It just won't be the same down at the pool again

Now's the time to bring out my bounce shot, I thought. It was in a big game for the Johannesburg Otters third team against Zoo Lake.

So I let loose. The ball plugged in the water, if that's possible, and drifted into the back of the head of a team mate who was was ponderously making his way, head down, into the hole. "Wait until I'm ready before you pass," he screamed at me.

The man on the break was Webby, the legendary Brian Webster in his later playing days and 40 years of service to the game of water polo and influence rubbed off onto thousands of youngsters lay ahead.

He was teaching at St David's at the time and I was running Transvaal Schools water polo. We got him on board as a coach, it must have been in the early 80s, and nothing was the same again. A razor sharp wit, an unbelievably sarcastic tongue and a complete inability to suffer fools gladly are what I remember, and what I continued to come across, as I drifted in and out of his considerable presence down the years.

He taught at King Edward School for a number of years and in that time they became the top polo school in the land - there's always heaps of talent among those boys, and his rough and ready style suited the sort of culture you get in that type of boys schools.

From there he went to St Stithians where he was as successful, in a different setting. He re-invented himself as a girls water polo coach at some stage and was instrumental in the development of the game into the fastest growing girls sport in schools in the country.

He eventually stepped down from senior coaching and took junior teams at Saints that hardly ever lost. He remained in charge there, though, and together with his wife Bridget, he invented and initially ran the Saints Invitational tournament that others are getting the credit for these days.

At the same time, he stayed involved at a provincial schools level. He ran Gauteng schools polo and expertly organised the SA Schools Championships when asked to. He also ran the club based at Saints and in the holidays he ran coaching clinics and took teams on overseas tours.

Yesterday I saw a Facebook post announcing that it was his last day in Gauteng polo - at a club game, I guess. Bridget is going to teach at a prestigious girls school in Grahamstown and Webby is tagging along. "I'm going to run the tuckshop, and probably coach some polo," he told me.

I bet he will be. But more than that, Grahamstown is going to get the Webby treatment. It will never be the same again, poolside, for them.

Brian Webster was a constant, sometimes disruptive, presence wherever water polo was being played in this town for so many years. The kids will be poorer for his leaving. I will miss him.