Cambridge Polo

Bit more drivel

Our next adversaries were the quaintly monikered local Swiss team "Moteurfuckers" , they were like Equipe's evil twin. They looked frightening ,and had already snapped the forks of one of the Polosyntheses boys bikes. Their snarling star player Laurent was in the habit of beating his mallet against the wheel disc in moments of extreme euphoria. This was satisfyingly primordial to watch.

They seemed a lot more subdued when they played us however, prehaps they felt sorry for Wills choice in footwear and delicate handling of the mallet. I even managed a goal . A draw .

We'd played Manchester's ASBO before . The irrepressible Woody was taking the piss out of me for my inactivity in goal. I tried to imagine if i'd met his dad at the Zap club 20 years ago .However I can't actually remember anything of the game. We won .

Finally ( i may have got the order wrong) we had a game with a team made out of misfits and an Australian which was called the A-Team . The preliminary mallet touching and pleasantries over we retreated to our respective ends of the court . The weather was overcast and cool, perfect for playing polo, no squishy balls and sweaty backs.
Another win.
The polo courts were originally basket ball courts which had their baskets removed, the hole replaced by a neat flush plastic cap . Surrounding the playing area was some plastic waist high ice-hockey fencing which was supported with a metal structure on the outside. Apart from dramatically blowing over a couple of times it was pretty much perfect, making a dramatically loud bang whenever someone crashed into it.

I got into a few conversations with people over the weekend of their visions of what Polo nirvana would mean to them , Laurent of Moteurfuckers expressed a desire to play a no rules version that  meant a goal was a goal however it was achieved. I loved this image of Poloanarchy, and suggested we could do a combination of my fantasy Polo match that would involve aircushions similar to what you have in pinball machines situated  round the edge of the court that would shoot the ball out at twice the speed that you fed it in. The logical progression would be to take the pinball thing futher to include multiball and extra levels , heavy metal bands on cherry pickers and pyrotechnics behind the goal .

The day's play ended with three wins and two draws , putting us on the top of our group and Hayden the second or third highest scorer of the day .

On the flight out we gave Will a copy of the rules . One of the few contentiously new things included in them stated balljointing had to be followed by a pass which was kind of hard to enforce because some people where using cut outs in the side of their mallets and not getting pulled up on this rule and also for refs working out what angle a push becomes a drag.
The other thing was time outs could be called if your team had possession , not after a goal . This caused a bit of confusion too , not sure why. Also no one on the court heard the refs whistles because everyone was shouting or banging the boards at the side, so the whistle thing didn't really work . We never argued with our refs , not wanting to have any similarity with Wayne Rooney and because we respect authority. All in all i think the refs did the incredibly thankless task well and kept it all flowing .

Getting bored yet ?