The England-Scotland clash at Ponds Forge on 11 February will revive the oldest international fixture in the history of water polo.
The first meeting was at Kensington Baths, London, on 28 July 1890 - some 20 years after a very crude version of the sport had been introduced in this country in the 1870s with no printed rules. Scotland won 4-0.
It was quite an achievement by the visitors because the fixture was played under English rules. Scotland had their own version, one of the key differences being that keepers guarded the goal by standing on the side!
According to a contemporary report of the inaugural international, the Scots were "far smarter in playing the ball . . . in the shallow end, the Englishmen repeatedly infringed the rule prohibiting standing when playing.
"It is of course hard to avoid standing in the shallow end of a bath, but the leaping from the bottom at the ball was so palpable an infringement that the onlookers quickly acknowledged that the Scotch game was better than that in vogue in England."
Scotland also won the return fixture, played under Scottish rules in Glasgow in October 1891. It was that occasion which brought the two countries together to create an accepted set of rules, establishing that teams would comprise seven players (changed to 11 in the first year of the former men's National League in 1963 before increasing to 13) and games would be played over two halves each of seven minutes (four periods were also introduced in 1963).
Picture: No, not from an early England-Scotland encounter, but the 1904 Olympics. How did a single referee manage to control that lot?
The first meeting was at Kensington Baths, London, on 28 July 1890 - some 20 years after a very crude version of the sport had been introduced in this country in the 1870s with no printed rules. Scotland won 4-0.
It was quite an achievement by the visitors because the fixture was played under English rules. Scotland had their own version, one of the key differences being that keepers guarded the goal by standing on the side!
According to a contemporary report of the inaugural international, the Scots were "far smarter in playing the ball . . . in the shallow end, the Englishmen repeatedly infringed the rule prohibiting standing when playing.
"It is of course hard to avoid standing in the shallow end of a bath, but the leaping from the bottom at the ball was so palpable an infringement that the onlookers quickly acknowledged that the Scotch game was better than that in vogue in England."
Scotland also won the return fixture, played under Scottish rules in Glasgow in October 1891. It was that occasion which brought the two countries together to create an accepted set of rules, establishing that teams would comprise seven players (changed to 11 in the first year of the former men's National League in 1963 before increasing to 13) and games would be played over two halves each of seven minutes (four periods were also introduced in 1963).
Picture: No, not from an early England-Scotland encounter, but the 1904 Olympics. How did a single referee manage to control that lot?
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