Women vs Nottingham - 01/12/2018

Nottingham 14 - 8 BLWP

Our trophy match rescheduled multiple times finally happened and it was rather a fun one! We had to trek all the way to Nottingham, however, a dreadfully expensive train ride changed into an amazing road trip thanks to Imy’s dad - Papa De Trafford - a hero and the best babe himself 🙌

We left our homeland at 2pm and by the time we arrived in Nottingham it was dark. After some trouble getting around, we found the pool hidden in Nottingham’s extensive campus. From the moment we saw the pool, we knew that it would not be easy. We have probably never seen such a long and wide pool in our whole lives. However, we decided we would not be worried by this and we would keep our heads in the game!

After a quick change and tactics debrief we got in the pool for a 20 minute warm up. Alarmed by the familiar looking scoreboard, I double checked with the other team that we were playing WITHOUT a shot clock and I was reassured that it’s a normal rolling clock. This put me at ease as I was happy my girls won’t die too quickly in such a big pool.... unfortunately, I was brought back to Earth when I noticed that the clock stops whenever we or the other team scored.

We did not let this put us down and instead decided to put up the best game we can! Starting strong from the very beginning we got 4 goals scored by Imy, Leah, Lizzy and myself in the first quarter.

Surprisingly the first quarter didn’t feel like ages so with double energy we kicked in the second quarter. We showed them how it’s done! However... we got a bit punished for that with one of our best players - Leah being sent off three times meaning that she was not allowed in for the rest of the match. With her being a significant player, we needed to pick up our game.

We pushed through our limits and showed an amazing water polo where all of us was glued to a player we were marking, we also set up a beautiful arc several times as well as had some amazing opportunities for scoring which we used a lot finishing the third quarter with 4 more goals from Imy, Leah, Emma and myself.

The last quarter was probably the toughest as all of us were exhausted and frustrated at some of the extremely aggressive Nottingham players. Sometimes frustration is bugger than we think and hence it is unavoidable to act on it resulting in another player (myself) being completely sent out until the end of the game.

Despite the loss of some key players and tiredness, we finished with a score of 14:8 meaning we lost, however, I can proudly say that all of us played our best and gave everything both in terms of our skills and our hearts ❤️

Huuge congratulations to all my ladies, however, I'd love to give a special shout out to Tadpole Emma-speedboat-mermaid as thanks to her we DID NOT LOSE any swim offs and hence had a luxury of starting every single quarter with a ball on our side!

Goals:
Imy (2)
Leah (2)
Emma (1)
Lizzy (1)
Ania (2)