Water polo teenagers impress Americans

Press, 26 May 1979, Page 12

Water polo teenagers impress Americans

I With a tour record of nine wins, nine losses and a draw, the New Zealand under-19 water polo team could be considered to have had a satisfactory tour of California this month.

But in two respects, the team could be considered a big success. Its man-up attack — six on five, in water polo vernacular — was “the best I have ever seen from a New Zealand team,” according to the New Zealand manager (Mr Alan Trotter, of Rotorua); and he said it was also rated the best in their experience by two eminent American judges, Dr John Lowell, of Indio High School, and Bob Home, the former Olympic coach. The latter is to incorporate that particular three-three attack into his University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.) programme. That was a lesson the New Zealanders could teach their hosts. The lesson they learned was in the type of game played by the Americans, and particularly the high school players. Smaller than many of their opponents, they play a basically counter-attacking game, with the heavy emphasis on timing. Timing passing is so important, that — contrary to accepted New Zealand teaching — the pass is invariably made to a player not watching for the ball.

The secret of the success of this sort of game is that each play has a position: setters, rovers and drivers are the

three defined areas, the first-named setting up play, the second being the fetch-and-carry players, and the drivers being the principal goal-scorers. So rigid is this system that rovers can not “pick” with drivers, and so on. The success of the system is reflected, in a player getting a break of perhaps only a head, and is almost certain to score a goaL In this respect, the New Zealanders learned to perform the flick and push passes much differently. They also learned an interesting variation of a pressure game, which basically involved leaving the players on the “wrong” side of the pool very loosely marked and not fouled; the others very heavily marked. Different refereeing interpretations were an obvious problem. A lot of splash and activity from an American — “doing a Hollywood” — would result in the ejection of a New Zealand player, even if he had both arms out of the water. And Mr Trotter said that another feature of rule interpretations being “miles apart,” were that American referees allowed the sitting holeman to “do anything” when the ball was nowhere near that area. “But equally, they allow the defender to do anything, almost as a matter of course — holding, sinking, pulling back — the lot.

“They are also far more vigorous; everything is done with urgency, and it took us four to five days to wake up to this." Also,

the New Zealand swimming was inferior to that of the Americans, though the leg strength of the players from the two countries was comparable.

The team was a very even combination, and the starting line-up was usually different from game to game. Two who were usually in the top seven were the captain, John Davie, and John Koens, and Mr Trotter mentioned these two as those in a small group likely to make further progress: Davie is already a national senior team member.

Others he singled out were Derek Ferigo and Stephen Williams, and he also speculated that Lachie Marshall had the same potential, but is still only 15. A former goalie himself, Mr Trotter said that John Gallagher had a quite good tour in goal, until some lapses right at the end; and expressed a personal thought that Stephen Ward should concentrate on goalkeeping. In the team’s 19 games, two losses and a win stood out as their best games. An early-tour 1-5 loss to Longbeach was mainly because of a heavy imbalance of major fouls, and three of the home team’s goals were from penalties. Later, in the second and last tournament, New Zealand lost 6-10 to the same team

after trailing 1-5 at the end. of the first quarter. The other top performance was the 13-7 win in the first tournament against Downey A, Davie making the difference with his six first-quarter goals. Davie has remained in the United States, and already has a place in the Santa Barbara B team, and the chance of a place in the A team for the PanAm Junior Olympics next month. Gallagher and the coach, Lindsay Scott, have also remained in the United States for a further period before returning to New Zealand.

Final success just eluded New Zealand in each of its tournaments. In the first, at Cypress, it lost 3-7 to the home team in the final after earlier beating Cypress B 13-1, Fast B 14-1, Jack Rabbits 11-6, Riverside B 23-3, Downey A 13-7, and Fast A 8-6.

In the second tournament, New Zealand was a late entry and placed in the stronger section, where it lost to Longbeach 6-10 and Newport, the host, 7-9, before beating Costa Mesa 15-3 and Commerce 9-7. In other tour matches, the losses were to Santa Barbara (1-7), Cypress (910), Newport (4-9), Longbeach (1-5), UC.L.A. (3-10) and Indio (4-9). It beat Commerce 12-10, and drew 6-all with Newport.