After a stern team talk at half time, Cambridge regrouped and Captain Josie Faulkner led numerous high-speed counterattacks up the pool. Oxford continued their drop, allowing Cambridge to move closer in to goal, and unleash some powerful testing shots, notably from Rebecca Vorhees. Voorhees won it for the team, scoring four blinding goals giving Cambridge the lead in the fourth quarter. Although a slightly less assured performance than that of a few weeks before, Cambridge did always look the better side, and played a better standard of Water Polo throughout the match. It was an extremely close contest culminating in a deserved win for the Light Blues. Boosted by the women’s result the men’s match opened with some encouraging attacking play from Cambridge and, although seemingly unable to convert some of their early opportunities, Steve Cooke scored a good individual goal to give Cambridge the lead. Oxford came back strong, testing the Cambridge defence, and eventually equalising.The second and third quarters were very close, with not much to separate the teams, although with players tiring both sides lost some of their shape in attack. With the score tied at 4-4 going into the final quarter, the Cambridge team knew that the match could still be won, and started out strong after fiery words from Captain Riccardo di Pietro and Coach Andy Knight. Crucially, 3 minutes into the fourth quarter Oxford re-took the lead, once again Cambridge pushed forward and tried valiantly to equalise, but with no result. After the Dark Blues doubled their lead with less than two minutes remaining Cambridge still fought
hard, but were unable to claw back the deficit, the match finishing a frustrating 6-4 defeat. The Cambridge side put in a disciplined performance, and members of the crowd commented on how unified they looked as a team. Sadly a chronic inability to put away their goalscoring opportunities throughout the match meant that the Men were unable to capitalise on some good attacking play. Defensively they looked fairly solid, covering back well, and impressively managed to keep a side featuring the imposing Shaun Hotchkiss to just six goals. Goalkeeper Alex Ross also consistently made topclass saves, including one penalty, to keep the match close. Cambridge now really need to work on their finishing if they want to take their polo to the next level. Other News Men’s Swimming The start of the term saw a dedicated core of swimmers left on the men’s team, but having lost several team members last year, it looked like a good intake would be needed from the trials. Freshers’ Fair saw many sign ups and soon the eagerly awaited trials were upon us. We saw, as always, a huge variety of ability at trials, but there were six people who stood out, and none could be left out of the team. Despite this causing the exceeding of the unofficial quota of 12 swimmers, the following six swimmers were welcomed into the team: Dane Rook; Joel Carpenter; Jack Long; Henry Marshall; Tom Hill and Brad Dixon. They have integrated well and have very quickly become crucial members of our tightly knit team.
This year, for the first time in several years, there is a strengthening link between our Club and City of Cambridge Swimming Club (CoCSC). A number of our swimmers are now training with the Top Squad, under the guidance of James Freezer, whilst others are training with the Senior Squad and Masters. The benefits to us are clear – we have some coached sessions, as well as more pool time. This, I feel, has worked very well with significant benefits to those people who attend these sessions. The first competition of the year was the Relays Gala, held at Parkside. This was one of the first opportunities for everyone to see each other swim, and begin to really bond as a team. Everyone swam really well, and the teams (after some scoring confusion) were well placed. Some outstanding individual performances, though important, were far eclipsed by the team spirit shown even at this early stage in the year! The next major event was BUCS short-course championships, held in Sheffield on 13th – 15th November. We managed to take a good sized team, making entries difficult as people wanted to swim so much! There were again some outstanding personal achievements, with several Blues times achieved. Of the guys, Andy, Dane and Tom swam impressively to achieve these times so early in the season. The single final made by Tom in the 200 back does not do justice to the efforts and achievements of the team as a whole! The relay teams swam impressively, missing out on finals by a matter of a couple of places. Again, the team spirit and excellent attitude of the team showed through.
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