Italy prove girls can be buoys

Women's water polo finalSo now we know where all the Greek football fans were hiding. In the swimming pool last night, the host nation turned out in force for what was to have been the coronation of the Greek women's water polo team.

The Greeks have managed to star in a diverse number of Olympic events over the past fortnight but this was their last chance of a team medal and having stunned the aristocrats of soccer in Portugal last June, they recreated a similar atmosphere at waterside.

The sport came about thanks to the original water birth at the London swimming club way back in 1870, the idea being to transfer the principal points of soccer to the water.

And today, it is the kind of sport that would lend itself perfectly to the phraseology John Motson has translated into popular currency: "Back of the net", "Oooh, off the crossbar", and the classic, "Oh, I say".

Water polo is, like many Olympic sports, a mad old sport. Exciting, highly skilled, technical but nonetheless another example of the sort of foolishness mankind has devised in its relentless pursuit of entertainment. The men's game has been an Olympic standard since 1928, a basic rites-of-savagery involving gouging, dragging, scraping, pulling, punching and often as close to drowning as does not count. And the women make the men look like wimps.

The Italians play water polo much like the Azzurri play soccer, preferring cautious, highly organised defence and slow-building attacks involving what Motty would surely call buoying with the opposition. Although they trounced the Greeks in the preliminary rounds, the Greeks returned to meet them in this final on a wave of popular emotion. They relied heavily on Kyriaki Liosi, their best sprinter and goal scorer, while the Italians had a more experienced line-up.

One thing was certain: whatever minority sports Ireland may decide to concentrate on for future Olympics, water polo should not be one of them. We are better leaving it to the continentals. An All-Ireland water polo championship would lead to unthinkable carnage in the water. Just imagine Armagh versus Tyrone in Speedos. Better still, don't.

This was the Greeks' game to lose and, eventually, they did. They flew into a lead with a series of scores involving shots that skimmed the surface of the water, shots with spin and shots that were deflected into the net. The game is divided into four seven-minute quarters and there is no let's-head-off-for-a-tea-and-a-chat at half-time.

Instead, the players merely clear the chlorine from their eyes and the blood from their hands and take a breather for 60 seconds. It is not a game for the faint of heart.

With the players exhausted going into the fourth period, the scores just stopped happening and normal time ended at 7-7. It was equally tense going into extra time until Liosi put Greece into the lead. Italy sprinted up the other end and replied.

For the longest time, we feared penalties would be the only way to end matters. The thought of it was terrible. The lonely swim to the penalty spot. The Italians stalked with thoughts of Roberto Baggio a decade ago.

Late in the second period it was 9-9 but then, after the only Greek mistake of the match, Italy moved up, em, pool with the ball and Maddalena Musumeci left the host nation goggle-eyed by firing home the winner from a spectacular distance.

It could be said the Greek goalkeeper, Georgia Ellinaki, was unsighted. It could also be said she was submerged under the water, fighting for breath and seeing her life flash before her eyes.

Trailing for the first time, the Greeks panicked and tried a crazy and ambitious shot that flew high into the crowd. They managed one more attack but it was coolly dismantled by the champions and so the game ended as so many soccer internationals do, with Italy playing the ball around in defence and hoarding a one-goal lead.

Afterwards, the Italian water-polo enthusiasts celebrated with abandon. Like Greece, they have made great strides in the sport since Sydney, when the gold-medal match was decided between the traditional pool powers of Australia and America.

On Sunday night, just as the first of the closing ceremony fireworks is about to spark, the men enter the water for their gold-medal match.