‘Rio Olympics 2016’ Water Polo Updates: Former Hungary Centre Joe Kayes Finally Joins Australia Team

After several years of fighting for his change of sporting nationalities, Joseph Henry Kayes a.k.a. Joe Kayes finally granted permission to play for Water Polo Men Australia Team via the Court of Arbitration in May this year. The 25-year old athletes once considered playing for the power house team of Hungary and later decided to join Australia instead.

For technical information, to be able for an athlete to switch his sporting nationalities, there are three requirements that must be followed. First, citizenship followed by 6 months of residence in the new country. Last thing, an athlete should be under the jurisdiction of the national governing body. Since Kayes is living in Hungary the time he sent his application to Australia, he told that it was denied.

In an interview, Kayes described his negotiation with the international federation and he said "Without getting too pessimistic about it, they were definitely hard to deal with." What frustrated him the most was along the application was a long list of mistakes just because they didn't follow the rule. Thus, he made an appeal to the organization's board FINA Bureau and was rejected on the same grounds.

Joe Kayes was born and raised in New Zealand. He was a water polo professional player who played for four seasons under the mayhem of Hungary. He was dubbed as one of the powerful forwards in the world. Kayes is half New Samoan, half New Zealand decent and in his desire to continue his professional career he moved to Australian and hoped to join the Australian Olympic Team.

Kayes cannot hide his admiration for Australian Olympic Team. He commends the Australian Water Polo by saying, "Aussie polo...people underestimate it, but it's arguably the best structure in the world in terms of the coaching and the set-up they provide for the athletes."

Kayes hopes to bag the gold medals in the water polo events in Rio. This is to bring back the glory of the Australian team that was lost when they were defeated in Kazan where they got zero offensive production from the centre spot, according to Swim Swam.