Water Polo News & Reports

Under 16 National Championships - 12-Feb-12

Crawley Girls Bring Home  Silver Medals From U16 National Championships

Two of our girls, Hannah Patchett and Lara  Partridge, were key players in the South East Region Team that played at the ASA  National Academy U16 Girls Water Polo Championships, held at Walsall on February  11th and 12th. The  South East team proved to be the dark horses of the competition, beating Wales  15-1, North West B 7-5, Ireland 8-2 and London in a 7-6 thriller, before meeting  North West B again in the final.  South East had the better of the early stages of this tight match,  leading at half time, but they were overhauled towards the end, losing 6-10, to  finish silver medallists. It was a great achievement in itself, to break the  dominance of the competition that the North West’s A and B teams have enjoyed at  this level in recent years and somewhat ironic that we were to only team to  beat the eventual winners.

South East Team: Grace Walker, Hannah Patchett, Lara Partridge, Fran Collings, Abi Rocky,  Freya Coughlan, Chloe Roxborough, Kathy Rogers, Beth Kingsley, Rebekah Woolcot,  Lydia Scott

South East League - 01-Feb-12
 
Crawley 15 - Oxford 9
 
Crawley got off to a winning start in 2012 with an eventually comfortable victory at K2 on February 1st.  Early on the teams traded goals and made tactical adjustments, however this was a match in which Crawley outthought and outfought their opponents to stretch away to a comfortable margin in the 4th quarter. Encouragingly, this was A Crawley side some way from full strength, with three Under 18s included, notably there was a first league goal for Michael Turner, age 15.
 
Crawley Team - Barry Hurst, Craig Roy, Jack Sheppard, Marcus Ripley, Ben Maloney, Freddie Gover, Simon Flint, Michael Turner, Ewan Partridge

London and South-east Region Inter County Tournament Under 16's (1996 and Younger) - Sun 13-Nov-11.
 
Competing Counties; - Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey and Middlesex.
 
Sussex Squad:

• Franny Collings, Guy Sandys-Renton, Matilda Coke, Daniel Jefferys (All Mid-Sussex Marlins)
• James O'Dell, Michael Turner, Hannah Patchett (All Crawley SC)
• Henry Jackson (g/k), Sam Wildman, Joe Hazeldine, Ben Goddard (All Worthing SC)

Sussex county entered this years under 16 inter county tournament with a young team that featured 7 players in a squad of 11 who will be eligible to play again next year. What the team lacked in experience we more than made up for with a combination of swimming speed and enthusiasm and we played four exciting and highly entertaining matches.
 
Match 1. Sussex 2, Hampshire 4.
Quite simply, a match we should have won. The team soon settled playing an aggressive "press" defence and we created chance after chance on the counter attack. What we failed to do was take these chances and we never made the opposition goalkeeper make saves with some very wasteful finishing. This really could have been a different result which was acknowledged by the opposition coach but if you don't take your chances you will always be under pressure. It was disappointing to lose but the team hade actually played well and on a different day we could have seen a positive result.
Scorers; - Ben 1, James 1.
 
Match 2. Sussex 7, Surrey 2.
A stunning result which was the biggest win by any competing team on the day. Quite simply, Surrey had no answer to our tactics and we soon forced errors that we punished with some excellent finishing. All the team played well and the final score indicated our dominance. This performance proved that the squad was capable of playing some very good water polo and some of the goals were of an excellent standard.
Scorers; - Ben 3, James 2, Joe 2.
 
Match 3. Sussex 3, Kent 6.
In the Hampshire match we failed to hit the target and now against Kent we came up against the outstanding goalkeeper on show. Once again we created more than enough chances to win the match but the Kent keeper made a string of quality saves.
Defensively we played relatively well but we conceded a couple of poor goals when we had a player excluded and that ultimately cost us a chance of victory.
Scorers; - Ben 2, Joe 1.
 
Match 4. Sussex 5, Middlesex 6.
By the time we played the final match a pattern had developed with the team creating enough chances but failing to take the opportunities. This proved to be the case again in the final match when we really should have recorded a win. We raced to a 4-0 lead with Fran and Joe both scoring twice and we were in total control. Unfortunately, we started to concede goals, mainly to the strong opposition centre forward, and we failed to take a number of chances that we created. In the end we lost to a late goal which was very hard on the squad who had again played really well.
Scorers; - Joe 3, Fran 2.
 
 
Overall, this was really exciting event with all five counties at a very similar level of ability. This made for a tournament where every game was close and Hampshire eventually took the title.
The Sussex team played well and although they only won against Surrey (with an outstanding display), the three defeats could easily have gone our way on another day.
This event again indicated that the standard junior water polo in the county has risen over the past few years and I'm sure that we will have a very competitive team in this competition in 12 months time.
 
Finally, it was nice to see a large number of family and friends who came to support the team and I would like to thank Simon Jeffreys for keeping the match statistics.

Sussex Knock-Out Cup  Final - 29-Oct-11

Crawley 15 - Worthing 20

It was not Crawley’s  expectation to reach this cup final on October 29th, and the team was substantially weakened by injury and absence due to short notice.  Nevertheless, Crawley put up a magnificent  fight, one that all those involved at the club should be proud of.  Worthing were able to field a near full  strength national league side, yet for periods, a below strength Crawley team  made them look average.  In overall  terms, Crawley ran out of steam, due to limited substitution options, were  hampered by Worthing’s better exploitation of current refereeing interpretation,  but Worthing were largely unwilling to utilise their less experienced  players.  Crawley finished denied,  yet unbowed.

Crawley Team – Barry Hurst, Richard Woodman, Jack Sheppard,  Joe Callus, Freddie Gover, Marcus Ripley, Barney Reed, Craig Roy, Andy Hepworth,  Ewan Partridge.

Sussex  Knock-Out Cup Semi-Final - 18-Oct-11

Crawley 13 - Brighton 12

The seesaw rivalry between Crawley and Brighton, that has developed in recent years, went up a level at K2 on October 18th, when Crawley came from behind to snatch victory in the last moments.
Both sides missed a number of chances early on, with Crawley keeper Barry Hurst keeping his team in the game, Crawley also missed a string of chances, at one point Crawley trailed 9-4, with victory seeming unlikely.  However Brighton started to tire in the expanses of K2, just as Crawley began to find and lift their game, with a series of incisive moves and goals.  Crawley fought their way back into the match, snatching victory in the last minutes, to face Worthing in the cup final.  Whatever the outcome of that match, this match will pass into club legend.

Crawley Team: Barry Hurst, Craig Roy, Jack Sheppard, Adrian Rotchell, Barney Reed, Joe Callus, Ben Maloney, Simon Flint, Freddie Gover, Richard Woodman, Ewan Partridge.