The Warwickshire England’s oldest high-goal trophy at its most venerable club is won by the longest-serving of the season’s high goal patrons
irencester Park is the oldest of England’s exiting clubs, founded in 1894 on the vast Gloucestershire estate of the Earl Bathurst. Up north that same year, the townsfolk of Lemington presented the Warwickshire Polo Club with a massive silver cup that is today the oldest of all the country’s high-goal trophies – and its most travelled. The club at Leamington ceased to exist at the beginning of the Great War, leaving the Warwickshire Cup in the hands of the captain of the last team to win it in 1913. Then, in 1932, he presented it to Roehampton where it was played for between that London club, Hurlingham and various international high-goal teams. After Roehampton gave up polo in 1955, it passed the trophy on to Cirencester Park where it remains today as the prize in the club’s premier tournament. The Warwickshire Cup tournament has been an important fixture on the English high-goal calendar since 1959, but with varying fortunes. In recent years, because of an increasingly crowded season, it has drawn fewer entries. This season, however, it started moving back up to strength with 10 competing teams. ‘That is more entries than the Warwick-
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Cirencester Park’s president the Earl Bathurst, left, with Countess Bathurst and Christopher Hanbury, chairman of the HPA.
ment losing by only one goal, 10-9, in its semi-final against Spencer McCarthy’s Emlor. In the other semi, Urs Schwartzenbach’s Black Bears comfortably defeated Foxcote/Wildmoor 9-5 to earn a place in the finals. A crowd of several thousand lined both sides of Cirencester Park’s historic Ivy Lodge Ground to watch the teams’ star players – Argentina’s Novilla Astrada brothers for Black Bears and Chile’s Donoso siblings for Emlor. Emlor opened the scoring, but Black Bears were ahead 2-1 at the end of the first, taking a lead that increased period by period. It was clear from the start that Black Bear’s massive pony power, demonstrated earlier in the Queens Cup, had Emlor out-horsed. The Gloucestershire team was leading 7-2 in the Black Bears patron Urs Schwartzenbach grasps Warwickshire Cup for the sixth time. fourth when Emlor staged a comeback that reduced their deficit to only one goal in the shire has had in 15 years or so,’ said former fifth and final period, but at the final bell it Cirencester Park chairman Mark Vestey. was Black Bear 8, Emlor 6. Support from Gloucester-based teams So the Warwickshire Cup again went to helped make the difference, with Black Bears Black Bears patron Schwarzenbach, as it had and Foxcote/Wildmoor from Cirencester last year. The team has now won the trophy a Park, Evolution/Laird from Beaufort and record six times. Lovelocks from Longdole joining the fray. It was a reminder that the Swiss patron has Lovelocks, with young Charlie Hanbury, been fielding high-goal teams far longer than did particularly well in the 22-goal tournaanyone else playing in England today. ■
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