Sweet Revenge: Barts vs. Southampton Uni 2

This time Queen Mary ‘s would travel from London to Southampton, giving the Southampton Men’s home advantage in the wonderful Jubilee pool. Last time’s sour defeat against BARTs at the start of the campaign meant that Soton’s biggest boys were out for revenge.

After the warmup, the first quarter of the game started with BARTS eager to be on the scoresheet as they scored the first goal. A short while later, Noah Boelmann got the game’s first foul in a misjudged defensive effort. Towards the end of the quarter BARTs unfortunately put another ball in the back of the Southampton net. However, Noah was quick to pull one back with a beautiful goal while playing pit attack, earning a celebration from Finn Thomas who promptly got in trouble on his coaching call for not being focused. With just 11 seconds left on the clock, Daniel Ammon scored a goal to bring the score to a tie.

After a wonderful poolside pep-talk from Katie McGill the Southampton Men’s team started the quarter off strong with some good defensive action by Jack James leading to an exclusion. Three minutes into the second quarter Alex Wilmshurst followed Jack’s lead and also got his first exclusion of the match. Shortly after, it was BARTs who was able to break the stalemate and got the first goal of the second quarter, making the score 3-2. Ed Wilkes was not going to let BARTs get away that easily in this quarter and scored an equalizer shortly after. In another defensive battle shortly after Jack James got his second exclusion of the match and the quarter. This emboldened BARTs to score one more goal against Southampton. At this point, Southampton truly wanted to win the quarter and set a mark for the rest of the game as Noah scored his second goal, putting Southampton level again. Next off, BARTs were awarded a penalty but Luke Bennalick made light work of it as they missed the penalty. After the missed penalty Dan also got his second goal of the match putting Southampton ahead for the first time that game. BARTs were then awarded another penalty but Luke’s aura proved to be too much for them once again. Shortly after an unlucky BARTs player scored an own goal. Dan once again scored a goal in the last few seconds of the quarter, for a score of 7-4 at the end of the first half.

The start of the third quarter was a struggle for power seeing BARTs get their first exclusion of the game. This was followed by some further grappling for power leading to Ed’s first exclusion. Fighting for the ball in defence Alex got his second exclusion 5 minutes into the quarter. Later on, Samuel Ellis came in and scored his first goal of the match. This goal motivated BARTs to try and get their head back in the game as they scored their fifth goal. In the very last seconds, Alex got his second goal. Furthermore, the tensions that had built between players in the third quarter culminated in a lot of arguing between players. The referee also seemed to have tuned his hearing aids wrong as he booked Alex with a yellow card for arguing with the referee even though BARTs number 5 was the one doing most of the arguing.

The last quarter commenced and was rather uneventful for the first two minutes. It seemed as though Ed Wilkes was out for blood against BARTs as he then received 2 majors in quick succession and saw himself excluded from the rest of the game. Cho followed Ed’s lead and also got another major. However, at the same time, another BARTs player also got a major. This was not the last of the majors however as in another great defensive run by Jack, he saw himself also awarded with 3 majors. This was followed by Michael Scott who also got a major shortly after. Michael followed this up with a goal to push Southampton’s goal tally to double figures. In the last minute of the game, Sam decided to join on the trend and got himself the last major of the game.

The game ended 10-5 for Southampton completing a successful revenge against BARTs who found themselves overpowered both defensively and in the attack. The game was quite physical seeing a lot of players draw majors but overall, it was a good game of water polo.

Man of the match: Noah Boelmann

Played in a new position as pit attack and had a beautiful first goal just as practiced in the session before. Also started the momentum for further goal-scoring and had his best game of water polo this season.

Special mention: Jack as he also had a phenomenal game despite his 3 majors and defended energetically.

Dick of the day: BARTs number 5 for chatting a load of bull through the game and shifting the blame onto Alex, getting him carded.

Player Goals/ Majors

Luke Bennalick 0/0

Michael Scott 1/1

Ed Wilkes 1/3

Finn Thomas 0/0

Noah Boelmann 2/1

Ben Lynch 0/0

Daniel Ammon 3/0

Jack James 0/3

Sam Ellis 1/1