Lancaster Clinch British Title
16th February 2003Lancaster City won a hard fought final game to claim the British Men's Water Polo Championship 2003 this weekend in Manchester. As the form suggested the last game against London based Hammersmith Penguin, was the decider as Lancaster came away with the title, winning 11 - 6. The contest for third place was between Bristol and Rotherham, with the West Country team coming out winners 13 - 6.
The contest between Lancaster and Penguin was eagerly anticipated, with few daring to predict the final outcome. With Colin Burgess and Jim Lafferty putting Lancaster on the score sheet in the first quarter, the northern team seemed to be stamping their authority on the match, going in to the second quarter 2-0 up.
Penguin, however, came out with renewed vigour and took the game to Lancaster. Nick Hume was guilty of missing a couple of promising chances for Penguin and failed to match the 7 that he scored against Rotherham on the previous day. He was, however, an integral playmaker and set up the move, which resulted in Penguins' second goal, scored by Joe Ernst.
Up until the half way point both teams were pretty evenly matched with the score at 5 - 4 to the Lancaster club. The turning point in the game was the sending out of two of Hammersmiths key players, Jerome Read and their top scorer Hume. Bruce Elder who scored a goal apiece in the second and third quarters, was the teams' top scorer in this match.
Although Lancaster lost their Scottish and GB international Dougie Campbell in the third quarter, the team showed that they had greater strength in depth. Their No 4 Jim McIlquham lead the attack after Campbells dismissal and scored a hat trick of goals. The first two were almost identical, as he found the right hand corner of the net, unchallenged from some 8 metres out.
The outcome was still uncertain going in to the final quarter, but Lancaster pulled away scoring a further 3 goals from Burgess and top scorer McIlquham, to win by a convincing margin. Lancaster coach Ryszard Detko said after the final whistle:
'The team played excellently well. We do have one or two top players in there, but its based on the team performance. At the end of the day we came out on top.'
The third place play off between Rotherham and Bristol followed a similar pattern of play, with the scores being pretty evenly matched up until the half way point, at 4 - 5. Bristol however, dominated the latter stages with 6 goals coming in the final quarter.
Saturdays Results
Lancaster 10 vs Bristol 3
Rotherham 7 vs Hammersmith Penguin 15