A WATER polo club that has been going strong for more than 100 years met for the final time this week.

Padiham Water Polo Club has been competing in local leagues for a century, but games stopped around a year ago and on Wednesday they trained at Padiham Leisure Centre for the final time.

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The club has folded as a result of dwindling membership and a lack of younger players coming through.

Paul Whitehead, who has played and coached at the club for around 30 years, said: “It was a very sad occasion. This club has been going for a long time.

“The swimming club has always had a lot of members, the water polo side of it has always struggled a little bit, we used to have around 15 to 20 playing every week, but over the last five years there have been no younger members coming through.”

Mr Whitehead, who has been playing competitively for a team in Bury since Padiham stopped competing regularly, said a lack of foresight by some swimming teachers was to blame for the decline in playing numbers in the sport.

He said: “A lot of coaches at swimming clubs don’t encourage people to play water polo. The coaches don’t understand that if they have someone who is starting to get fed up with swimming they can keep them in the sport by getting them into water polo.

“It can be a very physical and demanding sport, it’s very competitive and offers them something different.”

During its history Padiham has played in the North West Water Polo League, the Bolton and District League and the Central Lancashire League.

Mr Whitehead said: “It’s a very tight-knit community, we’ve been to France, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic to play, to name just a few.

“But we can’t keep it going any more, it just wasn’t paying for itself anymore.”