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!