Northwood 1st team waterpolo played Clifton on Monday 16 February as the fixture for the weekend had been postponed due to the Northwood team being on Tour in the Eastern Cape for the Vides waterpolo tournament.
The Northwood team has been gaining confidence after their recent tours to the Grey Bloem Itec Waterpolo tournamnet and the Vides waterpolo tournament hosted in Bloemfontein and East London respectively.
The match was played at Clifton and started well with good attacking opportunities being created on both ends of the pool. Clifton opened the scoring to lead 1-0 after 2 minutes, Northwood replied on the next attack. Both teams exchanged blows and at the end of the 1st chukka the score was tied at 2 all.
The second Chukka was the ultimate game changer again, Clifton converted first to take the lead but during the Chukka Northwood put 3 consecutive goals in while Clifton ended strong with the score 5-4 in favour of Northwood.
The 3rd chukka was even at 1 a piece with tactical time outs being called on both sides. Northwood lead going into the 4th Chukka 6-5.
In the last chukka Northwood showed composure by slowing down the game and running down the clock. Clifton converted to take us to 6 all. Again the young Northwood team fought tenaciously for every scrap and took the score to 8-6 with 1 min 30 seconds on the clock. Clifton pushed us all the way to the end and were rewarded with a goal in the dying seconds to pull the score to 8-7 in favour of Northwood.
Goal scorers for Northwood were:
Justin Snyman 2 goals
Mark Fourche 2 goals
Ryan Symington 2 goals
Criag Van Leeuwen 1 goal
Stratten Kennedy 1 goal
The coach of Northwood Waterpolo, Mr Hadyn Skinner, says “This is a remarkable victory for Northwood as after my appointment at Northwood in 2014 our 1st game was against Clifton where we lost 23-2. The team has been hard at work and will continue to push moving forward. We respect the Clifton waterpolo team immensely, we were just lucky to have our day yesterday”.
