8th May 2012
From the National
League finals we flew home for a last night’s sleep in our own beds for a while
before flying to London the next day.
In London the Aussie Stingers competed in the ‘London Prepares’ test
event, with games against Olympic qualified teams – Great Britain, Hungary and
the USAOur first game was against the Brits, after much publicity of them
claiming the Aussie’s to be the dirtiest team in women’s water polo – it even
made the Australian papers. Photo
below, and the article in The Weekend Australian at this link - http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/london-games/stingers-not-dirty-team-just-physical/story-e6frgdg6-1226347259310
I guess the
Brits are so new to the game that they don’t really know what to expect, well
they do now after we trounced them 10-4 in front of an almost full house of
4000 in the Olympic venue. Our
next game was against our main rivals – the USA. We always have very tough matches, and this was no
exception. The USA were the victors with a 10-9 win, which meant that we had to
beat Hungary to get another shot at the USA in the gold medal match. The Hungarian game was a very high scoring
affair, but we always felt comfortable with a few goals lead at each
break. So then to the grand final
– the business end of the tournament.
The atmosphere was electric.
The venue was packed out to 5000 people (mostly Brits who have only
recently been introduced to water polo, but were as boisterous as ny
supporter). The USA got a great start and we were trailing by two goals, but by
sticking to our plan we chipped away at them and gained the lead by the first
quarter break. We never gave the
lead up and won in a 6-5 victory.
It was a great feeling, winning in the Olympic venue and singing the
national anthem with our gold medals and Olympic mascot as a gift. Now we just have to repeat this in two
months time!
No rest for
the wicked, we went straight from the Grand Final to Heathrow airport to catch
a plane to Tokyo via Singapore (I know, it doesn’t make sense to me
either). We have a round of World
League against the Japanese and Chinese this week in Chiba.
I will
hopefully bring you some more good results in the next instalment!!
Sayonara
for now.
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