting back to the marquee, a couple more cans and the team were ready for bed.

07:00 came about too quickly, and we found out we were playing Meridian Y and Clapham that morning.  Winning both games would see us through to the Semis.  The first game against Meridian Y was tough, and we saw ourselves 5-2 down at the end of the first half.  This was bad as the team wanted to place top three so badly.  The tactic was to go into the second half and hit hard.  We played 5 out (which is basically man on man marking) and this seemed to favour us.  Scoring 5 goals in that half and not conceding a single one meant we had won our first game.  This was good.  Clapham next could see us through to the Semi-Finals!!!

Going 1-0 ahead in the first few minutes we thought it was going well.  However Clapham were on form, and the score was back to evens within minutes.  Second half saw Clapham 3-2 up, and we knew that this could be it for us.  We had to hit back, we had to score.  But nothing was coming, and the time was running out.  Somehow we got a ball into their zone (defence) and it was shot, finding its way past the keeper.  A draw, and the buzzer went.  We didn’t know what this meant, would a draw be good enough, could we get a decent Semi being low down.  Going back to base, and having a look at the playlist and score sheet, we noticed that St. Albans Ladies drew their match on the Sunday.  This was good for us, and meant that we were most definitely through to the Semis; it transpired that we came top of the group.  This meant we would play Canada Ninjas.  St. Albans Ladies would play Meridian Y.  Perfect we had the easiest team of the four, and one of the two teams we found difficult would play the other out.

Although we knew that Canada would be a hard game, it was going to be the easiest out of all the teams in the Semi-Finals.  Keeping a tight defence, we managed to hold off goals and by chasing hard and attacking in a strong and controlled manner, we won the first of our two last games.  St. Albans Ladies lost to Meridian Y, to our surprise, so it was going to be a repeat of our first game of the day.  This was it, we were in the final!

Meridian had learnt from our first game, and came out strong, scoring first.  We were chasing and this was a bad position to be in.  Somehow we evened up, but going 3-2 down in the second half and not much time to go, it looked dim.  Jonny got a break, and getting into the defence, he had a shot on.  This was it, but he hit the crossbar.  Luckily Matt was on the other side of the pitch, recovered the ball and put it in the goal.  Jonny was saved by Matt’s quick hands, and the buzzer went.  Into extra time and golden goal.  This was nerve racking.  Any mess-up and we could be out, only a silver.  We won the re-start, and were attacking the zone, but nothing was showing.  Meridian were doing well to keep us out, and stop shots being on.  We then lost the ball, this wasn’t good, didn’t want to be on the back foot in golden goal.  A Meridian player got the break; luckily Matt was covering, but went a little too vigorously into the tackle and gave away a foul.  He was lucky to not get carded, but this gave us time to get back into zone.  We kept a strong defence, and as Meridian did before us, kept them away from a shooting position.  The first period of extra time was up, and swapping ends showed people were tired.  We couldn’t play the same tactics we did in the first game against Meridian as they were faster than us and had learnt what we were doing in the game before.  At the re-start, I think Max was sprinting, and was fouled.  This was good, for two reasons.  Firstly I always enjoy when Max is the subject of a foul, not because he plays up or anything like that, I just like seeing him getting fouled.  Secondly we had the ball.  A quick transition back into play and we were hitting their defense.  This was it, we were making gains and seeing the signs of a weak defence.  I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but a shot opportunity showed itself, and I believe Jonny took it and we had it.  The gold was ours!

The team was ecstatic; London International and we came top of our division.  Getting changed and packing the car ready for the prize giving, we were elated.  During the prize giving, the Mayor of Bexleyheath (at least I assume that is what he was) was giving out the trophies.  We go up, shake his hand, but no gold medal.  Just a photo and a glass plaque.  Both of them were very nice, but I really wanted a medal to rub in other peoples faces.  I quickly got over this though, as a win is a win, and that will do.

Figure 3: The team and our plaque

The journey back to Cardiff was painless, and quicker than the one down to London.  When we were about 10 minutes from Cardiff, Jonny remembered that he had to somehow get home to Penarth that evening.  I don’t know how it had only just occurred to him, but he looked up the train times, and the final train for him was in 10 minutes.  This was gonna be tight.  He really is poor at planning that boy.  Luckily Max and myself managed to direct ourselves the best way through the traffic, as Jonny’s decision making skills were as useful as his time keeping skills, and we got him on his train, to leave the both of us with putting boats away.

I hope you enjoyed the post, and be sure to check out Stuff The Consequences if you liked what you read by myself.

 
Figure 4: (a) A competition polo ball     (b) A weighted polo ball for training

Welsh Open!

Being the Welsh Open, you would have expected Cardiff Canoe Polo Club to play a larger role in the organisation of the tournament, but (and I speak only for myself) we are all pretty lazy and having to organise anything is way too much effort.  We have shown our support though, and entered at least one team in the tournament since the club was formed in 2007, and to be honest, our track record in the tournament isn’t too great.  Last year I made the mistake of playing with the B team and we got beaten by the GB under 21 girls about 10-1.  This year we entered the A team entered (plus an Aberfan ringer) in Division 1, and Cardiff Uni Kayakers entered a team in Division 2.  The team was: Tim Williams, Elan Winter, Dave Morgan, Rob Haley, Matt Jenkins and Andy Francis (me).  Stronger than our normal national league team, makes me wish were a bit better normally!

In the past few years, the Welsh Open has moved about a bit, mostly moving around Cardiff Bay from the Graving Dock to the Cardiff International White Water Centre, which has been amazing for us as it has always meant a 10 minute drive and a nice bed for the night… but this year the organisers (Bridgend Canoe Club) decided to hold it a bit closer to their homes, in the North Dock in Llanelli.  This is still only a 50 minute drive for us, but for every other team coming from around the UK, its 50 minutes on top of a 3/4hr journey!  Ahh well, apparently there is no distance too far for polo!  It also led to the decision about whether to camp or drive each morning.  Luckily my decision was made for me as I was able to stay in a house on the Gower, about 15 minutes from the docks.

The biggest issue I heard from the weekend was from the camp site.  Luckily I was not at it, but when I arrived early Saturday morning it didn’t take long for the complaints to start.  Seagulls.  The little bastards kept everyone up all night!  At least our team was in a van and able to move it for the second night!  I also heard that the bacon rolls only had one rasher in them... Bacon rolls should have more than one rasher in them!  More bacon is always better.

We were in Division 1, which looks like this:

Group A:
Dragon
Nomad A
Avon Y
Cherwell A
Team Canada

Group B:
Kingston A
Meridian D
Avon X
FOA Z
Cardiff CC

After being told to arrive at 9, and getting there early, I was fairly unimpressed to find out our first game wasn’t until 10.30.  Bloody Rob the trickster.  An hour and a half later and we were playing Kingston.  I think they must have the same first game syndrome that we have (where you don’t play very well in their first game) as they seemed to struggle against us.  It ended up in 3-2 loss, but seeing as Elan thought it was going to be about 5-1 I think we can be fairly happy with it!

Next up we were playing FOA, a young team of Scousers…  We ended up with a fairly comfortable 6-3 win which helped to boost confidence after the first lost.

Our third game was against Avon.  We play them quite a lot, pretty much every tournament and in most leagues.  After a hard fought game we ended up winning 3-2.  A last minute goal to get the win!

Our last group game was with Meridian.  Looking at the team it looked like a ULU old boys team!  We walked away with a 6-0 win.

Fairly brief descriptions, but I've pretty much forgotten what happened in the games!  Three wins and one loss saw us into 2nd in our group, with Kingston winning.  In pool A, Dragon won all their games, Avon Y narrowly piped Nomad for 2^nd and the Cherwell and Team Canada were 4^th and 5^th.

The way the tournament was set up was weird, 3^rd to 5^th in each group went into two new pools, C and D.  The winner of these pools got to play 1^st place in group A and B for a place in the semi finals.  The other two semi final spots were for 2^nd place in group A and B.  2^nd in group A played 2^nd in group B, with the losers playing the winner of 1^st C vs 1^st A and the winners playing winner of 1^st D vs 1^st B :-/ Confused much?  I tried drawing it, but I couldn’t.  What mattered was that coming 2nd in the group meant we were guaranteed to be in the semi-final, whereas winning the group gave you the opportunity to lose before the final!  This would all be decided on day 2.

We had a chat to some of the students to find out how they were getting on, and it turns out not so well… they lost all their games, some in spectacular fashion!

We met up with a couple of Cardiff Uni Old Boys on the Saturday evening, drove around with a boy in the boot of the car and went for some celebration food and I called it a night. 

We were playing Avon Y at 8.30am in the most important match of the day… The winner would more than likely play Kingston in semi-final 1, whereas the loser would most definitely be playing Dragon in semi-final 2.  Predictably we were awful, and our bad play and rubbish tactics meant we lost 3-2.  We should have been more ruthless and played 5-out and pressured their weaker players, but we tried to be more defensive and ended up conceding a last minute goal with 3 seconds left… the buzzer went as the ball was still in the net! 

Our semi-final, against Dragon, wasn’t until much later so in the short but sweet spells of sunshine we took the opportunity to tan up as much as we could!  We played Dragon full of optimism, and this lasted all of 30s before we started conceding the inevitable goal after goal after goal… I think we ended up with a 6-0 loss.  There were some positives though, most of their goals were from breaks, and we didn’t let many in from open play!  But we got spanked.

In the other semi-final, Kingston made it difficult for themselves, but they did manage to beat Avon Y to make the final.  This meant we had our bronze medal match against Avon Y, a repeat of the morning match.  We played more 5-out against them and it paid off as we took an early lead.  But we got sloppy and allowed them back into the game and at 2-2 I was a bit worried we would lose the same way we did in the first game.  In a brilliant twist of fate we got the last minute goal and claimed our bronze medals!

Dragon went on to win the final, but to be fair to Kingston they put up a much better effort than we did!  We also found out that the Uni lost all of their games and came bottom of their league.   

And I also made a cool gif of the final sprint.

National Champs 2012

The weekend of the14th/15th July saw in the 2012 National Polo Club Champs.  This year was the first year it has been held up at Taf Bargoed, which was brilliant for us as it's only a 30min drive away... I think the last Club Champs we went to was hosted by Tees Tigers, and that took about 5 hours to get to and we ended up sleeping in the van.  When I got there nice and early on Saturday morning, everything had already been set up; there were already games going on, and the smell of bacon was wafting through the air.

There are a few things about the location that make or break a canoe polo tournament.  These are my top 3:

3.  Pitches
The pitches at Taf Bargoed were good, the lines didn't move or drift and the current was weak or non-existent.  The goals were ok; personally I prefer the goals made from round bars as the bounce off of the square bars can sometimes go anywhere, but this was good enough.  The only small let down was the ability of the refs to watch the game, as on some of the pitches both had to ref from the same side.  Another positive was that there were a lot of tents to hide from the rain in!

2.  Second Hand Boats
A lot of people try and offer you their own advice when you're looking to buy a new boat, and the main piece of advice you get is to try out as many boats as you can before you buy something... but it seems the best way to make you forget all of this advice is to stick a for sale sign on a second hand boat and bring it along to a comp, as if it's under £200 any chump will buy it.  There were loads of boats on offer; one tiny lady tried to sell me some boat with a weight limit of 65Kgs, and it took a lot to convince myself not to buy it as it had a nice hand made for sale sign on it.  Rob ended up walking away with a £180 Combat boat, not a bad deal as it only needs a few patches :-/

1.  Food
The number 1 thing that makes a canoe polo tournament is the food.  Each year I travel up to Doncaster for the uni tournament BUCS (BUSA still to most) and each year I am staggered at the prices they seem to get away with charging for food, especially as it is a uni comp and most students don't want to pay £4 for a bloody burger!  Fair play then to Aberfan who seem to always provide a decent enough service for a good price.  50p for a tea and £1 for a burger...  Thanks for the offer, but no thanks, I'm on a diet.

Anyway, Cardiff had 2 teams entered, the A's and the B's and based on the funky seeding system which took the national league ranking of each team into consideration, the A's were placed in the middle pool and the B's were placed in the lower pool of the championship...  This was alright for us as we had the majority of our national league players in the A team, but it didn't suit some of the other teams as they were placed in high leagues, but made up of a mix of players.

We were placed in group C with Avon Y, Kingston B and Meridian Youth.  When I first saw the group I was fairly apprehensive as Avon Y could have been any mix of their players, Kingston are fairly good and Meridian Youth could have been tricky.  But then I met one of the regular Avon A team, who we meet in pretty much all the leagues we play in, who told me that Avon Y should be an easy win, which boosted my confidence quite a bit.

When we kicked off against Avon, we managed to dominate possession about 90%, and just like standard we let them score on the break... Going in to halftime 1-0 down we knew we were playing alright, and not converting our chances, but in the second half we seemed to pick it up a bit managed to hit the target a bit more and ended up walking away with a convincing 5-1 win.

We had an hour wait till our second game, and started well against Kingston B.  With 1 minute to go and with the score at 2-2, they decided to try and play 5-out against us.  Their best player was marking me as I made my way toward their goal, he started driving me at the side of the pitch, I called for the ref to look, only for the lad to say I was obstructing him!  Cheeky bugger.  At least the ref saw what was happening and gave me the foul which I promptly dispatched to win the game 3-2.

Another hour wait and it was time for Meridian Youth, two 16 year olds and four 14 year olds.  Blimey did we make things hard for ourselves!  I guess we were playing the future GB squad, but for now they were just puny humans.  Luckily we walked away with a 4-3 win.

And that was the first group stage done!  With a full 9 points and unbeaten.  This put us top of our group and meant that we would be playing in the next group phase in Group H with Cherwell A and Welsh Warriors.

We were scheduled in to play Cherwell that evening, and we feared the worst, seeing as we played them last year in National Division 3 and lost twice!  We kicked off against them with their standard bup bup bup bup as the chaser sprints for the ball, which has become something that we all like to laugh at, and probably what caused us to go 3-0 down within the first few minutes, giving me the fear that we were going to be spanked harder than Max Mosely at a Nazi party!  But we rallied and managed to bring it back to 3-3 and then like two cars racing in a movie we were back and forth with them 4-3, 4-4, 5-4, 5-5 but in the end they pipped us to the finish line beating us 6-5.  Phil even got a goal which is a rarity and so to commemorate this and to show off some of my new photo editing skills, I've made his goal into a gif.

 

To be honest our (mine and Rob's) main aim of the weekend was get some good footage of the weekend and make some awesome videos and get some hits on YouTube, make loads of YouTube money and go off the rails for a few years till the money runs dry.  We've mostly been using Robs Go Pro camera to film what we've been doing, and I think we went a bit overboard with the time-lapse sequences, but they look good so who cares!  We also got some footage from a few cameras across the weekend, and the video looks pretty cool - check it out further below.

If you check out Make The Consequences you will see how we created the awesome panoramic time-lapse sequences (when we get round to making that blog!).

After a long day 1, no one particularly fancied the traditional curry at the Balti Cuisine, so we forewent the Aberfan arranged BBQ and all headed back to our respective houses for a nice sleep (as we were on the first game at 8am against the Welsh Warriors).

Day 2 rolled around and was a much nicer day, the rain of day 1 had mostly cleared and there were a few patches of sun!

We knew that Cherwell had beaten the Welsh Warriors by 2 goals the previous day, so we knew that we would finish above them in Group H with either a win or a draw.  The Welsh Warriors weren't really that Welsh, or really warriors.  They were made up of two Bude players and 4 Chester (I think) players, one of whom was Dave Brown and they all had nice shiny DB boats and made us look like a right rabble.  Just like our first game on the Saturday morning we were pretty poor and struggled to play our game against them and managed to scrape a 2-2 draw, both scored by me :) 

Coming second in group H put us into the 13th to 16th pool, this may sound bad, but we were the middle pool, so the maximum we could have finished if we had beaten Cherwell was 11th :(

Our game to see if we were 13th/14th or 15th/16th happened to be against Meridian Youth.  Which we thought was a bit silly seeing as we'd beaten them the day before, but they must have played well to get back in it!  We ended up dominating them and walking away with a 4-1 win as we defended really well and used our strength advantage to bully them a bit!

This meant we could finish 13th or 14th, and at the time none of us realised that 13th place overall was actually 3rd in pool 2 which would have been the bronze medal!  As such we didn't seem to play with any gusto against Aberfan B.  We allowed their best player far too much time to dribble in from the corners and he scored a few and I think we ended up losing 3-2.  But it was a fun game, and I got some good footage for the video which is the main thing!

After we were finished we had a couple of team photos and went for a pub lunch!  I don't even know who won the tournament, but I can only assume it was Meridian C as they looked a different class to the rest of the top teams!

It's not the greatest photo, but Matt didn't look at the camera in any of them!

Polo The Consequences!

Hi and welcome to Polo The Consequences.  This is my Official Cardiff Canoe Polo Club blog and is the first son of Stuff The Consequences, Rob's amazing blog.  Coming soon, Bike The Consequences, Climb The Consequences and Do The Consequences.  The plan is to build an empire of Consequences, sell merchandise and make some $.

I play for Cardiff Canoe Polo Club.  I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but we are pretty impressive.  Since we started in 2007 we have been in 3 different competitive leagues, the Welsh League, the South West League, and the National League.  We have an A team and a B team, and we are looking at setting up a permanent Ladies team and Youth team.

Welsh League.
The A team are in Division 1 and we have come 2nd in the Welsh League twice, won it twice and are doing pretty bad so far this year! 

The B team is in Division 2, and after missing out on promotion last year, are on track for promotion this year.

South West League.
The A team are in Division 1 and this year hasn't started yet, and we came 7th last year.

The B team are in Division 2.  I don't know much about how they do, except they came 9th overall.

National League.
We have just been promoted to National Division 2.  Three years in the National League, and two promotions!  And undefeated too!

This is the A team; back row: Matt Jenkins, AndyFrancis (me), Jonny King.  Front row: Phil Stevens, Dylan Dixon and David Morgan.

Next weekend is the Club Champs up at Taf Bargoed, and I'm hoping to do a report on that and have a logo designed by then!  Also check out My General Life.