Rob Parker Blog - September
Follow Rob Parker’s journey as he competes for club and country playing Water Polo around the world. In this update, Rob reviews the team’s Danube Cup exploits in Kosice.
After a well deserved three week break, GB training at 7am on a Monday morning didn’t really sound too appealing.
Anyway, back into training for two weeks before we were off to Kosice in Slovakia for a three-team tournament against Slovakia, Romania and the Greeks. All of these teams are ranked above us and are in the European Championships so it was going to be a real test.
Training was hard; lots of swimming to start to get our fitness levels up but then a lot more tactical. Unfortunately I had to miss a few days due to a family bereavement but then straight back to Manchester for preparation.
We flew early Wednesday morning arriving in Kosice after two flights and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of hotel (probably one of the best we have stayed in).
The first game was against Slovakia and we had the best chance of getting a result in. The game was tough but we hung on to a win after a great start 4-2 quarter to eventually win the game 12-11. This was a great result for us and even made our coach Cristian (Iordache) smile!!!
The next game was against the Greeks. We started the game terribly and were 6-0 down at the quarter. I was very disappointed because we didn’t even try to play with them. The rest of the game was better and we eventually lost 7-17, but if you take the first quarter out means we really were in the game.
The final game was against the Romanians. This was going to be a very difficult challenge and we started badly again with a 6-1 first quarter. However, again we started to play after this and got ourselves into the game more and the final result was 3-11.
Overall the tournament was good we played some good polo but just have to be ready to step up straight away against the better teams.
I left the team in the airport to head for Barcelona as I have been given a contract to play the new season in the Spanish First Division for CN Terrassa. I found out I had a five hour wait at the airport but luckily got upgraded so spent the time in the business lounge relaxing!
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