After convincing wins against Oxford, Imperial and Birmingham, the women's team sailed through the preliminary round of the BUCS National competition into the Semi Finals in Leeds. However, this was to be Cambridge's toughest competition yet with matches against Bristol, Manchester and the fearsome Edinburgh, who apparently love to do a bit of weight-lifting in their spare time. Enough said.

First up was the Manchester match, and despite some really tight defence from the whole team and rapid swimming by Josie Faulkner – who swam for the ball and won it in virtually every quarter – the team was relatively unfocussed and Manchester gained an early lead. This was then turned around in the second quarter with two goals from Josie, undeterred by her broken finger, and one from Claire Martin. Along with the strong defence of Tamsin Owen and Charlotte Chuter, a particular highlight was Fran Brandon's screamer of a goal in the final quarter, which shot straight through the scrabbling arms of the goalie. The team put up a brilliant fight and improved enormously in the latter half of the match, but unfortunately Cambridge's 5 goals were not enough to catch Manchester up, and the final score was 10-5.

The second match of the day was against Bristol, and the star of this game was undoubtedly Claire who collected a total of four goals. The highlight of these took place in the final two seconds of the third quarter, where, with typical Claire-flair, she took the ball and lobbed it from beyond the half-way mark straight into the back of the net. Marie Leger St-jean showed great resilience in goal and Anna Sutcliffe scored in the third quarter, which is pretty remarkable given that her glands were about to explode and she was being pursued by a relentless head-butter for the entire game. With two more goals from Claire in the final quarter, the end result was Bristol 8, Cambridge 5. The team headed off for a restful evening featuring the team's two favourite men: Ben and Jerry.

For the final match the team was more focused and played with serious aggression. However, the mood was kept light by Charlotte 'so keen she burst a spleen' Chuter, who shot off before the whistle had been blown at the beginning of pretty much every quarter. The final quarter was the best by far, with goals from Claire and Fran and some fantastic defensive play from Anna, but this wasn't enough to catch up with Edinburgh's lead and they took a 7-2 victory. The final score really doesn't reflect the fact that a huge amount of the game was played in Edinburgh's half, with Cambridge gaining 13 man-ups. However, Edinburgh's strong defensive strategies and absolute machine of a goalie meant that we were unfortunately unable to convert these into goals.

The majority of the team were playing a much higher standard of polo have ever played before, and to have reached this stage of the competition shows a massive improvement upon last year. Everyone had an enjoyable weekend and took away some really valuable lessons, and we returned home comfortable in the knowledge that the Bristol men's team had voted us best looking bunch. You lose some, you win some.