Barts Beatdown: Soton girls keep winning

This season we kick off BUCS in a chaotic fashion. Not our smoothest outing, but we (eventually) got the job done. After an unnecessarily long wander around London because of the enormous SUSU minibus, we finally arrived at the sad looking puddle that was Bart’s swimming pool. Your number 1 girlies were half an hour late, which must have seemed like an eternity to Barts because they were so irked about it they were lined up and ready to play without us! We weren’t sure how that would’ve worked (maybe would’ve given them a chance at a win), but unluckily for them we were ready to play.

Our warm up consisted of sprinting from the mini bus to the pool. We didn’t even get a chance to get our nipples to stags! The starting seven rushed into the pool and the whistle went off before they were even lined up. This was the start of a messy match. Miss Ramshaw’s speedy paddle wins us the swim off. Immediately we realise the ball is rock hard, but the refs refuse to let us play with one of our actually good balls, so we play on. Within the first couple of minutes of the quarter Rhia was already on the side with a major. A very vague hand signal from one of the refs made her swim back in, but I guess the other ref preferred the game without Rhia because she was automatically sent back out again with another major. There she stayed for a solid 3 attacks because neither of the refs wanted her back in, no matter how much we screamed at them. In the meantime, Grill McGill belts the ball in to score the first goal of the match, with Jessica launching in another soon after. The score on the whiteboard (no scoreboard, just a whiteboard) after the first 7 minutes showed 2:0.

Time did not exist for the girls in this match – there were no clocks, and only the refs seemed to know when the 30 second intervals were over. Despite this hiccup, we played on and settled with guessing the refs’ signals, as most of the time they waved their hands in the air and seemed as confused and flustered as we were. From early on we could tell there was something different about these Barts girls – all their fouls must have been tricky for the refs to spot, because they missed them every time. They were brilliant at spotting ours though! The second quarter saw incredible strong goals and flying shots from President Katie, Courteney and Rhia. It also saw both Courteney and McGill take on 3 Barts players at a time and still coming out on top. At the end of the quarter the whiteboard showed a promising 6:1 to the stags.

The third quarter was mainly horrific scenes of drowning her player and receiving elbows to the head at Miss Smith’s end of the pool, followed by a perfectly aimed ball to her head from Bart’s goalie (it definitely left a fat lump). On the plus side, there were some beautiful shots from Courteney, Rhia and my Captain. The moment inevitably came where Courteney’s terrifying attacks convinced the refs to kick her out and give the Barts girls a break. This was however pointless because our girls still managed to up the score even more, ending the quarter with 9:2 to Southampton.

The final quarter came too quick, and was every bit as chaotic as the last 3. Only one goal this quarter and it came from Katie (Irish one), compared to the 3 goals scored by Barts – the only quarter they won. I think by this point we were all sick of their splashing and invisible fouls. It’s important to mention that one of these goals was gifted to Barts by our lovely Miss Grace, as she gave away a penalty purely out of kindness and love for Antonia, who I’m sure was very grateful.

Your amazing Southampton girlies won the game 10:5. If not for the silly way London is built we could have buried Barts even more, but a strong win in the first match of the season is what we deserved. Let’s hope the rest of the season is just as memorable!

Man of the Match

Charlotte Ratledge for leading us through the first BUCS game as a Captain and doing an amazing job!

Dick of the Day

The ball chosen from Barts for being the worst one ever used.

Goals/Majors

Anotonia Nield 0/0

Jess Grace 1/1

Courtney Pienaar 2/1

Katie Smith 0/0

Rosie Ramshaw 0/1

Rhia Perks 2/2

Katie Magill 4/0