John Spicer lives and breathes water polo, firstly as a player and now as a coach.

He was a good player in yesteryear and he’s a very good junior coach today, so good in fact that he is currently Swim England’s national Coach of the Year.

That’s a pretty impressive accolade – he was presented with the award by Cheltenham’s superstar diver Leon Taylor at a glitzy ceremony at the end of last year – but at the age of nearly 64, budding water polo players at Cheltenham Swimming and Water Polo Club will be delighted to hear that he has no plans to take a step back any time soon.

Cheltenham-born John’s love of all things water began from an early age.

“My dad Leslie was a very keen swimmer when he was younger,” said John. “But when he was 19 his dad died and he had to give up swimming to look after his family, so he was a bit of a frustrated swimmer.

“Swimming was his passion and he also played water polo for Cheltenham’s 3rds.

“He always said that you couldn’t play for the 1sts in those days unless you were a doctor or solicitor!”

But while Leslie’s opportunities to swim were limited in his early adult years he was determined that his two boys – John’s brother Phil is five years older than him – were given every chance to make a big splash.

“Dad used to take us swimming all the time,” John said. “I remember my last year at Rowanfield Junior School and I wanted to ride my bicycle to school.

“My dad said that was okay as long as I continued to go to swimming training at Alstone baths.

“I’d finish school and swim for anything from half-an-hour to an hour.”

By now big brother Phil – like John very well known at swimming clubs up and down the county and beyond – was part of the junior water polo set up at Cheltenham.

“In those days if you swam for the club you played water polo for the club,” said John. “These days it’s much more specialised.”

And although John was to become all things water polo, in those early days he certainly enjoyed his swimming... even though he soon learned which strokes to steer clear of.

“I used to swim in the Western Counties championships,” he recalled. “I started off doing butterfly but that was too much like hard work! My shoulders used to be up round my ears when I went to school on Mondays!”

And although he may have had bulging shoulders like Buzz Lightyear, he was still good enough to come third in the 100 metres butterfly at the under-13 Western Counties championships.

A year later at the same championships he was competing in the breaststroke, finishing third again.

“I missed out on second spot by 0.2 of a second,” said John. “The top two qualified for the nationals so I just missed out. I still went to the nationals as a reserve but I didn’t get to swim.”

John was a winner in the medley and freestyle relay at the under-14 county championships, however, and he can remember the names of his team-mates to this day.

“Colin Denley, Keith Sutton and Martin Allen,” he said, almost without thinking. “We were all water polo players as well.”

And John was certainly part of a very decent water polo team at Cheltenham – they won the under-18 national title three years in a row from 1970 with John captaining the side in 72.

From there he captained the South West under-20 side and progressed seamlessly into a Cheltenham first team that was good enough to reach two national finals.

And while John, a forward, was a very good player, he is totally up front about where he stood in the water polo pecking order at that time.

“I played in the same team as my brother Phil and Tony Cherrington,” he said. “They were standout players. Phil was left-handed and Cherry was right-handed and they used to score 100 goals a year between them.

“They won national championships and they were amazing. They were renowned all over the country, they were phenomenal.

And they complemented each other very well, a bit like Toshack and Keegan for Liverpool all those years ago.

“Phil was short and stocky,” said John, “and Cherry was 6ft 5in, fast and lanky.”

And it wasn’t just those two who helped make Cheltenham a power in the water polo land.

“We had Martin Thomas who was one of the best goalkeepers ever and Dave Wright who was Great Britain captain,” said John, who was delighted just to have the chance to play with the stars of the day.

“I wasn’t quite big enough,” he said. “I was only 5ft 6in. These days we play in deep water pools which means it is the same for everyone, but in those days there was always a shallow end and it became like a game of rugby.”

Rugby was something that John used to play in the water polo off-season – more of that later – and the two sports have more in common than many people may think.

“I used to play against Nigel Horton,” said John. “He played for Aston but was also a second row for England in the 70s. He was 6ft 5in.”

So how good a player was he?

“He was hard but fair,” recalls John. “I ended up marking him. My job was to knacker him out and I succeeded because he didn’t do that well against us. I swam the backside off him!”

That was obviously one of the highlights of John’s career, a career that saw him captain Cheltenham one year and play for the team for the best part of two decades.

The highlights were the two national championship finals and although Cheltenham lost both times, John has good memories from both games.

“Both finals were played at Pittville Pool,” he said. “They were against Leamington and London Polytechnic and we had a crowd of 800 at both games. The place was rammed and it was a great atmosphere.”

Those were the days when water polo was rock ’n’ roll and although they don’t get those crowds nowadays, water polo players are still very well respected throughout the sporting community.

“A survey by the Bleacher Report revealed that water polo is the toughest sport in the world,” said John with obvious pride.

It was as natural as night following day that John’s two sons – Ryan and Ashley – would take up the sport and that dad would take a strong interest.

“I started coaching towards the end of my playing career,” John explained. “Ryan and Ashley had started playing and the junior head coach at Cheltenham at the time, Russell Beattie, asked me to be his assistant for a final one of the teams had qualified for.

“He’d obviously seen something in me.”

So how did they get on in the final?

“We lost,” chuckled John. “We played Plant Hill and they were a top team from Manchester.

“But I got the taste for coaching. It’s not something I’d thought about but it made me think.

“I’d taken up golf when I finished playing water polo but I got drawn back into it when Martin Thomas got involved in the junior coaching set-up.

“His two boys – Michael and Joel – were playing as were mine, and as the boys got better we took on the role of dual junior coaches.

“It was fantastic because it meant there was always a back-up. One would do the under-16s and the other would do the under-18s.”

And they enjoyed plenty of success too.

“Ashley was in the team that won the under-16 national title and he was also in the under-18 team that were national champions as well,” added John.

“He was a defender but he had a decent shot.

“He was very intelligent game-wise. He may not have been the fastest swimmer or hardest shooter but he could read a game very well.”

By now Ryan had been forced to give up the game because of trouble with his knees, and work commitments meant that Ashley had to give up the game at an early age too.

John admits that threw him into a quandary.

“I thought, ‘What am I going to do now?’” he admitted.

“I told myself that if I enjoyed coaching junior water polo I should keep on doing it and that was it… I never stopped!”

And young water polo players in Cheltenham and beyond are certainly pleased that he did, and they’ll be equally pleased to hear that the club’s chief junior coach is enjoying his role as mentor as much today as he did when he first started 30-odd years ago.

“I just love it,” he said, “it’s my life. I don’t do it to win awards although it was obviously nice to be named national coach of the year. That was totally unexpected. I’m quite proud, I’m proud for Cheltenham and I’m proud for water polo because it’s a minority sport.

“I want to just keep going. I’ve always been involved, it keeps me young and keeps me active.”

John’s wife Julie is a big supporter of the other big love in her husband’s life, even though she is not a water polo disciple herself.

“She realises what a passion it is for me,” he said. “I’ve made a lot of sacrifices but she has always been right behind me,”

From Julie’s point of view, at least it’s just one sport that he’s heavily involved in these days, not two as he was in his 20s.

“I played a lot of rugby,” chuckled John. “I started off with Cheltenham North. There was a tradition in those days that if you played water polo you also played rugby for Cheltenham North.

“Doug Auchterlonie was heavily involved with both clubs. My brother Phil played for them as well and I was playing for their 4th team when I was 14.

“I was at the North for three or four years before Norman Rees asked me to go to Cheltenham Colts. That was fantastic, we played Cardiff, Newport… we had some great fixtures.

“When I was there I played for England Boys’ Club against the Welsh Youth. I always said that I didn’t get a cap for water polo but I got one for rugby. The game against the Welsh was played at the Memorial Ground in Bath, that was my claim to fame.”

After Cheltenham Colts, John moved a big Owen Farrell punt up the road to Cheltenham Civil Service where he played for 12 years.

So what position did he play?

“Hooker or scrum-half,” he said. “Hooker mainly. I had strong shoulders and could throw the ball in. I wasn’t fast enough for scrum-half.”

He may not have been fast enough to wear the number 9 back in the day, but in water polo terms John Spicer is certainly 10 out of 10!