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.
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!
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.
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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