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hurlingham [ talk ]
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England expects Two years ago the HPA launched a new look for the England team. Herbert Spencer considers the situation today
Above Audi UK’s Head of PR Jon Zammett at the start of the Cartier International 2007 with the English team: (from left) Nacho Gonzalez, Luke Tomlinson, Henry Brett and James Beim.
Three weeks before the start of the Europe zone play-offs for the FIP World Cup at Sotogrande earlier this year, the England national team and their entourage were already in Spain preparing for the competition. The four-man squad was there along with alternates, chef d’equipe, coach, some players’ partners for moral support and 30 ponies brought down from the UK. The group lived and worked together in a rented villa and practiced at a club near where the play-offs were scheduled. This was no different from the England football team arriving early at a foreign venue to acclimatise and train before a big match. It was an illustration of the big-sport professionalism that pervades the HPA’s current approach to international competitions, and England teams that play in them. No other polo association spends more time, effort and money on competitions between nations and on its national team than the HPA. Chief Executive David Woodd estimates that in 2007 the association will have spent £160,000 on internationals and the England teams. The whole of English polo benefits in terms of national pride, a higher profile for the sport and profits to fund the game at lower echelons. ‘Thanks to sponsorship,’ says Woodd, ‘none of the membership fees paid by our members goes into financing the England team and, overall, the internationals
generate profit that we can use on such things as our youth programmes.’ National teams from the British Isles have been playing in internationals since 1886 when the Americans donated the Westchester Cup as a perpetual trophy to be played for between the United States and Great Britain. Great Britain has not fared well in the series, having won only five of the 15 meetings with the United States. The HPA’s International Day (now Cartier International) began in 1971 and since then England teams have played visiting national sides or composite teams from more than a dozen countries for the Coronation Cup. As in the Westchester Cup, England’s win-loss record has not been good, with the home team winning only 13 of the 35 Coronation Cup one-day tests. England teams also compete in the FIP’s three-yearly World Championships. They have yet to win the gold, but did take silver in Berlin, 1989; Santa Barbara, 1998; and Chantilly, 2004. At Sotogrande earlier this year, England qualified for the 2008 World Cup scheduled for Mexico City next April. Over the past five years or so there has been a significant increase in the number of internationals played between two countries. England teams playing at home or abroad have met national sides of Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and India, mainly at a higher
