Gbob and The Hippy Closure!

Winter Training

1. Neil
   
2. ste
   
3. Rob
   
4. Chan
   
5. Emyr
   
   
   

Monthly Road/MTB Rides

1. Neil
   
2. ste (MTB)
   
3. Chan
   
4. Emyr
   

Winter Training

1. Neil
   
2. ste
   
3. Rob
   
4. Chan
   
5. Emyr
   
6. Graeme
   
   

Monthly Road/MTB Rides

1. Neil
   
2. ste (MTB)
   
3. Chan
   
4. Emyr
   
5. Graeme
   

Okay, we've enough interest to take this a stage further I think. Next step is to scope out the activities we should be doing and the objectives they seek to address. List three aspects of polo you want to improve upon and we will then develop activities that we can all do for the Thursday sessions.

I'll go first as an example -

Neil

1. Speed whilst carrying/controlling the ball
   
2. Balance in tight space and one-to-one contact
   
3. Passing/shooting on my left/non-mallet carrying side
   
   

It will be vital that the activities are designed before we start these regular sessions - therefore once we have a list of objectives I'll call a Sunday session to 'design', test and name them with those who are interested. It will be a big mistake to change the format and exercises once we start as it's the fixed routine that will bring results. If we have monthly blocks of 4 sessions with alternating exercise 'leaders' then we can accommodate more types of session (assuming there are willing leaders/more exercises than we have time for).

I'll set some dates for the road/MTB rides shortly - anyone have a preference for Saturday/Sunday am/pm slots?

1. Shooting
   
2. Long passing
   
3. Sobriety
   

1. Shooting
   
2. Circling & passing
   
3. Not being wankered
   
   

FTFY. Long passes are seldom safe.

1. Passing/shooting on my left/non-mallet carrying side
   
   

I would say it's useful (for those who can't do it) to learn how to play in general on both sides. Being able to switch to the left and dribble/tackle/pass as well as shoot is invaluable.

I'd like to work on the following.

1. Sending the the perfect ball, i.e correctly weighting the pass (long or short) and taking the pace out of a pass that's too fast. For me being able to control a fast pass is vital in tournament play. There are certain ways you can angle you mallet head so the ball doesn't just hit it and bounce over or ping of in another direction. And there is a technique to passing that helps to reach your target directly. This is stuff I've picked up over the years from watching polo at the highest level. A lot of this involves changing the grip on your mallet, follow through techniques and swing radius, but its easy to do and becomes second nature with practice.

2. Blocking/Positioning

3. Goalkeeping

FTFY. Long passes are seldom safe.

Not true. The long pass has seen Netto take some amazing victories, namely at last years Worlds. Like I said above It needs to be fast to avoid the opposition intercepting, and more importantly you need to control it first time

also if people are really looking to improve their game try watching some of mr do's videos. He captures full games at the highest level and has slow mo's so you can see exactly whats happening.

http://vimeo.com/mrdo

Long passes are good, if your good at them, hence me wanting to practice them

1. The "chan" (angled shot)
   
2. Dribbling the ball at speed
   

1. The "chan" (angled shot)
   
   

I contest that naming!

Chan can have the backhand angled shot though.

the 'chan' and the 'forehand chan' it is

the 'chan' and the 'forehand chan' it is

^ Netto gimp... ;-)

That's a move I've been working on

I have an idea for some matchplay polo during the winter that needs developing/approving by you guys...

To keep winter matchplay polo going so we don't lose sharpness/keep practising at the highest level, I've come up with a format for a series of one day tawnys against other cities.

The Format

We challenge another polo city eg. Cambridge/Bristol/London/Sheffield to our one day Intercity Bench Challenge. They must get together a 9 player squad to match ours. We travel or host, play some throw-ins to warm up, then the Captains reveal their first three matchplay team line ups (normal 3 players in a team) for Round 1, where MCR A vs. Other A; MCR B vs Other B etc. These teams could be 'recognised' ones or newly formed/try-out combinations for the tawny.

We play a full sequence of five rounds during the day, 3 teams vs 3, each team playing 10 minute games, with a rule that each subsequent team combination must differ from all previous rounds and only be announced ie. is secret from the other team until the new round is about to start.

In Round 5 the Captains can/should field their best team combinations in the R5 Head-to-Head round with the C teams playing first; A teams last.

Round 6 is the Grand Bench Finale - a 30 minute continuous game in which all players must play a minimum of 3 minutes on court for their city and no single player can play more than 10 minutes continuously or total.

Rounds 1-5 points are win = 5; draw = 3; loss = 0.
Grand Bench Finale is golden goal and 10 points to the winning team/city, with 5 bonus points incentive available for the losing team as long as they have a losing score that is 2 goals or less than the winners at full time.

The overall objectives are to play competitive polo at least 2/3 times before next Spring, but also to try different player combinations under match conditions and to bring us together as a polo city.

The format means that every player will get at least an hour of decent matchplay polo (just like a tawny saturday) and that every player regardless of ability needs to perform throughout the day as each point gained will be vital across all matches. I've rewarded draws with 3 points deliberately, as these close fought games will be the most exciting - so a battling draw against a better team deserves a reward in this format.

The format is also straight forward from an organising point of view and means we should be able to play the whole sequence in 3 hours + turnaround time. This means if we travel to the venue and start at 10am, we have 5 hours to complete before it goes darker at 3pm.

Thoughts? Yays? Nays?

I personally hate the bench minor format thing. Would much prefer to play normally teams games against other teams from different cities.

I understand that view - in this format you'd only play bench-style in the final match. You could also play twice with your 'chosen' team in theory, but part of the idea/objective is that we all try different combinations in matchplay conditions - that's something we can't recreate on a Thursday/Sunday session.

I was about to complain you hadn't listed Cardiff in here. But then I noticed the 9 player thing. Yeah, 9 players in Cardiff... Fucking joke.

^ If it comes off, we could easily issue a challenge to a Bristol/Cardiff compendium... we might struggle for 9 anyways, so we might need a few honoraries and ex-pats...!

Cool. We've done a couple of Cardiff vs. Bristol tournaments. One was a Bench minor and the other was swiss rounds. Bench minor was more fun

hey neil thats an awesome idea, a word of caution though. 9 players is far too many for a BM team. the ideal number is 5/6 because then everyone gets plenty of gameplay in a half hour slot. also what do you mean by captains naming different combinations? usually in a BM people come off and go on sporadically, whole line changes during the game are not always used...

Rounds 1 - 5 are normal three man team contests - NOT BM - only the final R6 match is true BM, featuring all nine players within a 30 minute match to bring things to an exciting finale.

The captains can vary the make up of each of the R1-5 teams as they progress, but won't necessarily know which teams they will actually play in subsequent rounds because the other captain might have different ideas (eg. whether to play their strongest team lineup first, second or third)... this happens in the Ryder Cup (golf) on the finals day - each captain lists the order of their players but has no insight as to the line up of their opposition and creates a random factor that allows minnows to become heroes and vice versa!

aaaah gotcha sounds like a great idea!

I like, sounds good

I have just looked at this now >_<.

I'm stuck in a friggin' contract and my ex is being a bitch with moving out and finding a replacement which is a pain so I'm going to pay a few months by myself and try and find a way out but it's going to take some work getting the estate agent to agree.

I looked on montrose the site if it's the one with an Acer in the garden it looks well fancy and if I could get out now and move in I would jump at it.