Bidgeegators impress in first premier league appearance

In what Menz hopes is just the start of what will become a long history of Wagga water polo in the capital's top league, the men faced ANU in their inaugural game.

Competing in a double header on Saturday, Bidgeegators narrowly went down in both matches 14-10 and 9-7, but Menz had no complaints.

"Realistically I've got to give it to the team," Menz said.

"Obviously during the Wagga competition the majority of us all play for different clubs and therefore have to play against each other, so to be able to come together and play as our association team for the first round of Premier League with no training together and to play as well as we did I really think it's an amazing achievement and something we wish to continue to build on.

"All in all we had a very young team with several of our players being younger than 18 years old, but with the leadership of Rory Maguire in the pool, he really helped to pull all the boys together and control the flow from in the water.

"Sebastian Brown was easily our highlight player for the whole weekend, to dominate in centre forward as he did, in our first game scored eight goals and in our second game scored four of our goals.

"He's a very dominant left hander, he's so strong that even when he's got two players on him, he's still able to score with his makes everything look too easy."

Also impressive were juniors Campbell Bryce, Jack Piggott, and Cooper Gray, who stepped into the side after their recent stint with ACT at nationals.

MORE LOCAL SPORT NEWS

Menz said the biggest lesson from the games was the need to improve fitness.

Playing without time on in the Wagga league, the addition of the stopping clock can blow seven minute quarters out to as long as 15 minutes.

"Even in that first game of fatigue really started to set in which is where they started to pull ahead and come away with a couple goals," he said.

"It was a little bit of a rude shock for a few of our boys to go from playing on time, like we do in Wagga where the clock doesn't stop, to playing actual time like we did for the Premier League, where after every foul, goal after every change of possession, every time there's a stoppage in play the clock stops.

"So it takes a really large toll on the fitness of everyone in there, especially for all of our guys, not being used to playing for that duration of time, it was a big wake up call for much needed fitness for all of us."

Despite it, Menz was immensely proud of how well the side came together from the different clubs in Wagga.

Moving forward he's excited to watch the group learn and grow together, hopefully to become force in future seasons.

Hoping to see the team as a top competitor in future seasons and at the point where they need to run selections, Menz envisions a pathway for top players into the Bidgeegators team.

With two weeks before their next games Menz said he's hopeful to get a training schedule underway with the team to help prepare them.

In the women's competition the Bidgeegators had an outstanding first round of games, defeating ANU 12-3 and 10-6 at Oasis on Saturday.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: