Battle of the bridge at West Wave

Clubs from each side of Auckland's Harbour Bridge have battled it out at West Wave Aquatic Centre in Henderson today. Auckland central's undefeated Marist Under 20 Men took on North Harbour's Under 20 Men - also undefeated.

North Harbour opened the scoring, with centre forward James McLean scoring a ripper, Marist's Callum Lane said he could do the same - scoring an equally impressive goal down the other end. A reasonably even first quarter rounded out at 2-3 to North Harbour. 

A frenzy of 5 exclusions finally resulted in a goal for North Harbour's key left hander, Anton Sunde - pushing the score out to 2-4. 

Another exclusion down the other end of the pool let Marist's Tom Cathro slip one under North Harbour goalie Thomas Kingsmill's arm - bringing the score to 3-4 heading into the second half.

An impressive unorthdox left-handed goal from North Harbour right-hander Ben McDonald-Sporle pushed his team's lead out to two at the beginning of the third quarter. Tamati Harris got up high out of the water and scored a ripper to extend that lead to three. 

But Marist weren't about to give up. Goals from Liam Paterson and Phillip Hargraves gave Marist a chance to come back heading into the final quarter, with the scores standing at 5-6.

An error-ridden final quarter and some outstanding saves from both goalies led to a lot of swimming up and down the pool, with James McLean scoring one more to set the final score at 5-7 in favour of North Harbour.

"It was a great game from Tom, just so many saves and one-on-ones. Our counter-D wasn't that great, I mean Marist always counter it's just their game plan really. Overall from the boys we got some good goals, some good set pieces - a pretty good result I reckon." said Anton Sunde.

This is Anton's third time playing in the Pan Pacs tournament - he lead his Under 14 team to victory and was named Most Valuable Player back in 2010. 

"It's always good to see the CDM teams here - unfortunately there are some club champs in Aussie so there weren't as many Aus' teams this year which is a bit of a shame but it's always good to see the teams back. It's always good to have game time against not just New Zealand teams but also international teams."

SWIM OFF: Marist's Ryan Pike (right) narrowly loses to North Harbour's Anton Sunde (left)