Clean sweep for Aussie water polo squads over Japan

Australia’s men’s and women’s water polo teams have made a clean sweep of the Australia verse Japan Test Match Series in front of a sell out home crowd at the Valley Pool in Brisbane over the weekend.

While the women dominated their game, the final match of the night went down to the wire with the Aussie Sharks managing to deliver a 11-10 win in the dying minutes of the game.

Aussie Sharks captain and NSWIS Scholarship Holder Joel Dennerley said his team will take a lot of learnings from the tight win.

“It was definitely a nail biter, Japan put up a very tough contest today.

“From our perspective we were glad to get the win in front or a great crowd tonight, we have a lot of areas to improve but we’ve got some time ahead of the World Champs.

“The support the last two days here in Brisbane has been fantastic, it was a close contest back and forth the whole game and every little bit of support helped.

“Japan are a quality international side… they play a really high intensity of water polo, they play to the death, they play to the last whistle and you’ve got to stay on them for the full match you can’t switch off at any time.”

For the Aussie Stingers it was a slightly different story, dominating from the outset and powering home to win 20-9.

It was once again a passionate home crowd that propelled the Stingers to an emphatic win, with young gun Amy Ridge (NSWIS) leading the scoring with six goals followed closely by former Brisbane local Ashleigh Southern (NSWIS) with five goals.

The Australian Women’s Team now turn their attention to the FINA World League Inter-continental Cup that will be held in Perth, WA in March, where they will take on some of the world’s best teams in a bid to qualify for the World League Super Final.

Both the Australian Men’s and Women’s teams will remain in Brisbane for their first camp of the year. Players will then head back to their clubs to prepare for the start of OVO Australian Waterpolo League that kicks off on 2 February 2019.