Having just watched their female counterparts absolutely demolish the Essex Women’s team, Southampton’s biggest boys were raring to get in the pool and show just how big they are! 

The coin toss dictated that Southampton would start in the shallow end and Fresher Jack James won the first swim off for Southampton. Before the match, Michael Scott had been told in no uncertain terms to ‘stop panicking and just bloody shoot’ by his Captain Finn Thomas, took it upon himself to do just that and opened the scoring after just 26 seconds into the game. He then decided to never shoot again for the rest of the match. Essex responded quickly in what proved to be a difficult-to-defend shallow end with their only goal of the quarter. Daniel Ammon slotted in Southampton’s second goal, with Captain Thomas adding another. Ed Wilkes, not wanting to miss out on the action, put away another with the Captain adding two more to Southampton’s scoreline for a quarter end of…WAIT…GOALLLLLL!!!!!! Unbelievably, in the dying moments of the first quarter, goalkeeper Luke Bennalick took advantage of an out of position Essex goalie to score from his own goal with just two seconds to spare! The first quarter ended 1-7 to Essex. 

The second quarter proved to Southampton that they’d have to be very careful technically to not end up having men excluded – a point which poolside coach Katie Magill made very clear at the end of it – but we’ll come back to this later. Mr Ammon opened the quarter by spending 20 seconds in the naughty corner (AKA a major) which Essex took immediate advantage of to bring the scoreline to 2-7. Mr Thomas added another to his tally before deciding to give Essex a glimmer of hope by giving up a penalty which Essex scored. Mr Wilkes, Mr Ammon and Mr Thomas all enjoyed themselves for a bit, with 8 goals between them scored over the rest of the quarter to bring the score to 4-16 in favour of the away side. The Essex side proved very talented at drawing fouls and majors, with both Mr Thomas and Mr Ammon earning themselves their second majors. 

With the Boy’s two most experienced players sitting on two majors each, Mr Scott was placed in the role of Pit Defence as it was proving difficult to not get in trouble while defending the position. Mr Wilkes was really finding his groove and scored two very nice goals after a bit of back and forth between the teams. It was at this point that Mr Scott was getting a bit careless with his pit defence in the eyes of the referees and earnt his first major of the game for standing in the shallow end at 3 minutes into the quarter. Fortunately, the boys defended perfectly, with Mr James using his incredible speed to steal the ball, allowing Mr Ammon to score not even 20 seconds after the exclusion. Essex put one away, with Mr Thomas following up not shortly afterwards for Southampton. At this point, Mr Scott earnt himself his second major of the game not one minute after his first, again for standing. Essex were careless in their execution of the man-up and the ball was turned over immediately. It was at this point that Mr Scott forgot that he was on two majors and he promptly found himself wrapped from the game for getting into an underwater tussle with the Essex No. 5. Mr James stepped up into the role of pit defence for the rest of the quarter and was superb at nullifying the Essex attack in the shallow end. Fresher Noah Boelmann had a superb goal, and along with a few more from Mr Wilkes and the Captain, Southampton ended the quarter 23-6. 

Mr James at this point had a clean game in terms of swim-offs, winning his 4^th and final one of the game. The fourth quarter was much more slowly paced than the others, with the team focusing on good defence and good goal setup, allowing Mr Wilkes and Mr Ammon to score 3 more goals for Southampton while Essex with their final dying breath managed to get two past the Soton defence. 

Man of the Match – Between the impressive efforts of Ed Wilkes, Dan Ammon, Finn Thomas and Jack James it’s tough to choose exactly who should get this. In the end its going to Ed Wilkes for having his best game of the season so far, including good game awareness, impressive positioning and very good goal-scoring ability. 

Dick of the Day – It’s not difficult to award this to the player who managed to get three majors in under a minute – two of which were within 7 seconds of each other and so Michael Scott receives this award (somewhat) proudly. 

Final Score: 28 (SUWPC) – 6 (ESSEX)

Goals/Majors: 

Luke Bennalick 1(!)/0 

Nikita Shuyko 0/0 

Ed Wilkes 8/2 

Finn Thomas 9/2 

Dan Ammon 5/2 

Jack James 0/2 

George Lea 0/0 

Noah Boelmann 1/1 

Michael Scott 2/3 

Written by Michael Scott