Stirling Water Polo retain West Cup

At the National Swimming Academy on Sunday 11 June 2017 and in front of a vociferous support, Stirling retained the West Cup where they defeated Western Baths 20-18 in an extremely competitive and exciting game.
The West Cup is the oldest Water Polo Trophy still to be actively played for in the world dating from 1886 and is fought for by the Senior Teams within the West District of Scottish Swimming.
This was a match up of Youth vs Experience with Stirling fielding 4 players from their Scottish Under 16 Championship winning Team along with a further 6 players all under 20. Western Baths (Glasgow) brought through a significantly older Team with a number of Italians and Hungarians within their ranks.
The first quarter saw Stirling win the swim off and on their first attack scored a well worked goal. Throughout the quarter Stirling were a constant threat and at the end Stirling led 6-3. However, the experienced players of Western Baths were adept at using their size and power against a young Team and were constantly fighting back. In every quarter, every time Stirling stretched their lead, Western fought back to keep in touch.
In the middle of the 4th quarter, Stirling had worked back to a three goal lead but Western kept the pressure on and with less than a minute to go had narrowed the gap to one goal with Stirling leading 19-18. With Western pressing for the equaliser, Stirling stole the ball with under 30 seconds to play and cleverly worked the ball to an unmarked player to score the decisive goal with only 3 seconds left in the game. A 20-18 win for Stirling.
This is a fine achievement for this young Stirling Team who were presented with the trophy from the West District President, Janice Morgan.