South London Bike Polo (Tues/Thurs/Sun) - Newington gardens SE1 / Agnes Riley gardens SW12

Sorry I didn't show in the end, pissed it down as I was leaving and didn't look like stopping. Ahh well, next time.

Guess what? We had fun, no one died...

booooooring

Guess what? We had fun, no one died...

You played in the rain?

I don't believe you.

Good games. Thanks everyone.

Yep, about 10 people down, an average time was had by all, it only rained for about 10 minutes.

awesome games folks

Was good playing more Polo, am very tired now!

I don't see this happening every week tbh...

Background: A bunch of us played a couple of team nights before this year's Open and we were surprised at how much fun we all had... Evenly matched games played with great spirit, lots of time on the ball for everyone, blah blah, etc etc...
I'm just greedy and want to have even more fun playing polo and become an incredible player who confounds critics with amazing skillz... Etc...
I will also be at Souths on Wednesday...
#ilovepolo

....something about holding ones breath

#jus saying

kelis i hate you so much right now - YouTube

you're dead.

lolz!!!!!

I apologise for my abrupt nature. Last wednesday i had a conversation with joe in the pub, i told him that it was frustrating for me knowing that emmet was leaving, dt wasn't at souths that night and that souths had hardly any of the highest standard players coming anymore. We discussed this quite openly, he could even see my position. I've always been supportive of joe, emmet and i even asked him if he would like to play with us in cambridge, why would we do that unless we thought it would be fun or that he could hold his own?
Yesterday i asked a simple question whether i would be welcome because the first line of his post immediately excluded me and a host of other people, people that joe know's i find it frustrating to not see south more often. I was told in no uncertain terms that no i was not welcome and then rather patronisingly only if i played a certain way.
This was picked up by a host of others sensibly and some people pointed out the disparity, the exclusivity and the fact that there are other nights already organised that will return in the winter months. Admittedly more articulately and calmly than I. Some left their displeasure in a single line and others ignored the whole point of the thread and went to play anyway.
Gabes if you want to play internet policeman, then you shouldn't write deliberately inflammatory things and obviously side with people. You also shouldn't write to me on my email address about things that are not in the thread and are not on topic. If you don't want to speak to me as a friend, then don't write to me on a personal level, It's not friendly and its extremely invasive. Equally Joe, you know full well, why this frustrated me, because we chatted that i don't get enough polo, that downs is really far, (20 miles there and back) … and then you exclude me, when i have always included you. I have encouraged you to play polo when you used to laugh at this silly little game, you thought the secret polo society thread was funny, you know that it was a joke and you know full well that it was about trevor. We laughed about it in the pub together and now you use it as a weapon because it suits you. Don't be a different person on the internet stage than you are to my face joe, don't tell me, 'yeh we need to get more northies down to newt', then tell me i can't play.
Pique, went and played yesterday and ignored your silly thread, he is sensible and far less reactionary than I, I applaud him for that. I don't think he ruined your night, and is clearly an A cat. Hopefully his presence puts this thread in perspective. I apologise for swearing, if someone could post an appropriate tune, i'll >>>>>>>

We'll just keep this on the down-low from now on... Could one of the mods please lock this thread right away then delete at the end of the day? Cheers...

You're right, B, I should've done this via emails... Could the mid-octane brothers and sisters please PM me their email addresses?

Personally, I'm loathe to lock it because I think the idea has merit and I think it's more beneficial for our community that organising takes place in the public domain, rather than within an inner circle.

Fine, I'm down with whatever the other mid-octane peeps wanna do...

Also, who will watch our music when it's gone?

I think its ok to leave it up, so other mid-range people know its on, PMs are limited to ten recipients.

Also, who will watch our music when it's gone?

I assume they would just come to us for mixtapes?

Gabes if you want to play internet policeman, then you shouldn't write deliberately inflammatory things and obviously side with people. You also shouldn't write to me on my email address about things that are not in the thread and are not on topic. If you don't want to speak to me as a friend, then don't write to me on a personal level, It's not friendly and its extremely invasive.

I'm not playing anything. I saw your replies to Joe about the idea of intermediate night, and thought your were being a complete dick about it. Your replies to both me and joe, and anyone else for that matter are just plain aggressive and go around in circles. You clearly have no ability to control yourself on here. I'm not going to do anything about it, I don't want this forum to be restricted to people based on their ability to function in society, or lack thereof.

I emailed you in reply to a totally separate email, in which you basically demanded I build you a new mallet head like one that ray had taken a photo of a year previously. It's all take and not a lotta give dude. Sick of it. And you tell me about being invasive? So I was working away the other day, and I got an email saying "WANT" with a pic of a mallet I made for you ages ago. That's invasive, distractive and annoying.

Carry on treating people around you like crap. See how it works for you.

Could one of the mods please lock this thread right away then delete at the end of the day? Cheers...

Don't close the thread. Quite a few people turned up yesterday who hadn't been involved in the private conversation we had before, which shows the value of having it here.

And Brendan, you are welcome to come, all we ask is that you respect the level we are playing at. Pique did exactly that, and that was much appreciated. It's no different than if you come to beginners.

If you want to organise a high octane polo session then do it, I'm sure people will come.

And it's not just Joe's idea, there are a fair few of us who want to do this and feel like it could benefit us.

I have been thinking for some time that London could use an 'intermediate night' because beginners polo has reached a more advanced level and some of the beginners aren't able to keep up, which defeats the object. Also it can be frustrating and sometimes not enjoyable to play with A cats and see nothing of the ball. I appreciated that A cats have and do still tolerate B cats so it could be healthy to have merit based throw ins for all abilities as well.

I understand that all of the B cats still want to do throw in nights and see this as an additional night where we can improve on a different level so it won't detract from any other night.
Admittedly South polo has gotten a little slack of late and I'm sorry this has gotten personal, but we just want to play polo with similar skilled players sometimes.
Please don't close the thread.

I'm not going to close it. This forum should be free, and that includes brendan's right to be horrible to people. It's up to the users to ignore him mentally, or actually set him to ignore.

If there was a Category A / "high-octane" only throw-ins, I'd happily respect the space those people wanted to play that game as well, I think there's nothing wrong with the occasional merit based separation of casual games / throw ins, its just an open acknowledgement that there are differing levels amongst the 70 or 80 of us who play fairly regularly.

I think Pique had the right idea last year. Slow, Medium, Fast. You decide what game you want to play. And you don't choose medium because you're sandbagging, and you don't choose fast because you want to be an A player. You choose the game you feel like playing. If you fell like this game you want to give it your all (and you think you can), you choose fast. If you're an A player who's just not feeling it, choose slow or medium. People are not idiots and I think they can police themselves to a certain extent.

Now. Tunage.

Joan As Police Woman - Real Life (Album Version) - YouTube

indeed merit based across all the range is what i was arguing for all along, apologies if it came across as anything else. Gabes drop it eh? You continue to be inflammatory, dictatorial about what you do and don't think should be written. And if you can't accept an email that compliments your workmanship, sent privately. Then you are twisted.

Interesting thread (not the personal stuff).

In Birmingham, we constantly come up against this problem, but in a much smaller scene our solution has to be different. Recently we split into three regular ABC teams, so that we could play competetively against each other when enough people are present. More recently, we've had a few new players coming along, and a few of the established team-members going AWOL, so games have got a lot slower/less competetive/more adventurous/more lighthearted or whatever, and there have been far fewer team games.

I think the whole 'throw-in/shuffle' tradition doesn't help, to the point that we often now use that only to decide who is playing. After the mallets are shuffled, we mix players up to create roughly even games. There is an emphasis on our A players bringing B and C players into the game, encouraging them, setting them up in goal scoring situations etc etc. Those games aren't really about winning, more about having fun and trying new things.

When we have a mixture of team-members and beginners, we'll alternate between team games and throw-ins, so beginners get a chance to pick up skills and learn the game, but more experienced players also get to play a few games where the focus is on winning, not wheelie goals/flashy passes...

Somebody mentioned once about how this is similar to what they do in Geneva, albeit at a higher level. Ultimately you need to improve everyone's standards if you want to raise your own teams' standards.

One thing I don't get about London though, is how come you don't make your league into two (or three) divisions? I guess geography represents a big challenge, but a smaller division would mean fewer games which would make organising games easier, right?