Brist-all seem like GB players x

On a sunny Saturday morning, Southampton’s strongest girls took a road trip to their first “home” match of the year against Bristol, ready to make a name for themselves in the prem.

The day began with our lovely captain, Miss Lottie Ratledge, gathering the teams’ bets on how badly we would be shafted by Bristol. Popular scores included: 40-0, 37-2 and 34-1 (clearly, we have very high expectations of ourselves).

After a mini road trip over to Surrey which included the two most important things on a match day: tactics and karaoke; the Soton girls, and their dedicated support team of our fabulous freshers and family, mentally prepared to enter the pool.

Following an ever-inspiring team talk from Miss Ratledge, consisting of outlining how epically we lose but making it clear our objective of the day was to have a good time, the first quarter kicked off our singular ref dropping in the ball after a blow off his whistle. A fierce swim off resulted in Bristol snatching the ball from under our noses, slinging it right into the net only 15 seconds in and then sneaking another one in swiftly after- not even giving Miss Rowland’s long arms a chance to warm up. A few more goals from Bristol resulted in our lovely coach Mr Thomas to yell several times from poolside ‘ARMS’- just to remind us that we do actually have arms and we should actually put them in the air to help stop our goalie from being battered with the ball. Halfway the first quarter Bristol earned their first major, kindly letting us practise the well-loved man up formation. Unfortunately, we were not speedy enough and Bristol snatched back possession of the ball and ended the quarter 11-0 in their favour.

The second quarter began with our captain earning her first exclusion of the match (she obviously did not take a mental note of how to avoid majors after being dry side captain for the boys a few days before). The Bristol girls sadly utilised our diva down moment to launch some more balls at Miss Rowland upping their score to 15-0. Miss Ratledge then made the intriguing tactical decision of awarding herself yet another major, giving away a penalty which Bristol used well despite our best efforts to stop their ever-increasing number of goals.

However, all was not lost, Bristol didn’t know it yet we had a secret weapon up our sleeves! After wrestling with Bristol’s strongest girls, muscle mummy Iris Bugnar launched an absolute cannon right past the goalie straight into the back of the net. THE CROWDS WENT WILD!!!!! Even the Bristol supporters cheered because they were so impressed. After this impressive display from Miss Bugnar, the Bristol girlies were clearly so filled with fear that they sent 3 more goals past Miss Rowland to end the quarter with 20-1 to our adversaries.

After a brief half time break and tactics talk from our dry side coach Mr Finn Thomas, we started the quarter strong with our speediest wing, Eleanna Fairhurst, charging in to win the swim off and scoop the ball swiftly into our possession. With the ball in our possession, we finally felt awake and stepped up our defensive game, much to Miss Rowland’s delight, I’m sure she was feeling lonely as the only person defending the goal for the first 2 quarters.

Following some back and forth with aggressive attacking and defending from both teams, Bristol made the mistake of committing a major too close to our terrifying goalie, awarding a penalty to us.

Much to her delight, our very own Katie Smith readied herself to take her very first BUCS penalty. The Bristol goalie however was clearly not feeling intimidated enough to cower away in fear from VP Smithy and snatched the ball away before it could make its way to the back of the net. Bristol took this as a sign to take advantage of our use of Smithy’s penalty as an intimidation tactic failing and hammered a few more goals in, ending the penultimate quarter with a score of 28-1 to Bristol.

Our final quarter began with spirits high and our tactical plan on point, the Soton girls lined up for one final swim off, speeding up and down the pool with all their strength. After one of the Bristol girls earned her second exclusion of the day, our very own VP (I heard a rumour that it stands for Very Powerful) used all of her might to launch a beautiful goal right past the Bristol goalie right into the back of the net. THE CROWDS WENT WILD (for a second time) and the people who had predicted us scoring zero goals at the start of the day cursed their lost opportunity to earn a free pint.

By this point all the excitement had taken too much out of me and I had to quickly sub myself out for fear of taking a chunder in the pool as I had taken my social sec role a little too seriously the previous night by spending too long in the palace of dreams, luckily for us a much less hungover replacement jumped in- which kindly saved the lifeguards from having to clean up my vomit.

Our captain then took it upon herself to get herself on the score sheet again as she was clearly feeling a bit left out, although it was unfortunately with a third major, giving away another penalty to Bristol, resulting in the wrapping of Ratledge and the reinstatement of her title of ‘Major Queen’. Bristol ended the final quarter by taking advantage of our third diva down, sneaking in one final goal round Miss Rowland’s long arms before the whistle was blown, resulting in a final score of 31-2 to Bristol. We then gave a cheer of congratulations to our friendly competitors and in a true sporting way they cheered back (with a brief pause to actually remember which team they had absolutely battered in the pool).

We ended the day with a celebratory Nando’s, funnily enough Miss Ratledge didn’t order a wrap as she was full from the one she got in the game, we then endured our trek back to Southampton for a well-deserved coma of a sleep and pints from our lovely Captain for Smithy and Bugnar for managing to get goals past these absolute weapons.

Written by Ella Evans.

Most Valuable Players: Katie Smith and Iris Bugnar for scoring our 2 beautiful goals (from very far away) against the absolute beasts who were playing for Bristol.

Dick of the Day: Lottie Ratledge for being the only person to get any majors despite being our captain and getting wrapped, truly leading by example.

Goals / Majors:

Neve Rowland 0/0

Izzy Saunders 0/0

Eleanna Fairhurst 0/0

Katie Smith 1/0

Katie Wallace 0/0

Imogen Lancaster 0/0

Georgia Skelton. 0/0

Mia Spencer 0/0

Lottie Ratledge 0/3

Iris Bugnar 1/0

Isobel Neighbour 0/0