cover story It’s not just Sven Goran Eriksson who has trouble prising players away from their clubs for England duty. Polo has the same problem. But change is afoot and the national side’s profile could soon be riding higher than ever. By Adam Edwards
Bachelor Boys hey say football is a funny old game. But try polo for a bit of a laugh. It’s the grandest sport in the world, offering the perfect profile for any luxury goods manufacturer worth its leather accessories and yet our national team has struggled to get major sponsorship. It draws large crowds at its home international, the Cartier, but half the audience has never heard of the players on the field, let alone understand the rules. The British sport’s only world-famous players of whom anyone has heard, the Windsor princes, are unlikely to make the country’s national side, which anyway traditionally has one annual home fixture because the regular club polo schedule is so crowded. And despite drawing more celebrities per square inch of turf than any other comparable game on the planet, the major television networks and most of our newspapers simply shun the sport. Is this crazy, foolish or just bad luck? Certainly, all these anomalies mean that the general public has regarded our national polo side as an obscure gang of rich toffs watched by twits who are more interested in the Moët than the match. It also helps explain why for much of its life the English team has been to international polo what the United States soccer team is to international football – keen as mustard yet missing the beef. The competitive spirit in polo has been willing but the flesh has been under-trained and under-funded. But change is
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