SPREYDON IN N.Z. CLUB FINAL

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27896, 18 February 1956, Page 3

SPREYDON IN N.Z. CLUB FINAL

This summer, for the first time sn nearly half a century, a water polo competition among champion clubs throughout New Zealand has been held. The final of the competition will be fought out between the champion South Island team, Spreydon (Christchurch), and the Hutt club’s team, which is the leading North Island side. The game will be played on the final day of the national water polo title rounds at Nelson next Saturday.

Water polo now has two championships on a Dominion-wide basis —a provincial championship and a club championship. Originally national supremacy in the sport was decided by leading clubs. That was more than 46 years ago when the contest was superseded by competitions among representative provincial sides. The champion water polo club team from each swimming centre is the leading team at the end of first round competition games. The first trophy for water polo competition in New Zealand was a big black and gold banner which came into use in 1893. That year was the third in which national competitions had been held and it so happened that it was also the third year the Christchurch club had woA them. The club took the banner outright before it had a chance to travel; then presented it to the New Zealand Amateur Swimming Association “for perpetual competition.’’ In all, the club won the banner five times, the last time in 1896. Wanganui won it just after the turn of the century and in 1912 a Wellington team called Swifts, with a young Bernard Freyberg as a member, won it. In 1909 when the banner went into provincial competition Canterbury won; and Canterbury won it every other year it was competed for, except in 1915 when Hawkes Bay took it in its home pool at Napier. The banner’s “perpetuity” ran out ir 1923 and today it hangs, still an imposing trophy in spite of the moths anc the wear of years, on a wall in the Christchurch Swimming Club’s pavilion at Addington. The present national- trophy is* a lifesize bronze water polo ball mounted on a black ebony stand. It has been in competition for 33 years and has spent more than half its time in Canterbury. Since World War II Canterbury has held the trophy in four successive seasons (1950-53) losing to Wellington in 1954 and last year. Wellington and Canterbury, the Dominion’s two leading water polo centres, have a private competition of their own each year. The trophy at stake is the E. Norden Challenge Cup, at present held by Canterbury. Next Saturday Spreydon will be a hard team to match for the title of the Dominion’s premier water polo club. It has kept up a high standard ovei the years and in 1950 it had the distinction (with one Beckenham player) of . trouncing the team selected to train for Australian representation at the 1952 Olympic Games. It has only been beaten once in the last six years and that was by Beckenham, which is breeding some champions of its own, in December.