|
Coach’s One-Eyed View of the championship Winning Weekend
Saturday 8th Dec - V Manchester at Lugerberuger ; No contest!
1st objective of weekend was to beat our fellow European LEN Trophy representatives. They have the most players training at the HPC (8), and had given us 2 tough games in the season but we won them both / 8 - 3 in September & 14 - 10 in October.
We played well on those occasions and so I’d spent all week worrying about a) will we turn up and play? b) Get ars3y with the refs c) get hammered on Friday night and play with hangovers d) press our own unique self destruct button e) play with confidence. Funnily enough I slept badly all week!
Well, I took one look at them in the pre match team talk and thought more tactical and less motivational... they looked ready...
Early part of the 1st qtr saw us defend solidly, set up the attack and take some pretty dodgy shot options against their good G/K . Then we tuned in and started scoring... Counter attacks , C/Fwd goals and Man ups. We ended it 4 - 0 up and I turned to the bench and said this is going too well ! A short team talk saying concentrate, more of the same etc... They scored early to make it 4 - 1 and then we went up another gear. Half-time saw us 7 -1 up and it was just sublime water polo. Highlight of the qtr was the counter attack down the right and Craig’s pinpoint pass onto the Doc’s hand on 2M. We barely saw the G/K lift his hands out before it went in...
3rd qtr was much the same !!! I’d rotated all the players so we could c/attack at pace and in this period it really showed. 7 -1 went to 12 - 3 and it was game over - there were some of the national coaches and senior people watching this game and most of them got up and left at the end of the 3rd . That said it all!
We slowed down in the final qtr and they scored a few but as I rested some of starting 7 it didn’t really matter and we ended up winning 15 -7. We looked on top of our game and that was the best 3 qtrs we had played all year.
Quite a few players scored in that game with Craig and Sean scoring hat tricks. But J Button’s best mate was goal less...
So we’re watching the Rotherham V Cheltenham game straight after and quite frankly our local rivals were having a shocker... they couldn’t work out how to contain the very sophisticated Rotherham attack... it was all too confusing for them... all they had to do was contain the Scholefield scoring machine by maybe double marking him? Well, he scored 7!!! Towards the end Rotherham were 1 up and Chelt were disappearing up their own attacking ars3s and then the league chairman said to me ‘if this stays the same you are champions !’. It did and we are !!!! 16 -15 to the Yorkies - cheers lads !!!
So the L’boro student union bar was our port of call straight after - we found Morris, Greg and Captain discussing the virtues of the Premiership - how boring - and not knowing the Roth V Chelt score - We then decide to tell them that Cheltenham had won and we had to be sensible all evening... Eat properly and only 1 pint more. As the captain got up to get some food - probably from M & S - we finally told him the real result - we lasted at least 25 mins with our ruse which was pretty good going!!! Cue much smiling and celebrating !!!!!!
Classy team that we are - we went to a Wetherspoon’s for more ale... some food - captain got served quite quickly this time - and a few bottles of champers !!!! The captain went down market with own brand champagne but the coach and director dipped into their pockets and went for better quality !!!! the rest of the night was a bit of a blur...
Bright and early the lads got down for breakfast to tuck into proper nosh - and then back to bed for more zzzzzz’s.
Rotherham were our last opponents and I began my team talk...
‘Lads , this lot don’t like to swim much so if we go out hard at the beginning with full on counter attacks we’ll win easily’... I look at Mesh to see him giggling. He says, ‘Do you know what time we got in last night and you want us to go flat out from the start !!!’ - cue team giggling and general laughter...
We had some female support this time and spurred on by the constant cheering we went 2 - 0 down!!! We got back to 3 - 3 and then traded goals with them all through the game until the 4th, when we took a 2 goal lead and extended it to 3 to run out 16 - 13 winners ...
Sean 4, and Craig 3, were the main scorers but J Button’s best mate didn’t trouble the scorers - again!!!
Ahem, a confession - I’ve lost the match sheets so that accounts for the lack of detail around the scorers. I’ll pay the fine for non-return of the sheets.
So, we are the champions with a 14 win - 3 loss record and 28 points. If we’d had a full squad against Chelt both times we’d have beaten them... we basically pressed the self-destruct button v Lancaster as the score suggests.
I’ve had many texts, emails , and handshakes from opposing coaches , players and team managers congratulating us and saying we deserved it. I’d like to thank Lancaster’s Geoff Parker , Chris Hartley and Bushy for their congratulation messages... but an awful lot of silence from the rest of Northern Lancashire...
Some final comments I’d like to leave you with... 1) A most senior coach thought it was Men v. Boys in the Manchester game...
From Lancaster & Morecambe CITIZEN Newspaper - 12th December edition - and this is for our Lancastrian readers...
LANCASTER water polo team's five-year domination of the sport came to a shuddering end as Bristol pipped them to the post.
The locals finished second, just two points behind the West Country outfit - but Lancaster were 51 goals better off than their rivals over the season.
Am I right in thinking that goal difference wins a league?
So, to all Central players and supporters;.Keep the faith in ’08