Well, it could have been worse.

Wednesday 17th January and our glorious Narwhals find themselves at home against our fierce rivals, Croydon Amphibs. Croydon have brought a squad of mixed youth and seasoned National League campaigners, but the Narwhals have George so it’s anyone’s game. Our pre game chat consisted of the not defeatist in any way “let’s keep the score down to 5 a quarter”, so we were buoyant and confident at swim off….

Surprisingly, the Narwhals started like they’ve never met each other or heard of the strange game of waterpolo, conceding 4 sloppy goals in the first 4 minutes. Zach decided enough was enough, and to cries of “don’t do it”, proceeded to lob the Croydon keeper from 7 meters out to put the Narwhals on the scoreboard (asst E Gamble). Croydon scored another to quick goals before Rob decided he was bored of missing constantly the target and scored a very nice long range effort (asst E Gamble). Croydon scored again before the end of the quarter to draw to a close a miserable opening session. 2 – 7 to Croydon with our brave Narwhals fearing the worse.

The second quarter started like the first had ended with Croydon scoring an easy goal before Nick started to find his rhythm and scored a very well worked goal (asst E Gamble). The Narwhals were playing better and had sharpened up defensively helped in part by the referees refusal to give any major fouls and some slightly wayward Croydon keeping. The half closed with Croydon leading 3 – 11.

The third quarter saw the Narwhals begin to play champagne polo, a glorious cross pool pass and pin point near post shot from your author (asst E Gamble) followed by almost the reverse, this time Ed going cross cage (asst E Gamble) cut the deficit to 6 within two minutes of the half, the spectator was surely wondering whether the comeback was one?? Of course not, we conceded two goals to bring the deficit back to 8 before ending the quarter with a very nice Gio screamer (asst E Gamble) and another nicely taken Nick goal (asst E Gamble). Pleasing quarter with the Narwhals winning it 4 – 2 to bring the score to 7 – 13 at the end of the third.

The final quarter saw Croydon bring on their ‘bomb squad’ in an effort to staunch the flow of Narwhals goals, but despite this the Narhwals scored first with another fine Nick effort (this time assisted by Ed) before a flurry of Croydon goals, another Nick strike (asst E Gamble) and a rather embarrassingly missed penalty by your author (and it had been all my own hard work too!) saw the game at 9 - 16 with ten seconds left to play. We had spoken before the game about a new and innovative tactic of deliberately putting poor head high passes into the pit in order to counteract their very strong pit defence but had mostly failed to put this into practice, right up until the final ball of the game which saw Gio put in a sumptuous head high pass into me in the pit who dutifully accepted his kind offer and didn’t mess it up (asst E Gamble, no one know how come, it just is.) Final score 10 – 16 with the Narhwals coming out of the pool far more positive than we expected having put in a decent performance albeit without the result….

Man of the Match was Gio for tireless work in the pit and for not fighting Amphibs this time.

Moment went to Zach for his lob. Fluffer is shared between your author for his woeful penalty and Nick for missing about three zillion shots (he did score four though!), special mention for Gary and his shocking lob in the second quarter.

We’re all enjoying the weather in the UK so much at the moment, that nobody has booked an early holiday in the sun!

Citizens away on Monday, the fun never ends with the Narwhals 😊

Forza Narwali.