The Egypt Army Polo Tour

The Roscoe Harvey Cup resulted in a tie

Egypt Army Polo Tour

Simon Ledger

reports

The original invitation from the Mohammed Elsewedy owned Kings Polo Club, near Cairo, was sent via the British Embassy nearly two years ago and planned for March 2020. The polo world, and everything else stood still, whilst Covid did its worst around the globe, but thanks to the Defence Staffs at the Embassy and Mohammed Elsewedy, perseverance paid off and at a month’s notice the tour was confirmed for 1 – 7 November 2021.

Army Polo gathered a good team together under the firm eye of Army Coach Gaston Devrient. An excellent programme was arranged by our hosts at King’s Club some 10 miles outside Cairo of two days of practice, chukkas, coaching and trying ponies before the Roscoe Harvey Cup was held on Friday 5 November.

The 66 acres is an ambitious project with a wonderful main field – another under construction – a large arena, clubhouse and housing for staff. The stables were state of the art and built in the Argentine/US style and thus were airy, cool and very well constructed. The staff, headed by Gavin Chaplin, with Marselo Pasquel (5) as the resident professional run a very effective coaching regime with local Egyptian players and a smattering of expat members. The ponies were all from Argentina and catered for different levels of players, they had clearly been very carefully chosen and were uniformly of a very high standard.

The Cup was contested over six chukkas of fast and impressive polo by both teams in front of a large crowd of British Embassy invited guests from the diplomatic and trade community hosted by the British Ambassador, HE Gareth Bayley. The 250 or so guests enjoyed the normal polo hospitality and really got into the game.

At first it seemed the Army team would be on the receiving end of a sound beating by a very swept up and closely drilled Kings Club team, well led by Marselo Pasquel and coached by Gavin Chaplin. At the end of the third chukka the Army team were down by 3 goals and seemingly doomed to lose. BUT a long break at half-time enabled Gaston Devrient to change the British Army team around and scope a plan to come back into the match. This plan worked well in the second half with Capt Johnny Sleeman (2) having more space created by Giles Bromley-Martin (1) now marking tightly along with Henry LlewelynUsher also glued to his man thus allowing Gaston Devrient, later named Most Valuable Player, more space and two/three great runs to close the gap to just one goal in the final two minutes or so. A lucky break by the Army to bring the scores level at 7 goals each and some frantic defence saw both teams trying score the elusive winning goal – to no avail and a draw was deemed a fair result of a pulsating and well-mannered match.

The Roscoe Harvey Cup Teams: The HACKETT British Army Polo Team (5)

Lt Col Nick Foulerton Scots DG/ Lt Col Henry Llewelyn-Usher WG both (-1) Capt Giles Bromley-Martin IG (1) Capt Johnny Sleeman QRH (2) Gaston Devrient (3)

The Kings Club (6)

Hussein Abozaid (0) Mohanned El Afandy (0) Mohamed Bassuni (1) Marselo Pasqual (5)