London Winter League Tournament 3.

Under 15's (1995 + Younger)

Sunday 8th March 2009.

Whitgift School, South Croydon.

This was the last tournament of this season's Winter league program and we faced 3 demanding matches against the best teams in the competition.

We were missing Karen Chan and Joe Hazeldine who were swimming at the Sussex county championship event at K2 Crawley and so we were limited to a squad of 8 players.

The individual match reports are as follows; -

Match 1; - Worthing 1, Sutton & Cheam 4. (H/T 0-2)

Although we lost this opening match our young team showed a huge improvement from the previous tournaments and with better finishing the result would have been much closer.

All of the squad played well and the goalkeeping was shared between Sam Wildman and Henry Jackson.

Scorer; - Sam Wildman.

Exclusions; - None.

Match 2; - Worthing 1, Beckenham 4. (H/T 0-4)

As in the first match, this performance indicated the progress that the team is now making with another good performance against probably the best team in the competition.

After a slightly disappointing 1st half, the team played their best water polo so far in the second period and dominated proceedings. Once again our finishing let us down and the final score didn't fairly illustrate the closeness of the match.

Scorer; - Sam Wildman.

Exclusion; - Tara Osborne.

Match 3; - Worthing 2, Croydon Amphibians 5. (H/T 1-2)

Once again, a much improved performance.

This time we dominated the first half and really didn't deserve to be behind at the break. The second period saw the team begin to tire but they still remained competitive up to the final whistle.

Scorers; - Laura Joseph, Sam Wildman.

Exclusions; - Oliver Rainford, Ben Goddard.

Squad in Full; - Oliver Rainford, Henry Jackson, Tara Osborne, Laura Joseph, Sam Wildman, Charlie Jones, Ben Goddard, Callum Craven.

Having entered this competition with a very young and inexperienced team it was obvious that we would be on a steep learning curve. We have seen a vast improvement over the three events and I am sure that this team will now improve quickly and we are particularly looking forward to the summer competition which will start in May.

All of the squad have the potential to be very good players and I am sure that all of them have benefitted greatly from the experience of playing in this competition.