South Manchester Bike Polo

As some of will know, we've been preparing an organisation to foster the growth of polo in Manchester, with an emphasis on beginners. We've built it out of much of the work I did for the 'MHPA' discussions and interviews at the back end of the summer, for which I make no apology - I wasn't prepared to let it go to waste!

I want to be completely clear about our intentions and direction, as I'm not interested in fostering any lingering bad politics and don't want any conflict between any individuals or 'MHPA' of the future.

We plan to grow slowly out of the Chorlton Park Saturday morning sessions, which, as those of you who have tried them will know, are deliberately built around the raw beginner. Our aim is to get beginners to a safe and competent level of play so that they can then progress - first to open Manchester Sundays and then to open Manchester team/competitive Thursdays and on to tourneys. Note that we are not 'claiming' those sessions as 'ours'.

Going forward, we'd be more than happy if the existing Manchester players want to join, become members and play an active part - whether that be in coaching or in organising. We hope to attract and retain new players and help them form into new teams, which will then go on to national tournaments. We also expect to organise smaller tournaments in the spring and autumn, again based around beginners teams, possibly using the Bench Minor-style approach - check the calendar section for our possible ideas.

There you will also see sketched in dates for other Manchester polo events - should a Manchester collective organise any other, bigger tourneys, we'll be on-hand to help if required - again, and I stress this, without necessarily 'owning' the event.

FInally, I'd like to say I'm sorry I couldn't facilitate the MHPA concept through to maturity this year. I hope that the senior players are able to respect or even play a part of the approach we're taking in South Manchester and recognise that we all ultimately need more players playing to survive!

Neil, Lewis and Stevo
South Manchester Organisers

www.mcrpolo.org

looks amazing neil! nice work

Yeah good work man. Impressed that you managed to get a forum built, we should switch to that!

Begun the recruitment drive for SMBP 'members' by flyering MCR city centre bike shops at the w/e - here's the deal:

Playing membership includes full forum access; forthcoming merchandise discounts; mobile text messaging re. fixtures, members spoke card and various pin badges

Annual playing membership mininmum £10+ donation

Family or house membership for 3 or more playing members - £15+

'Country' '* and/or Student membership - as above, but no minium donation expected.

• Non-playing out of town members/supporters
  
  

Email southmanchesterbikepolo@gmail.com for membership/forum access.

Hope to see some of you here supporting SMBP soon!

i tried to register, still waiting on email confirmation....?

The forum's set to require manual approval of new accounts so it depends how often "admin" checks in.

geek

I have a certificate which says I'm only a second class geek.

I'm not a fan of phpBB as forum software but it's usually available "off the shelf" with web hosting packages. I prefer Drupal.

ah was gona use phpBB for the new mhcbp site but il check out drupal

i tried to register, still waiting on email confirmation....?

I think you'll find the 'administrators' don't know what they're doing... ;-)

Drupal's more of a do-everything solution. Http://www.lmscardiff.com/ is one I made a few years ago using Drupal. Has forum, events calendar, configurable access levels etc.

guys we need to do some posting on the new forum to check its working well n stuff.

i do hope you get me yeah?