Goal by goal: Joanna Wray blogs from Turkey - Day Three
Originally supposed to fly on Thursday but thwarted by volcanic ash flight disruption, GB water polo men’s team were in Ankara, Turkey from Friday 23rd - Sunday 25th April in a LEN competition. Catch the action in this blog by Joanna Wray, World Class Programmes Manager, British Water Polo. Today is the final day and they are playing Belarus.
We played the first match this morning against Belarus, our last game of the tournament. Yesterday they drew against Ukraine 8-8 after leading at half time 5-1, so we prepared for them to be stronger than Ukraine.
Collecting our composure we came out more organized in the final quarter.
Right from the start of the game we dominated, having seven attacks in the first five minutes. However we couldn’t convert any of them. We hit the post, had shots blocked by the goalkeeper or they just went wide. Near the end of the first quarter Rob Parker managed to break the deadlock scoring in man up. The Belarus attacks were few but they managed to score one past Matt Holland in goal to end the quarter 1-1.
Quarter two started with a good goal from Rob Parker in centre forward escaping from his defender to put the ball in the back of the net. However, a mistake in defence led to a penalty for Belarus scoring to level the game again. Glen Robinson scored another goal this quarter and there should have been more but again our shots were just off target and we didn’t convert the chances we had.
The second half started with us conceding a soft goal followed by another penalty against us. Lucky for us they didn’t convert this time.
A good man up by GB lead to a goal by Tom Curwen followed by a goal by Scott from outside. However, each time we scored we also conceded. Rob scored a final man up in the third quarter but then we had a man down which was also scored, leveling the game 6-6.
Collecting our composure we came out more organized in the final quarter. Adam Scholefield scored a goal from the pit and Scott scored another positional goal. Tom Curwen then followed this by making a good steal in defence and swimming through to receive the ball back and score. Final score was 9-7 to GB and we took a very respectable second place in the tournament behind Turkey.
Game statistics
| Goal Scorers: Rob Parker -3, Scott Carpenter – 2, Tom Curwen – 2, Adam Scholefield – 1, Glen Robinson – 1 |
| Man up: 3 converted from 6 |
| Man down: 1 conceded from 3. Two penalties conceded from 3 |
| Total attacks: 29. Total shots 25 = 64%, 9/25 goals scored = 36% |
| Steals: 8 |
| Goals scored: 3 man up, 2 centre forward, 4 positional from outside |
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