Roamin' Polo

After meeting loads of the Brum, Sheffield and Newcastle poloistas for the first time this tournament, and after getting more jealous of how often London get to play sucha variety of teams, as teams AND after the vague success of our Manchester to Leeds polo trip (despite the fact only Josh turned up from Leeds), I propose we try and get some more north west/north polo travelling going on. With Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham and Newcastle (although hwo long does it take to get their?) all 5 of the cities go to one, and then a different one the next month.

Any opinions? too much travelling? too much effort?

i think it sounds lovely..i might even come and play if we get to go no little holidays...

If we do day returns and book in advance would probably be about £10 (or less with student railcards)
even the most skitn of us could afford that 4 times every 5 months

yes woody, we were talking about exactly this yesterday. great minds think alike and all that. Its clear we need to step things up to compete with the londoners and a regional league might be a really good idea. We also should try and play team games at the beginning/end of every thrown in session so teams get used to playing with each other cause its stupid if we never play in teams together except the week or so before a tournament. Maybe some kind of mini manchester league - that would encourage everyone to show up to sessions as well....

Yeah a Manchester league would be amazing, as we say every tournament, but we have nowhere enar enough dedicated players at the moment, you can't have a 4 team league.
I am posted a link to this thread into to other regional polo forums, do they need to join to be able to post in Manchester?

we have 5/6 teams (Netto, ASBO, LMJ, 2 Beer Rule, Hip Replacements, Doommallets and maybe even the old Mango Sharks) and with possibilities of reshuffles and other people to come back from holiday etc i think a 6 team 'league' would definately work, make people more comitted and improve all our play tons

Cheers for pointing us to this thread Woody - I'm sure i can speak on behalf of the Birmingham scene and say how good it would be to get involved in this. We're playing tomorrow night, so i'll bring it up at beers.
:)

Fair point ben, I wasn't trying to put any teams down or anything. I'd be all for any form of league! We should have one night for teams not in the middle fo the throw-ins no? need's its own thread i feel
Anyway, we could handle this and a league easy, more polo ftw!

i for one would love to play more polo, but working in a bike shop and needing to at least spend some time with my missus means weekends are difficult. i've already booked time off for cambridge, london and geneva tournaments, this summer so i can't really see that i'll be able to commit to anything else regular-style.

that said, i am but one of the 10ish brum polo players, so perhaps we could rotate players or just use some people from B Team, much to everyone else's amusement...

It wouldn't need to be individual teams that travelled around, but the whole cities scene (or those than can make it), and then have a big day fo throw-ins, and also team games, to help get everyone general level increased, and also allow more oppertnities to practice competitivly.

Sheffield are keen to be involved with this. We currently have a very fledling set up with only 5/6 regular members so far, so the opportunity to have a decent number of people playing - be it a throw in or teams would definately help our game. We are playing tonight so i'll deiscuss with the others - keep us in the loop.More polo + more people + good heckling + washed down with booze = polo win

Sweet. Right go and play your polo and get backl to us. i would say i am doing the same but i aint playing this week, maybe you gan do it Punkture? see what people think?

that would be cool - definitely up for whatever games i could make and birmingham is instituting a seeding system which would make it easier for us to decide who could go to what games.

we were talking about hosting an invitational tournament for the minnows of bike polo. keep 'em peeled!

What do you need the seeding system for? why can't all your teams go to all tournaments?

someone needs to do a "no london allowed" tournament to get the northern teams up to speed and be able to score some goals

if we had thought of it earlier a city could put one on on the 1st May, when London are all gonna be playing for Brendans birthday

Cheers for pointing us here Woody. Think it's fair to say Newcastle would be well up for this. We had been talking about similar plans as well. Last year Edinburgh hosted teams from here and Glasgow and we actually had the pleasure of winning a few games. I'm not sure the standard of our polo has improved much at all in the last year which is shit and the only way to remedy is to play outside more often. We're about three hours away by car although there are direct trains at pretty reasonable prices.

We'll try and put some thoughts together at our next session tomorrow.

Cheers,

Matt

Loving the Roamin' Polo concept - let's build it around fixed dates though. That way we will maximise attendance/commitment.

How about a four city format - each has to send representatives on to the other three cities/host their own leg?

Could run Individual, Team and City matches as well as throw ins...

I can see the Tour T Shirt already! :-)

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YEah i think iot is important that each city take it in turn to host, so that people don't end up spending too much on travel and so everyone gets to take a road trip
too early to talk of fixed dates at the moment, but first sunday of the month or something seems like the best kinda idea?

Loving the Roamin' Polo concept - let's build it around fixed dates though. That way we will maximise attendance/commitment.

How about a four city format - each has to send representatives on to the other three cities/host their own leg?

Could run Individual, Team and City matches as well as throw ins...

I can see the Tour T Shirt already! :-)

Don't forget sjheffield in your wagon fest!

What do you need the seeding system for? why can't all your teams go to all tournaments?

we only just managed to get a 6th person for the nationals! if such a small number of people want to go, we need a fair way of deciding who plays for which team.

eg: black stabbath and the b team were both formed for the nationals. myself and fin have played together in tournaments before, but never with andy... the b team were all tourney first-timers.

maybe if the brum scene grows a bit we'll be able to settle into fixed teams. as far as this idea is concerned i personally would maybe not want to trek up to newcastle (no offence, i've heard it's a lovely place, just flipping far away...), but mancs, leeds, oxford, cambridge, sheffield would probably be do-able. are there no liverpool and bristol teams?

also, i agree with the fixed format (same day each month)

i also really like the idea of a no london tournament - it would make a nice change to see netto, cambridge and oxford battle it out for the win!

i also really like the idea of a no london tournament

Racist

Racist

no northerness no talk!