The BMC Cup continues to pave the way for grassroots Water Polo in the UK and has reached new heights in its most recent iterations.
In October 2023, we shared the story of the Brian MacDonald Campbell (BMC) Cup, a water polo championship founded by Ali Campbell and his brothers to celebrate the memory of their father Brian Campbell, an inspiration in Scottish Water Polo.
Now, a little over a year later, I sat down with Ali to talk about the BMC Cup’s growth and recent tournaments.
The BMC Cup began in 2021 as a single-day boys’ competition and has since grown into three separate competitions – a girls’ weekend, a boys’ weekend and a day-long U14 tournament.
With 2023 being the first introduction of a girls’ tournament, Ali shares his surprise at its immediate and enormous success: “The girls’ event has become our biggest event, which is crazy considering we’ve only had two girl’s tournaments and four boy’s ones now. Last year, we ran the girls’ one for the first time, which had six teams, and then we had the boys’ one with seven teams. And then the girls’ one became our biggest ever with nine teams entered.”
Ali went on to describe how the demand is only increasing and noted that several teams have already gotten in touch to enquire about the next BMC cup: “There’s a high demand for the girls, one for sure. It’s nice to know that when the girls’ teams came, they must have enjoyed it, since they’ve gone back and told other teams that it was good and now they’re wanting to come as well.”
The expansion of the BMC Cup is heavily down to word of mouth. This progression is a testament to the cup becoming an established part of grassroots water polo in the UK and is also an important indication of the demand that’s out there for tournaments within niche sports. Without Ali and his brother’s initiative, tournaments like this would likely be dismissed due to assumptions that there would not be enough engagement, with the girls rendition being even less likely to exist following this logic.
If we learn something from the BMC cup, it’s that you can’t assume the reception of sports activities or tournaments before they’ve been introduced. In my experience, coming from women’s cricket, a sport which used to be extremely scarce in Scotland and now has multiple flourishing female leagues and cups, people’s engagement and interest will always be a positive surprise and this will grow as the sport gets more established but it will never happen if the idea is eliminated before it ever has a chance to exist.
As someone new to water polo before approaching this article, I did some research, and what stood out to me the most was how fast-paced and exciting the game is.
According to Ali, the BMC Cup was no exception in this regard: “We had our boys’ event and that was one of our closest tournaments, the finals went to penalties which was brilliant for the neutrals but not so good for the coaches taking part, but in the girls, one of the highlights was that both semi-finals were within one goal and that was really exciting. The one game that springs to mind included Dunfermline, which was the home team, since it’s their pool that we use, and they were playing the Irish team, The Diamonds. They had played in the very first game, and Diamonds won by a goal. Then they played them again in the semi-final and Dunfermline won by a goal, but they scored in the last few seconds to win it.”
The girls’ cup also had the exciting addition of an exhibition match on the Sunday, a few hours before the final – it was to celebrate the women who represented Scotland at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Ali explained the reason behind the match’s organisation as part of the weekend: “In terms of the Scottish senior teams, men and women, that Commonwealth Games has probably been the highlight. I’m 35, and it’s been the highlight of my lifetime to be involved with water polo, so to have that in your home country was brilliant, and it’s something that a lot of the players now won’t know about because it was ten years ago. It’ll just be this thing they’ve heard, so I think it was good to give it the publicity that it deserves. These players were playing at a really high-level competition in Scotland, and to give those senior players a bit of recognition and also to get them back together again,
“One of the players was actually coaching at the BMC cup as well, so they had all of their players supporting them. And then also for the younger players to look up and hopefully get inspired to say, look, if you train hard and work hard, you can end up playing for Scotland at something like this as well.”
The importance of seeing what you can be and having inspirational role models is at the forefront of success in sport, so the BMC Cup’s incorporation of this commemorative match is yet another mark of the care that this cup and its administrators hold for the next generation of water polo players. The BMC cup’s inclusion of teams from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England transformed the tournament into a ‘mini UK championship’, giving passionate youths a taste of what professional water polo could be like as well as giving them an insight into the history and successes within Scottish Water Polo.
With so much advancement for the BMC cup at the end of 2023, a little over a year ago, I am excited to follow its future progress and the evolution of grassroots as well as women’s water polo in Scotland, and I hope all of you will join me in doing so!
Lastly, I’d like to convey a thank you from Ali and his team to all of the volunteers who contributed and to Dunfermline Water Polo Club for the use of their facilities to host the BMC Cup, without which the tournament wouldn’t have been possible.
