Friday 31 August 2012

London International


The weekend of the 11th & 12th 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

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