Our February England Water Polo club news is out - February 1, 2024

Welcome to our February News. In the News we usually concentrate on what clubs have been up to in England over the last month or so. However, this month we would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the GB Senior Women’s team who have proved that they are among the elite teams in Europe after their performance in the LEN European Championships that took place in Eindhoven in January. The team took 3 wins from 3 matches in the group stage and went on to finish 7th overall losing only to the Netherlands (World Champions) and Hungary (Olympic bronze medallists).

This fantastic result means that the team qualifies for the World Championships that will take place starting 3 February in Doha Qatar. Well done to all the players and coaches for making this possible.

Great Britain’s women with their ticket to the World Championships!

In addition to the overall team achievement, team player, Toula Falvey, was the overall top scoring Centre in the whole competition with 11 goals from 20 shots.

Toula Falvey

And Katie Brown (nee Hesketh) was joint second leading sprinter winning the ball 15 times from 25 attempts.

Katie Brown

Absolutely amazing performances and we are all so proud of you!

Back in England the BWPL Super 5s are under way. In the men’s competition, Polytechnic is in the lead on 4 points followed by Sutton & Cheam and Welsh Wanderers on goal difference.

In the women’s competition, City of Manchester women’s first team had a strong start to their defence of the Super 5 title with an 18-4 win against Otter and a 16-7 win against Sheffield Sharks. They sit top of the table with a goal difference of 23 over Liverpool Lizzards in second place. Coventry are in third place.

City of Manchester’s women

In Men’s championship 1 Penguin are in the top spot on 5 points with an 8 goal difference over Watford in second. Sheffield are in third.

Penguin in action against Exeter

In the women’s Championship 1 event Cheltenham are in the lead on 6 points with Hucknall in second and Tyldesley in third.

Tyldesley currently third in Championship 1

City of Manchester hosted their Winter Festival on 13 September for boys and girls born in 2010/2011 and mixed matches for athletes born 2012/2013. It was another fantastic event in which 27 teams took part, with over 200m players and a total of 75 games played. It was a fantastic opportunity for this age group to play a lot of games and get experience of competition water polo.

The Manchester Winter Festival of Polo in full flow

Congratulations to St Ambrose College who won the Boys event with Caledonia coming second and Sedgefield third. Liverpool won the girls’ event with Birmingham in silver and Cheltenham picking up the bronze place. In the 2012/13 mixed team Ratcliffe took gold, St Ambrose College took silver and Tyldesley/Chester took the bronze position.

Some of the Winter Festival winners

In other news, the Nordic League has started again and Cheltenham have been in Tenerife to compete in the qualification round where they faced Neukolln Berlin, CE Mediterrani and SC Tenerife Echeyde. Many thanks to www.lacorchera.com for the pictures from Tenerife.

To be fair, playing polo in the glorious Canary Island sunshine isn’t a bad way to spend a weekend!

Cheltenham in Tenerife

That’s it for this month’s round up of club news. We are always happy to publicise news from clubs around England so if you have any news you would like to share, please let us know by emailing ah@waterpoloengland.org

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