Player of the game

Bella - she was unstoppable. She swam like a fish, shot like a sniper, and passed like a maestro. She was a dominant force on both offense and defence.

Honourable Mentions

Fergus had a good game, scoring a goal and playing well against a national league team. He was also encouraging and supportive of his teammates, and identified areas for improvement.

Mark played well, making some good saves and directing the defence. However, he was exposed too many times due to the team's lack of organization in defence. Overall, he had a good game and was a valuable asset to the team.

Summary

We got off to a slow start against a very strong Bridgefield team. They had a lot of good players, easily a top five team in the league.

We seemed disorganized, not like our usual selves. This is probably because it was one of the first games of the season and we hadn't yet gotten into the flow of things.

Ant did really well in the pit, putting up some great defensive work. And Mark was on fire, making some amazing saves of his own. It was also great to see Alexis back in the water, he's always a force to be reckoned with.

We need to work on passing into the pit, but we also need to develop some strategies for when the pit is not an option. Similarly even if the pit looks like an option doesn't mean it always has to go in.

We also need to stop wasting opportunities. Even if we are losing by a wide margin, it's a waste of energy and effort for the entire team if we don't use the time we have on attack. Don't make silly passes or shots that have a low percentage of going in.

Let's work towards using up the full attack time. Even if we don't get a shot off, we need to use the time and then cover to stop the other team from scoring off our attack.

In other news, we had a very large number of spectators, which is really good. We are clearly getting quite the following.

The Good:

• Ant did really well in the pit!
• Mark made some amazing saves!
• Alexis was back in the water!
• We had a lot of spectators!

The Bad:

• We got off to a slow start.
• We seemed disorganized.
• We wasted some opportunities.

The Ugly:

• We lost.

But hey, it's only one game! We'll get 'em next time.

Game Stats

No.	Player	Majors	Goals
1	Mark	0	0
2	Chris V	0	0
3	Jake D	2	2
4	Risho	1	0
5	Ant K	0	0
6	Rick T	0	0
7	Dec	3	0
8	Bella	1	1
9	Theo	0	3
10	Daz	1	0
11	Fergus	0	1
12	Chris J	0	0
13	Alexis	0	0

Some favourite player moments

Some great shots and unlucky touches on the frame of the goal. Great work and attempts to swim off and block. However many unguarded players when defending which left Mark exposed too many times. props to him for not giving up.

Fergus's shot, where he pretty much waited until the goalkeeper sinks under the water :D

Sharks played well against a national league team!

Although I enjoyed the game I think we were a bit disorganised in the pool.

I think Jake made some really good points as we were playing and was encouraging during the breaks.

i enjoyed it but i don't think it was our best game and it was clear players didn't want to overcommit and be caught out on the counter by their fast swimmers.

Mark was really encouraging from the goal as well and gave clear instructions for defence, it didn't always work out but he was good at directing players.

I did enjoy getting a lot of play time though and i think we handled the subs really well so everyone got a fair amount of playtime. It felt like everyone was able to contribute play as much as they wanted.

An in-one-time shot to goal was great! We need to start swimming back to defence earlier, especially when the other team is fast.

Really enjoyed the high pass from the wing into Theo on the post scoring a great goal! At this point the Sharks were losing by quite a bit but it really showed the determination as the team kept going.

Risho being in the pool for 20 seconds and getting a major

They were tough, tough opponents but the Sharks seemed to stay focused and kept fighting. Really proud of the team.

Although Chris Raffo wasn’t there. His presence and expertise was radiating from the pool. The team won their 1 on 1s and played with such gousto and you can tell that was inspired by him. Congrats to him for being the profound role model to all

We mostly kept our cool during a rough exhausting game. We had a couple of glimpses of positive play but we are still far to static and not getting eyes when passing

Mark handled himself well, considering the other team was much faster than ours and would be up the pool before our defenders were!

Ant was a beast in pit defence

Bella calling a timeout with 3 seconds to go when we were about to score

Mark keeping going even though he had to put up with loads of one v ones

I thought we did orite against a pretty tough team, needed to take more time to find spaces and pass properly, conceded most our goals on counter-attacks as Bridgford could outswim us pretty easily. We still should've made more of an effort to bet back when losing the ball.