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.