The Water Polo Match

Some years ago I went on holiday to Minorca. The resort was Son Bou consisting of a small beach with twin hotels, a very family orientated resort. The hotels were basically one for British tourists and one for German tourists. Of course there were other nationalities there, but that was the basic cultural divide.

During my stay there, the hotel staff thought it would be a good idea to have a sports competition between the two hotels, a bit of bonding and light hearted fun between the hotels. Soccer, tennis, some races and of course; a water polo match.

I was asked to be part of the water polo team, not wishing to be a spoilsport, I readily agreed. I think to qualify for the British team you had to be able to swim two lengths of the pool without stopping, and not require an oxygen mask at the end. The match was to be played at 4pm on the Thursday afternoon, away from the fiercest heat of the day, and to last for ten minutes.

So on the Thursday I had lunch about 1pm, and then a nice relaxing snooze at the pool side. At 3.45pm the British team assembled at the pool side, apart from myself, at 35, there was a young girl of about fourteen, who was an excellent swimmer, and a young lad of eighteen, also an excellent swimmer, and a good athlete. The others consisted of two gentleman in their forties, who, I’ll put it kindly, had a liking for a pint of beer or two, and a few cigarettes. The final member was an older gentleman who had volunteered to play in the goal position. Thus we met as a team for the first time. The pre – match team talk consisted of getting to know each other by our first names. We were now psyched up for the match.

As we surveyed the pool, now with the goalposts in position, our opponents arrived. They had a different make up to the British team. They were all male, between the ages of sixteen to eighteen; around six feet tall, tanned, and all looked as if they could swim nonstop for about six hours, before breakfast. The Bayern Munich water polo team had arrived. Two thoughts occurred to me at this point, first, why did I have such a big lunch with two beers? Second was the other hotel a secret training camp for the German Olympic team?

The British team entered the water, the youngsters dived in of course, I jumped in along with one of the other gentleman, and the other two came down the steps. The German team dived into the pool, in a synchronised movement, that did not bode well for us. The game started, needless to say we were hopelessly outclassed, our only tactic, on the odd occasion we got the ball was to get it to one of the youngsters and hope they could hold it for a few seconds to let the rest of us get a breath. It is probably the most tiring thing I have ever done, to swim after someone and at the same time try to push myself out of the water to catch a ball. This becomes even worse when you never actually catch the ball; it just sailed right over my head. After what seemed an eternity, but was probably only around five minutes, lack of oxygen does strange things to your senses; we were about 8 goals to 0 down.

This was when the red mist descended upon me. In my defence, I will repeat, that lack of oxygen to the brain affects your sense of reason. All thought of sportsmanship and fairplay was forsaken. Without informing my teammates, for I could hardly breathe never mind talk, I changed my tactics. I now just swam as hard and as fast as I could towards any opponent who was near me, my arms and legs flailing, hoping to do some damage, to anyone. I have been informed that this is a legitimate tactic in water polo, although a slight technical point might arise if your opponent does not have the ball. This tactic proved as futile as any other we employed. On reflection our best tactic might have been to wedge the two beer drinkers in between the posts, it would have been difficult to get a ball past them. Of course the rules of the sport probably would not allow this.

At this point I must apologise to the young Germans, and applaud them for their sportsmanship. Not once did any of them retaliate in any way, and at the end, when thankfully the whistle blew, one of them helped me out of the pool. I think he was frightened I was going to drown. This was my first and last water polo match.

There is no moral to this tale, just a word of caution, if you are ever asked to take part in a water polo match……….. DON’T.