BUCS Focus: M1 Water Polo

Northumbria University M1 Water Polo struck back with a 15-7 win against Sheffield Hallam after two straight losses.

“It was obvious to me that we were in better condition generally as a group, than Sheffield were,” said head coach Neil Bowers. “So we were always going to come away stronger with counter attacks and most of our goals came from counter attacks.

“I’m reasonably impressed with the fact that we only conceded seven goals. I’m always happy for if the opponents score fewer than eight, which is often the target I set for the guys, because I know that we have enough goals in our attack to score more than another team.”

In light of the win Bowers remained critical in an attempt get the best out of his squad.

“The guys were a little bit shocked how hard I’ve been on them after a win, but the performance wasn’t great,” added Bowers.

 “I suppose the unfortunate job of a coach is to make sure the standards stay high and we win as many games as we can. We have to be ready to operate at a higher level in order to lower the risk of losing games.

“The result was [still] something that we needed and that’s always the important thing.”

Bowers considers mental toughness to be a deciding factor in dealing with a busy schedule.

“The difficult thing we’ve got at the moment is that there are so many matches that there is not much training going on,” he added.

“To rectify things can be quite difficult then. So it’s more a mental approach. I need to get the players to be mentally ready, because as we showed at the end of the game, not a lot needs to change for us to be dominant.”

For their next BUCS game Northumbria travel to Loughborough.

“We’ve got two very important games coming up against teams that are very similar to Sheffield and they are both away matches, which make them difficult to negotiate,” added Bowers.

“We will do some work on mentally preparing, the warm-up and the focus before the game. We want to get in that intensity early on in the game rather than waiting until three quarters to do it.”

Patrick Dalacker