Defence FTW

Victory in the first home game of 2025! A 16-8 win against Kingston 2s built from an excellent defensive performance, some good counter attacking and (for once) decent shooting.

A 12 strong pod of Narwhals was available for our first outing at Whitgift this year, basically our entire club. The team talk remains the same, “don’t be shit” and “can we please just follow the instructions defensively”, and the consistency seems to be paying off…

Bar a 4 minute lapse of concentration in the final quarter, the Narwhals defended resolutely and frustrated Kingston’s attack. Forcing them into errors or shots from distance, the counter attack was effective and even Gamble got a couple of break away goals. We effectively did to Kingston what every other club does to us, force them to make a mistake in attack, break, score.

Saying that there was also some lovely attacking play. The rhetoric of keeping it simple was effective, with a decent arc, pit man on 2m, one step passing, take a foul. Put it in the pit, we score or man up. They drop, we score from the arc. Keep it simple, don’t be shit.

A competitive first half saw the Narwhals take a 5-3 lead. Shute had his Shuting hands on, and some good pit play from Geo and Oggy got us a few man ups, one of which was duly slapped into the goal by Zach on 2m. Their only goals coming when we “forgot” to drop and a decent shot from distance. The third quarter was some of the best polo we’ve every played! Absolutely solid defence kept Kingston from scoring a single goal, with a combination of that frustration and our numbers allowing rest contributing to some easy counters. A 5-0 quarter taking the score to an insurmountable 10-3 lead. We did try, an initial white blue white goal sandwich was followed by 4 unanswered goals to take the score to 12-8. But we managed to settle the ship, fix the leaky defence (i.e. subbed out Finchy) and got 4 more goals to take the final score to 16-8.

Overall an excellent performance and a big victory vs a team we at best last season had some close games against. Let’s hope this is a sign of things to come for 2025.

Man of the match this week goes to George for a solid performance filling in in goal. Shout out to Geo and Shute who came a close 2nd for some excellent bullying and shooting respectively.

Moment also goes to George for his swim off win. Only joking, of course it doesn’t. You idiot. Rob D gets moment for his lovely backshot from the pit in the final quarter.

Unanimous Fluffer (apart from not voting for himself) goes to Finch Snr. No specific fluff moment, just general all round fluffiness.

Until next time, Forza Narwhali