As swimming became a popular recrea

As swimming became a popular recreation in England during the 1860s and 1870s, several water sports developed, roughly patterned after land sports. Among them were water football (or soccer), water rugby, water handball, and water polo, in which players rode on floating barrels, painted to look like horses, and struck the ball with a stick.
Water rugby became most popular of these sports, but somehow the water polo name became attached to it, and it's been attached ever since.
As played in England, the object of the sport was for a player to touch the ball, with both hands, at the goal end of the pool. The goaltender stood on the pool deck, ready to dive on any opponent who was about to score.
Water polo quickly became a very rough sport, filled with underwater fights away from the ball, and it wasn't unusual for players to pass out for lack of air.
In 1877, the sport was tamed in Scotland by the addiction of goalposts. The Scots also replaced the original small, hard rubber ball with a soccer ball and adopted rules that prohibited taking the ball under the surface or, "tackling" a player unless he had the ball.
The Scottish game, which emphasized swimming speed, passing, and team work, spread to England during the early 1880s, to Hungary in 1889, to Austria and Germany in 1894, to France in 1895, and to Belgium in 1900.
Water polo was the first team sport added to the Olympic program, in 1900.