Harry Neesham (main picture, left) comes from a decorated sporting family in suburban Perth in Western Australia. A lifelong player of the sport, he has attended many masters world championships among his illustrious career and won gold medals.

His latest challenge is to commit to print the history of Melville Water Polo Club in its 75th year, gathering more than 100 premiership-winning teams and trying to name every person in every photograph.

His dedication comes years after brother David Neesham — a four-time Olympian — produced an instructional book about the sport in the 1970s.

Probably one of the most important and defining books that included water polo was Aquatics 1908-2008 depicting 100 Years of Excellence in Sport under the FINA brand. Edited by Craig Lord, the 300-page tome came with a DVD and was co-written by Camillo Cametti, Derek Parr and Russell McKinnon.

Tracey Rockwell, Water Polo Australia’s historian, set about doing a history of New South Wales water polo and found that it intertwined with the discipline throughout the country. He produced Water Warriors, a voluminous effort (591 A4 pages) that attempted to capture each decade in all the states of Australia.

Another Australian publication brought an outside photographer and wordsmith to approach the sport from another angle, releasing Australian Water Polo — A Celebration, in time for the 1998 FINA World Championships in Perth.

Kyle Utsumi, a world champion junior women’s coach from United States of America, is another who put a huge effort into recording a moment in time — the silver medal won by the USA women’s team in the inaugural Olympic final in 2000.

Utsumi retraced his travels to Australia, returning to Perth where he won his world title, to interview several Australian gold medallists and research the book. He then flew to Sydney where he met more athletes in his quest to get the lowdown on the Sydney Olympics. He was working on the Olympic News Service team during the Olympics.

His finished work — Sydney’s Silver Lining — was a tremendous success.

Dejan Stevovic, a long-time Serbian water polo writer, championed in this column not so long ago, is another to have produced books on the sport.

Stevovic has been on the inside of Serbian water polo for decades and has an incredible wealth of knowledge from his five Olympic Games, 13 World Championships, 14 European Championships, 15 World Leagues and five World Cups.

“I am proud of three books about water polo: ‘Serbia, I think a medal’, ‘Unrepeatable’ and ‘The First 100’ about water polo in Serbia, written with the famous golden Olympian from Mexico Djordje Perišić. I am the author of the TV series ‘Golden Caps’ about 17 gold medals from Yugoslavia, Serbia and Serbia & Montenegro. I am now preparing the 18th episode about gold in Paris.”

Tomaz Lasic is a former Yugoslavian, Slovenian and Australian goalkeeper — probably the first player to front for three different countries. Others have followed suit like Ukraine’s Andrei Kovalenko (CIS, Ukraine and Australia) and Argentinian/Spanish/ Italian Gonzalo Echenique.

Lasic is an educator, also living in Perth, and his forte was goalkeeping. He has produced a book on goalkeeping — not just for water polo, but all sports — entitled The Love Of Goalkeeping, in 2020.

Wolfgang Phillips, who worked for waterpoloworld in its infancy as a sport-specific website based in Netherlands and Germany, was another to chronicle the sport in his 100-year anniversary history of German Swimming in the mid-1980s, called 100 Jahre dsv Deutscher Schwimm Verbrand.

Kelvin Juba produced All About Water Polo in 1972 and followed up with a paperback edition called Water Polo and published by Info Books.

Hamilton Bland put together the water polo book in the Know The Game series in Britain, coming into my possession in the early 1970s.

Chris Freeman, a United Kingdom international referee, took time out to produce a working publication on refereeing.

A look online shows there are books on Manuel Estiarte (ESP) and Urho Saari (USA) as well as tactical books and rules and tips.

There are many throughout the globe who have water polo at their heart and wish to record or instruct fellow participants and followers of the game, we believe to be the one played in heaven. All our support goes out to them.

Author’s Note: They all follow in the wake of International Swimming Hall of Famer Jimmy Smith (USA) whose claim to fame is writing many of the early rules of the sport and helping introduce the rubberised ball into the Olympics.

His first book, Playing And Coaching Water Polo, was printed in 1936 and revised in 1948. It was said to be the first completed text book on the discipline. Another book was Water Polo In The Olympics.

His biggest task was to collate all the international matches from pre-1900, a book published by his family after his death.