The real Queens of the pool: Southampton vs Queen Mary’s (BARTs)

In the familiar setting of the Jubilee pool – far away from any possible London navigation confusion – Southampton’s best ladies were ready to beat BARTs again in home waters. With this being the first home match of the season, the excitement was palpable. Before beginning the warmup, our wonderful social sec had to navigate the problem of keeping her newly dyed hair dry. Armed with a roll of blue electrical tape, a lot of hope and help from the other girls on the team (pictures available upon request), we followed Miss Smith and her new blue halo into the water.

Setting off the game right, Rosie won the swim off and after much swimming up and down, the first goal was scored by none other than President Katie Magill. With all the defensive practice, perfecting of our arc formation in training and Antonia’s incredible goal keeping paying off, BARTs struggled to get the ball past us. After much more swimming, both teams having nearly all their subs, BARTs secured their first goal. After some amazing saves from Antonia, Magill finished off the relatively quiet first quarter with another lovely goal ending 2-1 to Soton.

The second quarter began with another speedy swim from Rosie as the girls began their attack of the shallow end. However, the lack of practice in the shallow end was evident this quarter as the girls shot multiple times to no avail, clearly, they were mistaking this for a crossbar challenge. Defensively the girls played amazing not letting many balls even make it past halfway with tight presses to the BARTs girls, leaving Antonia stating how cold she was being sat in goal. Despite the lack of events on the match sheet the girls still performed fabulously. Tilly making some incredible passes and tight defences. Refusing to have a completely blank sheet this quarter, Rhia manages to slam a ball past the BARTs goalie leaving the first half 3-1.

After a quick few pointers from Alex, the girls were determined to widen the gap even more from BARTs, with tighter defence on the wings and pushing to take more shots.

After having been swam rings around, Barts returned with a vengeance, casting a shot into the shallow end goal (despite the nipples not being in the water, someone’s obviously not listen to Magill’s mantra). However, not too soon after, Magill scored a hattrick. Then not even a minute later followed it up with another amazing goal, shaking off her defender. Obviously quite agitated by Magill’s scoring streak, BARTs committed a foul, failing to stop Katie and instead set up a beautiful man up which Soton made the most of, scoring another goal making coach Alex very happy. This was then followed by another 2 goals from Magill leaving BARTs far behind with a score 8-2. A final foul from BARTs ended the quarter 9-2 to Southampton.

Riding on a high going into the final quarter, Southampton were on top form, swimming rings around BARTs defending every attempt to score. After another quiet start to the quarter, Lottie got excluded (she’s trying very hard to keep her title of Major Queen despite being captain). But despite the advantage, Antonia’s continued unbeatable goal saving stopped BARTs in their tracks. After a lot of swimming back and forth, Rhia scored again bringing Soton’s score into double digits. In the final 20 seconds, with tensions running high, Southampton eager to get one final goal, a quick pass was made to Miss Ramshaw, swimming as fast as she could toward the goal ready to pass. However, not hearing the shouts from her fellow teammates, with 10 seconds to spare realised that she had been swimming towards Antonia. Fresher behaviour.

The match ended 12-2, thrashing BARTs sixfold – a proper start to Southampton’s home games! A fantastic game of polo with some really great defensive play from all the girls, as well as clear team coordination and guidance from our ever-amazing captain throughout the game! In addition to Soton’s success, Ms Smith’s hair remained remarkably dry with her taped hat surviving the entire game – a true victory!

Man of the match: Tilly Phillips for her incredible defensive post play and passes throughout the second half.

Special mention: Katie Magill for her continued incredible goal scoring!

Dick of the day: Rosie Ramshaw for swimming off in the wrong direction at the end of the match.

Goals/Majors

Antonia Neild 0/0

Jessica Grace 0/0

Eleanna Fairhurst 0/0

Katie Smith 0/0

Rosie Ramshaw 0/0

Rhia Perks 4/0

Katie Magill 7/0

Lucia Ciardo 1/0