Warrington Seniors in Holland for the ‘Water Polo Like A Sir’ tournament, from right to left Andrew Burke, Paul Wilkinson, Ian Musgrove, Pete Love, Neil Musgrove, Peter Burke, Dave Price, Lee Chadwick, Chris Byrne.
Warrington seniors attended the ‘Water Polo Like A Sir’ water polo tournament on Friday 30th August, and concluded on Sunday 1st September. The tournament was held at the open water swimming pool at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Twenty four teams entered the competition with teams mainly coming from the Netherlands but included teams from Italy, Germany and of course Warrington the only team from the UK.
A team of nine Warrington players took a flight from Manchester to Schiphol Airport, and then travelled by train about two hours east to Enschede near the German border arriving at the university on Friday afternoon.
Our team included Andrew Burke, Peter Burke, Peter Love, Lee Chadwick, Paul Wilkinson, Ian Musgrove, Neil Musgrove, Dave Price, and myself.
There were two leagues of men’s teams, a league of mixed (female/male) teams and a female league. Warrington played in the second men’s league.
Although the tournament started on Friday evening Warrington didn’t play until Saturday morning. Some late changes to the fixtures and a seventh team added to our league caused some last minute changes to times and fixtures meant that the first team we were due to play WAVE didn’t arrive on poolside and another team started the game. We worked hard and led 1-0 at half time but then the team we should have played arrived on poolside nice and fresh and played the second half. We lost the game 5-2 but Warrington was later awarded a 5-0 victory due to the complication at the start of the match. Andrew Burke scored for Warrington off a man up and Pete Love scored our second goal.
Our second game v ALL STARS saw Warrington lead 3-1 at one stage with two goals from Ian Musgrove and one from Pete Love. But the Dutch team fought back and the game finished 3-3.
The third game v DJK was a difficult game against a strong side. This year there seemed little difference between Division 1 and Division 2 teams. Warrington battled hard with goals from Paul Wilkinson, Peter Burke and Pete Love. But with our average age over 40 years the young Dutch team eventually won the game 6-3.
At 6.40pm that day we played our 4th game of the day v ZEW. Fatigue started to play a part particularly as the team we played against at one stage took six players out with six fresh players going in. Again Pete Love playing at centre forward scored together with the inform Ian Musgrove. We finished 7-2 as we missed some good chances to see the Dutch team counter attack and score. It was the end of a long hard day and time for some refreshment.
On Sunday we were first game on and that meant an 8am start against home team ZVP Piranha. Warrington looked fresh and started to play better as a team. Ian Musgrove was playing really well scoring three goals in the game and Pete Love adding another. Some excellent defending restricted Piranha to one goal so a satisfying start to the day with a 4-1 victory.
The final game of the day against ZVV we thought it would take place at 11.40am. To our surprise we discovered our game actually started at 11.20am. So with two minutes notice we put our caps on and lined up without a warm up. We were 3-1 down by half time but re organised and set out to rescue the game. We came back strongly to 4-3 and within the last minute were awarded a penalty but we missed the penalty and lost the game 4-3. During the tournament we were awarded three penalties and missed all three.
We finished the tournament with seven points from six games and finished fourth overall out of seven teams. Ian Musgrove was top scorer with seven goals and Pete Love with 6 goals.
Some feedback from other teams commented that the team from Warrington played hard but fair. All the players worked hard throughout the competition and certainly enhanced the reputation of the club. My thanks go to Ian Musgrove for organising a successful trip for the second year.
On the Saturday evening four of our team entered the beer drinking relay race. Each team member had to swim two lengths after the first length each team member had to tread water and drink half a pint of beer before completing the return leg. After the heats Warrington qualified for the final.
In the final Warrington finished second but the first team were disqualified and Warrington were awarded first place.
Pete Love on 1st leg of 4 x50 relay (beer race)