home affairs Anyone fed up with the win-at-all-costs attitude should seek out an invitation to Country House Polo. It’s a growing movement and a reminder of gentler times. Yolanda Carslaw is charmed wo sets of players line up in the middle of a Gloucestershire polo ground and an umpire throws in the ball. There follows a few misjudged swipes, hooked sticks and clumsy jostling for position before someone finally gets hold of a decent pass. The commentator is getting excited, while 50-odd spectators keep one eye on the action, another on drinks, children, fellow bystanders. It’s a pretty English picture – a low-goal tournament at the height of summer, perhaps. But wait a minute. Aren’t they all behaving rather politely? Where is the raised arm? The raised voice? And why is just one player per team a nimble, skilful expert? Why do I keep seeing them selflessly passing the ball up to their less proficient team-mates? And, hang on, don’t most of the chaps on the field usually run their own teams, with three pros each? In that case, what are they doing here, playing their socks off, virtually all by themselves? The answer is that this match, at Colin Dhillon’s Trewsbury Farm, near the source of the River Thames outside Cirencester, is by no means regular low-goal: it’s Country House Polo, an “alternative” to club polo. Three amateurs and one three or four-goal professional make up each team, and everyone is invited to a sociable tea or lunch afterwards.
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But most importantly, Country House Polo is played without pressure or tension. The movement’s founder, Nigel a’Brassard, an investment banker and 0-goal player, originally put his idea to a group of private ground-owners three years ago. ‘Country House Polo was started to recreate what I think polo used to be like,’ he says. ‘When I first took up the sport in the early 1980s, it was competitive, but it was done in a gentlemanly spirit. Above: Colin and Jacqueline Dhillon hosts of the Trewsbury Farm (pictured right) Country House Polo day.
ALL PICTURES JASON BUCKNER
Left: Alex Olmos and Nigel a’ Brassard battle for possession of the ball.
Back ‘Now, most patrons – of all nationalities and ages, across all levels – are only interested in winning. And they want to win at almost any cost, and that takes a lot of the enjoyment out of it. Meanwhile the pros have another match, so they jump in the car and drive off. Before, we’d all go to the bar and talk about the game. The whole thing has become much less gentlemanly.’ Colin Dhillon’s home is one of Country House Polo’s dozen or so venues across the south of England. Others include Black Bears patron Urs Schwarzenbach’s grounds near Henley, which hosted the first Country House Polo fixture two years ago; the Lloyd Webbers’ Watership Down estate, HPA chairman Christopher Hanbury’s Longdole and the Vesteys’ Foxcote, both in Gloucestershire. The day I visit, the Dhillons’ two immaculate fields are hosting not only six chukkas of polo, but a village fête – which means there is more of an audience than usual. The polo runs
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