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BUSA Canoe Polo Tournament
The Nottingham Trent University Canoe Club is normally associated with weekends away drinking and paddling obscenely hard and dangerous pieces of white water around the country. However in May they branched out to a new level. 8 members of the club travelled to Hatfield, near Doncaster on Friday evening to attend the BUSA National Canoe Polo Championships.
For those of you who don't know, Canoe Polo is very much like water polo, but played in canoes (obviously!). 5 players can ram, jostle and capsize opposing team players in order to score a goal. It is a very physical game requiring excellent paddling skills and team sport tactics.
So on Friday afternoon in a minibus full of fancy dress costumes and alcohol, off we went to Doncaster. But wait a second, before leaving nottingham we by-passed Marks house and in a very cunning display of showers of tears by nicky we managed to lure his Ex girlfriend Jane away from the house whereupon four burly lads kidnapped her and off we went on the bus!! She had no clothes or kit yet was willing to drink on and by God did she!!
We may not have had team talks by the time we got to hatfield, we attempted to read the rules on the way, to find out that because we had done so well the previous year we were now in the hardest division, meaning that while cambridge and oxford, plus newcastle were trying to get beauty sleep, we showed everyone how to drink and spent a large part of the night on various busses singing songs! Big up to Leeds and reading uni's, they wre just as cool as us!
Saturday, in our own way we played three matches, our plan for the weekend was to not concede more that 10 goals and match and by our last match we'd only conceded 39, so by our standards that was plenty of reason to crack on with the celebrations and fancy dress (two of our guys had their 21st birthdays) and off we went drinking away, handcuffs, curry fights, thongs, drinking yards of a paddle....need i say more!!
In all fairness to playing polo we gave it our best shot and tatics such as Stu - our goalie hanging on to the back ropes to stay in line with the goal above - fairplay!! If anyones reading this, we were the team with inflatable seals stuck on our heads and armbands!!!
We played reading on the sunday for the wooden spoon place of the tounament but would have scored more if waking up in randoms tents counted for anything!
But news to all you other teams out there, watch out! Trent now has a polo session every tuesday booked for this year and its own coach!
Trent Canoe Club will be pursuing more Canoe Polo success next year so come along and find us if you are interested or e-mail the club on TNTUCC@hotmail.com. Also checkout the club website including photos of our debut Canoe Polo Tournament as well as what else we get up to on www.trentcanoeclub.50megs.com
Nicky - Canoe Club Polo Secretary
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