As we rounded up the 8 biggest alpha-males in cayley, it became clear we were always going to make the final. On the walk down, we taunted the opponents, faraday, calling them ‘faragay’. As they had never heard this insult before.

Graeme (captain) mistakenly lead the boys to base, as he has became accustomed to this walk. When finally entering the pool, the chap on reception was overwhelmed with aura, as the Cayley troops powered their way through the automatic doors; 10 minutes before their match commenced.

Once kitted out in the suitable attire (speedos and socks) and a pregame team shower before entering the pool, it dawned upon us we were mere boys, with pre-adolescent bodies, compared to the chizzled chaps of ‘faragay’ – one of which was playing his ab-xylophone!

The ‘warm up’ consisted of standing in a circle, football throwing the ball to each other- little did we know we weren’t allowed to use two hands when throwing. Without a warm up width, we were called up for assassination.

Faraday must have been daunted by our team cohesion, as we argued amongst our-self who should go in goal. Richard, the tallest member of the team stepped up to the plate. In hindsight, it may have been beneficial to have our biggest team member outfield. The team was feeling very weak after consuming over 10 x the RDA of chlorine after the first 30 seconds. One of the seven chizzled chaps from faraday banged in one less goal than the no. of fouls we gave away- 5. However, the cayley lads were unfortunate, as we smashed the cross bar at least 11 times, with 6 disallowed goals- one of which, big Richard banged in an over head bicycle kick from our own goal line.

We left the swimming complex only 10 minutes and 53 seconds after entering, chanting C-A-Y-L-E-Y proudly, after what appeared to be the special units day out to the water polo.

By Graeme Rodger and Philip Marsh.