Who can play at the SSA U16 National Water Polo Championships, and how are teams made up?

From the SSA 2026 U16 National Championship competition rules (held 13-15 March 2026 in Durban: boys at Clifton School, girls at Durban Girls' College):

• Players must be registered with SSA for the 2025/2026 season and in good standing. Teams can be club, franchise, district or provincial teams, or individual entries.
• Foreign-based players may take part with clearance from their own federation.
• Each team has 14 players: 12 field players and 2 goalkeepers, plus at least one coach and one team manager, all SSA-registered.
• Inclusivity: each team must include at least three Black players and one Black team staff member.
• Entry fee: R1,100 per registered member or R15,000 per team.
• The championship is the main platform for selecting players for the World Aquatics U16 World Championships.

On the field (World Aquatics rules): a team starts with 7 players, one of them the goalkeeper. After the start, a team may play without a goalkeeper (with no goalkeeper privileges). A player listed as goalkeeper may only play as a field player if the team has fewer than six available field players. A team must have at least two players to continue.

Which rule book? SSA's 2026 championship rules applied the World Aquatics rules in force from 1 July 2025. World Aquatics rewrote its water polo rules in February 2026, and this guide follows that edition; the main numbers used here (28 and 18 seconds, 18-second exclusions, four minutes for violent action, three personal fouls, two one-minute timeouts) are the same in both.