LANCASTER City swim-mers are the water polo champions of Britain again for the fourth time in the last six years.

The city men retained the title won last year by beating Rotherham 5-3 in a tense final at Manchester Aquatic Centre at the weekend.

And to add extra spice this time around, Lancaster's first under 16 girls team, captained by junior international starlet Alex Rutlidge, won the first ever ASA national competition for the age group.

The Lancaster men set up their title chance with a hard fought 8-7 semi-final win over Scottish champions Portobello on Saturday.

And after narrowly losing to Rotherham in the qualifying competition two weeks ago, they began the final as underdogs.

To their credit, they responded with true grit and determination, and thanks to an outstanding defensive performance from Neil Bowers and Chris Hartley, the Yorkshire side were unable to get a challenging shot on goal in the first half of the game.

It was not until the third quarter that Dave Bush was really called upon to defend his goal with an outstanding save when facing a Rotherham attacker one-on-one.

In fact, it took a deflected shot in the final quarter to finally beat the Lancaster keeper and by that time all the hard work had been done at the other end and Lancaster were 5-0 ahead.

Those anticipating or hoping for a Rotherham victory had been treated to a controlled and inspired performance from Lancaster, with Colin Burgess netting the only goal of the first quarter from the centre forward position and Hart-ley and Campbell doing sterling work in mid-bath along with Tom Curwen and Jam-ie McIlquham.

Burgess scored his second two minutes into the second period, and on the very next Lancaster attack Tom Curwen found his scoring touch to blast home from the right hand wing.

As Rotherham began to lose their composure, a major foul against Burgess set up Curwen for his second goal.

The third quarter was quite tense and ended goal-less but the championship was assured four minutes into the final period with an unstoppable finish from four metres out by Burgess.

Having qualified for European competition, the players must now decide whether to enter or not. The swim club says that, in view of finances, much will depend on sponsorship.

Team: Dave Bush, Paul Howarth, Colin Burgess, Chris Hartley, Jamie McIlquham, Ryan Pinington, Tom Curwen, Ian Mounfield, Andrew Squires, Neil Bowers, Stephen Knowles, Dougie Campbell, Ryszard Detko.