Liverpool University Canoe Club

Lots of photos of BUSA 2008 Polo on facebook: People (Finn), Women’s Polo (Finn), Open Polo (Finn), Polo in boats (Mary)

By the way, best of luck to Charlotte, who is playing in the GB team this weekend at the international in Belgium. 

By various 

A really enjoyable tournament down at the docks, with teams from all over the country and abroad, and a good atmosphere. Lucc started off with 4 players, which made games really tough, but nevertheless, managed to put up some good resistance, with Andy rushing around like a demon.

Jo (Manchester) joined for the last 3 games - certainly feels better playing with a full team, thanks Jo! Eventual outcome lucc came 8/10 in their minileague, well done guys.

My name is most certainly down for next year, this tournament was the most lighthearted serious one i’ve ever seen, played in really good spirit (for the most part) and even hosted a rather embarassing swim from a certain person……!

Cheers to Alison for all the solo organising and for the trip to the library, Claire for driving, and the lending of 4p for cake and Rob for providing humour throughout.

Anyone wanting some extra polo practice over the summer and next term, check out FOA website for details of training sessions - several folk are planning to head there so watch forum and email.

By AndyR 

We went, we saw some balls, we got some balls, then we threw some balls, scored with our balls and saw also that some teams had more sets of balls than we did. We were at BUSA polo……

More photos from Dom at Facebook After a feast of uncooked beef and pork sausages in jimbobs house the night before, we crawled out of sleeping bags as dawn was breaking, and all our boats then preceded to fail the scrutineering….. a few promises of seeing our balls later on and breakfast bribes consisting of chocolate covered balls in milk in a ball (bowl-sorry i’m northern), we were allowed to continue down to the pitch to begin the onslaught.

The first group game saw us get the biggest anhililation we’ve ever had, giving Nottingham good games in our previous meetings, they kept the ball the whole game and preceded to put it in our net lots of times.
nottingham 9-0 liverpool

Our second game we remembered what we were supposed to be doing, and a fine display from the whole team and some of our best movement of the tournament, saw us convincingly beat the Brums to put us threw to the next round of the competition.
Birmingham 0-1 Liverpool (convincing!!)

In the Ladies group stages, we did rather better in winning 2 out of the 3 games, only Birmingham humbling us, and loads of dubious songs from the sidelines later, we emerged second in the group!

Next came Cardiff and our bid for the top 8! A valiant display later, and being one of only 2 teams to score against them in the whole tournament, shook them up at half time, trailingj ust 2-1. but then their substitutes and fiberglass showed and they dominated the second half.
Cardiff 4-1 Liverpool

Our Ladies, then playing Durham, winners of their group and eventually third placed, put up a bloody good fight, star performances from Charlotte and Cath, steering the vastly inexperienced team, to a good battle of plastic versus gold-encrusted-diamond-whittled-carbon-kevlar-alloyed-speedboats. The money and experience told, and Durham prevailed…..

It then gets a bit hazy, due to the vast amounts of alcohol consumption, and large platefuls of goodness in my stomach, but i vaguely remember sitting on top of our mini-bus singing - i’d rather have a shower than a lloyd! and then regaining consciousness in drips and drabs throughout the night, finding myself up a tree, and then losing consciousness again as i hit the ground and my waiting beer-bottle! Various phonecalls and bit of a sleep later, we found ourselves once again on the polo pitch, or rather most of the team did, as i was helping out by reffing….!!

In a final blow to our bid for any respectable place in the table, we faced sheffield to challenge for nineth spot, and after missing the first half, due to said refereeing duties, we continued to take them apart, yet couldn’t seem to get those balls where we wanted them!
Sudden death ensued, and a feeble shot and a fine deflection from my paddle, steered the ball around dom’s paddle and gung ho, sheffield won golden goal.
Sheffield 2-1 Liverpool

Next were ULU. Another really close game, inwhich we dominated, but yet again, those balls were not co-operating. Another golden goal loss in extra time.
ULU 3-2 Liverpool
devastated.

Liverpool Open team finished up in 15th after beating Swansea 1-0 relatively easily, another golden wondergoal from nick finished off a well won match to a disappointing final position in the table. A year later and we’ll be back……

Our ladies had a better second day, beating the likes of manchester, and loughborough convincingly, before finally meeting Bath, and due to exhaustion were at last gotten the better of, to finish a hugely respectable 10th place.
We haven’t seen the last of these wee lassies, they’ll be back

The old gits, marred by injury with exploding teeth and other very dubious excuses for being injured, did well to actually turn up with raised chins to look at death and defeat in the eye! and after appealing to the crowd for random volunteers, managed to scrounge a team of relics together. Needless to say, they got hammered by Britain’s best wheelchair folk, but managed to stay off the foot of the table by ensuring Bath were disqualified. Really good to watch though guys, and boy did you put up a fight…

A fantastic weekend in all i think, everything went smoothly, beer definately flowed like the canoeing weekends we’re used to, and even though our “squad” consisted of a broken finger, 2 dislocated shoulders and a wookie, we still managed to field three strong teams. We did play some good-looking polo in places and next year (same as this year) will be a completely different story!

Thankyou to everyone who made it happen, jimbob for food, vanny and dom for driving and anyone else who had a part in making fun.

until next year…..

Hello, has anyone got a report on the Christie Cup? Especially any photos? Hooray that Liverpool won!

For now, you’ll just need to make do with the view from the enemy camp.

BUSA polo is the weekend just before term starts.
Going to be an exciting BUSA polo - after winning Christie cup, high hopes of doing well this year, go teams!
For details of transport etc, or if you want to go along and support see Andy Rahoo.
In fact, rather than support, you could also play in the B team? See Andy or Helen (Cost to enter in B team = £20)

By Andy R 

Sorry for the late notice on this guys, my digestive system’s had a rollercoaster ride the last couple of days! (Am just about able to eat soup and keep it down now thank god- i’m starvin! although not yet managed solids)

Usual stuff applies to this sunday, 7;45 meet at the sheds, tournament will go on until we’re too cold to carry on, or until there are no more teams good enough to play us (approx 3:30 ish).

Bring warm stuffs in the way of drinks and clothes, you shall need them if last tournament is anything to go by.

See you in the pool on thursday, we will have a polo training session then, and you will look like a duck on sunday if you aren’t there….

By Andy R 

On a hugely freezing, wet and windy day, i think the biggest accomplishment from everyone was staying in a boat as long as we did, and the 8 that turned up, playing non-stop competitive polo for both teams, from our first game at 9:30 to (almost!) the last game at 1:00 in the baltic conditions.

i think we played the worst polo so far this year, and lost a game and drew another, but seeing as though we were looking to check our paddles were still in our hands, every other second, mebbe in justice wasn’t so bad.

Well done to everyone who stuck around and braved the arctic until the end, it was a bloody cold day, especially for the idiot deciding short sleeve kag and shorts was a great idea!

Cheers dom, laura and martin for the 2 Star assessment, wasn’t too keen on the “you need to prove you can capsize and get out” bit, and feel life draining away…. but cheeeeers, medique davey and myself took two for the team!
- a great opportunity missed here, for more people to be recognised for their paddling credentials, hopefully the opportunity will come again and more will take it.

Well played everyone, at least we gave Sheffield Hallam a Stuffing!

Andy

By: Andy R and Dom 

Polo ref course at the docks Sat 20 JanOpportunity to learn polo rules and take the multi-choice polo reffing exam. This is a good opportunity for anyone interested in reffing, or indeed anyone who just wants to know the rules a bit better. See Dave R at the pool for more info

Polo at the docks Sun 21 Jan

sunday is the usual polo tournament at the docks against anyone brave
enough to face us:

so far i have as playing-

Can anyone else play? no margin for error this tournament…..

- Andy R

2* training and assessment at the docks Sun 21 Jan

Alongside (well in between polo matches) me and Laura M will be
available for 2* training and assessment at the docks on Sunday.
If you are interested email me about this so we can organise what we
need to do.

Cheers

Dom

Polo reports by Andy and Rachel. If anyone has photos of the polo, please post them or send them to Helen. Also please look on the calendar and note the dates of the next few similar tournaments coming up, cheers, Helen

Well done to everyone who played today, there was some cracking polo played, and no swimmers either! The guys team won 4 out of 5 of our games, only losing to last years BUSA winners Nottingham. We have an extremely promising team here, i reckon with training and practising playing as a team etc, we have BUSA already in the bag this time! The girls did well against some tough opposition too, winning half their games. lots of promise, but again, everyone needs to get used to who they’re playing with. More training and practice needed though! So practice at the docks on Wednesday! (see seperate announcement) Andy

I really enjoyed the polo yesterday. Ladies had a bad start, we were thrashed by a team of little boys from FOA (They’ll be scary when they develop muscles). But we definitely improved! Our last 2 games were both against Bangor uni ladies and we were a really similar standard to them, so the games were good. and we won them both I think. Ali did an excellent over-the-head-backwards shot which slammed into the goal!

I also thought that the people who were new to polo yesterday did brilliantly. they all got really involved in the games and listened to the advice that the rest of us were giving them, so that by the end we were playing together much better. Cheers for organising things Andy!

Bangor are really keen to set up some more friendy tournaments. In the past we’ve done these on thursday night sessions with Manchester and Lancaster uni’s, so maybe we could sort something out with them again as well as with Bangor. Wednesday afternoons would also be perfect for this! Rachel

By Andy R 

Docks on wednesday, meet at the sheds at 1:15, same as two weeks ago. email me: a.m.raho@student.liverNOSPAMpool.ac.uk or ring/txt me: O7835631837 to say you want to play.

All abilities welcome, as long as you know which bit of the boat to sit in. If you are wanting to play regularly in the inter-university games at the weekends (like this one just gone), it’s important to get to these sessions, this is where the team-building will happen. make sure you’re there!