The time was 18:15, the date Sunday the 24th of January… 15 minutes prior to the meeting Conal Groves began his brief walk along the usual route to the concourse. We can only speculate that a couple of things weighed heavy on his mind. Firstly it was to be his debut first team performance, a coming of age for one of SUWPC’s finest, earning his rightful place in the pantheon of our treasured establishment. A moment to cherish one might imagine. However, it was supposed to be a baptism of fire against the club rumoured to be one of the most violent in the league. Luckily his brother in arms Malcolm of Suzuplewski was also going, ready to demonstrate methods of renewable energy generation if anything got out of hand. The following recounts a few of the evenings events.

The journey to Weymouth was made in the spacious C-Max and (laden full of talent) the speed bump scraping 147. Over the 90 minutes we had time to learn much about each other but decided instead to focus on our respective gym routines. One undisclosed team member currently takes ‘Grenade Pills’… I can only assume these are the same as the ‘Grenade Thermo Detonator’ supplements I helpfully researched. So if anyone reading this feels they need:

Explosive sustained energy – no jitters, no cravings, no crash. A weight-management product with an advanced, multi award winning thermogenic formula.

Then feel free to perhaps try some healthy breathing exercises first (See Vice: Iceman for more info) before committing your body to this medical field trial. That said we were all concerned we’d need them that evening to overcome our lack of post exam fitness.

We arrived along the newly built Olympic bypass, and piled out into a changing room that smelled somewhat suspect. Weymouth had assembled a full team (minus the old captain) and as this was a Hampshire league handicap knockout (which we smashed last year) they started 9-0 up. Some maths was done to decide how far ahead we would be when we put Timye in goal and brought out the Stallion, however as it was we would never make it into the lead.

Despite a lot of previous incidents, Weymouth played a fair game of polo. The Ref was debatably a little biased / hard hearted on the fouls but all in all a decent game was had. We struggled to break away from their strong grips but Charlie found the net a couple of times in the first quarter. They had no real goal threat but maintained a solid defence, hanging back to prevent us from breaking on them.

The next couple of quarters proceeded much the same way, we failed to capitalise on a couple of man ups and let Weymouth sneak in a couple of scrappy goals. There was a lack of movement which can only be overcome by improved fitness. Happily I saw two members getting in the pre polo weights session on Wednesday… the more the merrier!

Jason presented a new tactic of random swimming in the final quarter which, along with Andrea on the attack appeared to work quite well. Myself, Neil, Perry, Conal and Malcolm worked hard but I can’t help feeling we need to take on more responsibility for finding space and making plays.

The match ended 12-6 to Weymouth or 6-3 to Soton in reality, I think we can safely count this as another step in our unbeaten run, with many matches coming up over the next months it will be exciting to see if we can keep this going.

Much appreciated sandwiches were kindly provided at the pub afterwards, with the Weymouth team again demonstrating they are true gents out of the pool. It was however a bizare social experience to be given food by the grown man, who 20 minutes ago genuinely tried to nipple cripple me as I in turn attempted to drown him. Perhaps future generations will understand this strange ritual.

On the journey home we put the worlds issues to rest, sang some Frozen songs and watched a fellow human do ‘the werewolf’ on a treadmill. See link below. Perry suggested ‘ man in space with a yoyo’ …(4:08 for his recommendations on how to impress girls) perhaps consider your seats carefully at the next social to avoid this chat…

werewolf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLC8vnHlF00 yoyo nerd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni4j5K4Lz3o

In other news the social shirts have finally arrived and they are very bright! #SUWPCNightSafetyTeam

Thanks for reading, Polo love,

Horlock

Team:

Timye, Horlock, Perry, Malcolm, Andrea, Anton, Charlie, Jason, Neil, Conal.

Goal Scorers:

Charlie.