There’s no point getting involved in Water Polo if you are after an easy Saturday afternoon out. Who wants that?
For the second season in a row our division 3 team traveled to play Clontarf with no keeper in the squad. Worked out ok last year when we left with the points. This year a collective decision was made to up the ante by going with no keeper and only 7 players.
With one arm behind our back the team stormed into a 2-4 lead in the first quarter. Today would be a good day, Clontarf hadn’t figured out that Waris in nets was new to this. The 2nd quarter started and we went 2-5 up. And the goals, oh the goals, these were well worked, Clontarf couldn’t live with the movement and majestic interplay.
And then the wheels came off. By halftime the score was 6-6. The refereeing had been pretty harsh on both teams, Clontarf had a player wrapped up in the first quarter, the 2nd quarter the balance swung and we conceded penalties and exclusions by the bucketful.
By the start of the 4th quarter Clontarf had a 11-8 lead. It was hard to imagine a come back, but the plan was to give it a go. That didn’t happen and the referee’s willingness to exclude players eventually came back to bite us. This guy here, got excluded for 3 majors (I insist two of them were mistakes, but who’s gonna listen). To cap things off there was another small incident involving back-chat to the referee that resulted in another player getting excluded leaving Cu Chulainn with 5 in the water for the last 3 minutes.
Emmet McCann managed to get a goal while we were 2 men down, fair play to him.
I’m already excited for next season’s 3rd Annual Division 3 No Keep Clontarf Away Game.
Final score 14-9. We gave them a game. Somehow.
Goals from J Duffin 5, McCann 2, Jordan 1, Bradley 1