Following tough matches against Japan and New Zealand, Great Britain women’s water polo team round out their positive world championships campaign with a second victory over France.
With Great Britain women’s water polo team advancing from Group D in second position, a crossover tie against Japan was awaiting them as they bid to reach the quarter finals - and with that was the potential of surpassing Britain’s previous best ever ranking of 9th in the world at the Madrid 1986 championships.
Japan however had already proved their goalscoring threat against several highly ranked sides in Group C, and once again showed off their ruthless counter-attacking ability to strike up an early lead that couldn’t be chased down despite Britain’s best efforts to positively pass the ball about.
Five of Britain’s goals in the 23-10 defeat were converted in the final quarter as the team battled to the final klaxon.
Entering the 9-12 classification stages lined up a match firstly against New Zealand - which would prove to be another free scoring affair.
Closely matched through the first quarter, New Zealand blew out to a 12-6 halftime lead before stretching the scoreline further through the third period. Resilience has been an essential attribute of this British side and with penalty goals from Lily Turner and Toula Falvey they won the last quarter to take momentum forward from the 20-12 match defeat.
The final match Great Britain’s campaign provided a second meeting with the French side they’d played in the opening match of the tournament.
It would prove to be another tight match up, with crucial moments at either end of the pool as Turner and captain Kathy Rogers each scored hattricks, while Sophie Jackson recorded 12 saves as she protected the goal.
Coming from one down to lead 6-4 at halftime proved to be the key turning point in the match for Great Britain as they went on to sealing a 14-9 victory that secured 11th place in the competition rankings – equalling their result at last year’s world championships in Doha.
Speaking of their encounter against France as she picked up the player of the match award, Rogers said:
“The team came out super strong. We stuck to our plan and I’m really proud of all the girls. It’s such an amazing way to finish the tournament – stronger than we started. We had some real highs and lows here, so it’s incredible to finish like that.
“We know France pretty well. We also did two preparation camps with them before the draw came out. We just knew that we had to go out there and play our game. We knew how they played, so we just had to stick to our game plan. Today, we did the little things better, like we got the ball a bit deeper, we set our wings deeper, the centre forward did the extra spin, we took the extra seconds on man up. It was just the little things that we had worked on throughout preparation and throughout this tournament that we did to get there.”
Adding on Britain’s Singapore 2025 campaign and the future:
“We came in, we met our goal. We really wanted to be in the top 12 at least and meet the level we did last time. Every player has grown, which is another goal of ours. It was important for us to come back from the Japan game strong because that was a really hard loss to take and we did that so I’m really proud of the team.
“There’s going to be a really good future. It’s going to be really big. We’re getting more support from Swim England and Aquatics GB, so it’s a really exciting time. We have only two-and-a-half years’ worth of a programme so we’re going to get better and better.”
Stream live free-to-air coverage of the World Aquatics Championships 2025 taking place in Singapore at www.aquaticsgb.com/live.