Ponies, snow and a broken jaw at polo nationals

It’s actually getting pretty tough to remember how many polo nationals I’ve been to these days. However, this year, with a new venue in the Midlands, we were expecting something a bit different and a bit special. With some stunning new club shirts courtesy of the extremely generous Rydges Hotel Kensington and the attached Polo Bar on Gloucester Road we felt confident that we were going to at least look the part; with marginally more practice as a team this year than on previous occasions we had fingers crossed for a strong finish.

With the expense and the requirement for time off of college it’s often pretty tricky to get people to commit to the event, but this year we managed to pull together a lower intermediate team for the third nationals in a row. By combining our weight with Oxford Brookes (who train at the same school as us) we managed to twist a couple of beginners arms enough to make them play in a mixed team as well. Early on the morning of the 9th of February we converged on Euston station, with Miss Sheena Cowell meeting me early for what she termed “moral support” as I lugged the club kit across London.

My teammate and club chair Mikaela Bryant-Meisner and other newbie Miffy Oliver showed uncharacteristic punctuality and we all managed to collect our tickets and board the 08:45 to Rugby without issue. None of us envied final teammate and polo stalwart Jon Matthews’ decision to drive his motorbike up rather than joining us.

In true SUPA style, despite rocking up with hours to spare before our first match everything had changed by the time we arrived. Miffy and Sheena would now be split playing between 2 mixed teams involving themselves, Oxford Brookes and RVC and the ensuing confusion was an excellent source of stress for the 4 or 5 people in charge of various different things for the rest of the weekend. As it turns out the first chukka (match) of the tournament would involve Miffy and two equally confused compatriots from Oxford Brookes. The scratch team, never having played together, did well to hold their own and Miffy managed to score the goal that kept them to a slim defeat at 2-1. Later on, it became apparent that the match had been recorded as a draw rather than a loss, a mistake we weren’t complaining about.

Playing with a slightly different team yet again we had to cross our fingers that the girls would manage to gel quickly and come away with a strong result. In a scrappier but less one-sided match we looked on with cheers of encouragement and advice. Sheena, not wanting to be outdone by the younger Myfanwy, looked set to get her goal tally off the mark as well but her consistent hitting and well-timed run left her just wide of the mark to get the equaliser. However, you can never quite rely on your pony to be entirely on your team and an unfortunate ricochet from an opposing pony’s leg finished the job Sheena started as the match ended in a draw.

After this the confusion really set in. The snow started coming down and the pony providers and tournament officials started looking at moving chukkas from other days. Hungry, cold and tired it took quite a while for us to figure out that Sheena would have one more chukka that night, the final one of the day. With the addition of Steff from RVC and Sam from Oxford Brookes, the girls made for a strong team and came away with a runaway victory.

With the way the draw worked this year our teams all got Friday off so we settled in for a long night at the pub followed by drinks in our rooms. There was some pretty excellent food at the B&B, a lot of drunken banter with Brookes (which somehow resulted in us owning the Brookes Polo T-Shirts) and more rum, gin, vodka, wine, beer and cider than I care to admit to. After an extremely lazy day, Friday night saw us slightly more sedate at our instructor JJ Spark’s 40th birthday party. Needless to say the B&B staff were not polo’s biggest fans by the end of the evening, and with our Lower Intermediate team set to play against Brookes first thing in the morning the quest to leave each other in a worse state in the morning provided some additional amusement.

The stress of the morning hit new heights when a lorry breakdown meant our horses arrived late and we took to the field significantly later than our opponents only to realise that one horse had taken a knock in the lorry and was limping too much to play. A desperate swap to another unknown pony left us ready to play our training partners and Mikaela, Jon and I got stuck in and were surprised to find ourselves 1-0 up early on. Georgie, Charlie and Tess were on form though and a close fought match ensued with Brookes keeping us at bay and with a goal from Jon the buzzer went with the score at 2 all. Needing a result the match went to penalties and taking the first one from 15 yards despite a smoothly hit shot my attempt hit the boards just to the side of the goal and Georgie Haycraft’s level head and increased experience sent us into the lower half of the knockout. Our second match saw us pitted against 3 girls from Nottingham. We’d been on a high during the Brookes match, working as a team, lots of good natured yelling at one another and pretty relaxed given we were playing some familiar faces. This didn’t last and our communication started to fall apart in a scrappy match ending one apiece. Jon got his chance to make me feel slightly better about missing a penalty during the match and so the resulting sudden death penalty fell to Mikaela… unfortunately, this was the second match we lost on penalties. Very British – well, except Mikaela.

We were all pretty ready to drown our sorrows and fortunately SUPA were well prepared for us with a fancy dress party set to start at 9pm. As a white knight, his faithful steed, an evil dragon and a damsel in distress we were continuing the very British vibe. However, for all you freshers out there, a warning as to the dangers of pre-drinks. If you pass out on the bed in a onsie before the party you are likely to earn yourself the nickname “Drunken Dragon” or something much less forgiving and less printable. Things got pretty messy from that point and our white knight totally failed to protect our damsel in distress from falling over and managed to lose his faithful steed and roommate (who had the keys) at some point during the evening. After a confusing, and in some cases extremely hungover morning we were just about ready to look at getting on ponies.

Our rematch against Notts did not go great; a strong game plan from the Nottingham girls left us unable to really impact the game as we wanted and one slightly lucky backhand to score was the only consolation in an otherwise very one-sided match. The 2 chukka final of the B3 was hard-fought and fast. Despite Sheena managing to finally get her goal tally off to a proper start and both players saying it was one of their highlights of the weekend the girls had to settle for second place. The LIs, on the other hand, were in the running for the wooden spoon against ULU, one more grudge match to conclude.

Things didn’t get off to a great start. Left waiting in the warm up arena, we trotted around, until in a moment of extreme intelligence Bumble decided that 4 legs were too many to keep track of and proceeded to trip over them. I took an unceremonious tumble while a confused looking Bumble clambered back to his feet entirely unaffected. Things didn’t get a great deal better on the pitch; us against ULU is always pretty physical and this wasn’t any different. Lots of fouls, lots of ride-offs, lots of action – inevitably, injuries happen. A stray elbow connected with Jon’s jaw causing an impressively swollen tongue and what turned out to be a fracture. All in all the clearly talented beginners came out of the tournament with hangovers and exhaustion as scars, whereas the club chair Mikaela managed to come out of the LI tournament unscathed and we expect her to proudly carry the wooden spoon home. Still, some silver ash trays, a good time, Jon lost for words and the summer nationals yet to come; I’ll take that.