Alfie was twenty centimetres taller than Bruce and fifteen kilos heavier. But Bruce was super strong. He ripped free, then drove Alfie hard into the poolside, leaving him badly winded. With Alfie temporarily disabled, Bruce and Lauren linked up, with Bruce throwing balls across and Lauren making the short final throw into the goal.

But while Team Crusty’s healthy duo racked up the points, things were going less well at the other end. With a man over, Ryan and Leon played a tactical game, lobbing dozens of balls down towards their goal, allowing Daniel and Ning to scoop and shoot.

Kyle threw balls back and batted Daniel’s throws with some success, but Ning was a fish and James couldn’t get within two metres as she rattled a stream of plastic balls into the dumpster. Rather than a losing battle with Ning, James decided to break along the edge of the pool. He scooped several balls and flipped them up to Bruce as he swam. But as he neared the middle, James found himself double-teamed by Ryan and Alfie.

As Alfie gave James a powerful shove, Ryan dived and whipped down his shorts.

‘Hey!’ James shouted, grabbing frantically as Ryan surfaced and resumed lobbing balls down towards Daniel and Ning.

Five minutes into the twenty, more than half the balls had been cleared. Those that remained tended to be low-value reds and yellows, scattered along the edges of the pool. Bruce and Ning were sharks amidst dolphins, scoring consistently with the opposition getting nowhere near. At the other extreme, Kyle was red-faced as he clambered out of the pool and lay flat on his back, breathing rapidly.

‘Are you hurt?’ James shouted, looking around after hitting the dumpster rim with the last five-point blue.

‘Stitch,’ Kyle gasped. ‘So painful.’

‘It’s the first round,’ James said. ‘And I thought I was unfit.’

With Kyle out it was five against three. The Currents made their numbers count, with their two fastest swimmers – Ning and Ryan – collecting balls and feeding them to Alfie’s long arms near the goal, while the twins did what they could to harass the opposition.

There were four and a half minutes on the countdown when the last single-point reds clattered into the dumpsters at either end. Kyle had made it to a sunlounger and was still clutching his side as the others climbed out of the pool and the training assistants tipped up the dumpsters and started tallying points.

‘You’re bright red,’ Lauren noted, as she gave Kyle a look of concern.

‘Heart attack material,’ Bruce teased. ‘I thought you belonged to a gym.’

‘Didn’t say he actually went though,’ James noted.

‘Just gimme a couple of days,’ Kyle moaned. ‘I’ll be fine once I’ve blasted off the cobwebs.’

‘We have a winner,’ Capstick announced, as one of the assistants handed him a piece of paper. ‘Current Agents, two hundred and forty-three. Crusty Old Agents, one hundred and thirty-two.’