BS: What is wrong with polo?

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Greg B
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 10:56 AM

Here in my home of Bucks County PA, we have a polo grounds
right along the banks of the Delaware river, sandwiched
between river and hill. On weekends, a rather unpretentious
bunch of congenial folks come out and play a match.

Other congenial folks come out, bring picnic lunches, spread
out their blankets and enjoy the follies. Some bring vintage
cars. There's a bit of a competition for who can bring the
most extravagant picnic, but it's all in good fun.

Some time back, the local paper did a feature on the players.
By and large middle class folk, who in many cases don't own
the horses they ride on. Apparently a lot of horse owners aren't
crazy enough to play the game, and a lot of the folks crazy
enough to play the game don't have the means or urge to own a
horse.

I have the impression that the game is rather hard on the horses,
what with all the stops and sudden turns and such. But so are
pole-bending and barrel-racing and cattle-cutting in the Western
World, and so is steeple-chase and (to lesser extent) show-jumping
in the English world. All seem harder on the riders than on the
horses in many cases; all give the horses a purpose.

As to costs, experience tells me that a large breed dog is really
as expensive to keep fed and healthy as a hardy horse. Hay is cheap;
first-rate kibble is expensive. The vet costs the same either way,
only health insurance on a horse is far more obtainable. Now, if
you pay someone else to do all for your horse, that's an expense,
but that's a choice not a requirement.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,Uncle Boko
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 04:59 PM

We've just arrived back from our polo club and didn't notice any so called "toffs" there, just nice educated country folks. It's incredible how lefties have so many hang ups.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 05:05 PM

Some cops stopped the rodepolo match some of the guys 'n' gals were holding up at the University's soccer field. Seems like they thought it might be fun to move the ball along with bullets from a Colt's .45 revolver.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 05:47 PM

That's the trouble with cops. No sense of humor and precious little imagination either...

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 06:56 PM

It may also have been related to Slim whistling a jig while Rexy provided the reason for the cop to "dance."

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 07:01 PM

Prince Charles used to play polo. One day he hurt his hand and they took him to the nearest hospital - Queens Medical in Nottingham.

They cordoned off two floors one to keep him on the one below to keep his security staff on. he was there a week.

God knows how many operations were delayed and how much it cost the local health authorities to sort out his polo wound. Princess di came to visit him one day and there squadrons of coppers all over the hospital on full alert.

I'm sure its an okay sport, but it attracts some very dodgy people who piss most of the population off. the polo player in Howards Way turned out to be a villain as well.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: John O'L
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 08:36 PM

Kerry Packer played polo and he was a rich arsehole. I have nothing against rich people, but rich arseholes have greater scope for arseholery than poor ones.
"It's incredible how lefties have so many hang ups." No hang-ups, just clear vision obscured by poverty.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,sinky
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 09:08 PM

i have nothing against toffs,but come on,it is a bloody boring piss poor example of a sport.Its even worse than basketball where the only ability required is to be a fecking 7 foot freak.WHY dont they raise the basket another four foot and see how good they really are.Slam dunk my arse.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 09:21 PM

You probably wouldn't like it if your ass was slam-dunked.

Not being one who watches sports much (I prefer to play than to watch) I find most of them to be bores. NASCAR is just cars driving around in a circle, polo is a bunch people abusing horses, dog racing is people abusing dogs, and most of the rest are people abusing themselves or others.

Golf is people abusing their balls.

Give me something to do, like shooting, fencing, archery, hunting, fishing, hiking, camping.... All of these are boring as hell to those watching, but exciting to those involved.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,ibo
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 09:34 PM

spot on Rapaire,couldnt have said it better myself

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: John O'L
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 04:21 AM

I agree too Rapaire. My son and I have just recently taken up archery and we love it. I can't imagine what it must be like to watch, but doing it takes you to a whole new world.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,Uncle Boko
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 04:51 AM

"polo is a bunch (of) people abusing horses" - what lefty rubbish are you talking here? What ignorance - polo horses are treated with the utmost care and respect.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 11:52 AM

Never, never make the mistake of taking every single word Rapaire says seriously, Uncle Boko. His central purpose in life is to make everyone's day a little more surreal. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 12:09 PM

In the US we don't eat horses....

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 01:01 PM

very wise, they might bite back

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Greg B
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 02:02 PM

One bit me a week ago Sunday. Didn't hardly hurt me, but he felt
real bad about it and has since been more careful of where his
mouth is when he chomps down. So it was worth it.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: sneeble
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 05:09 PM

I used to play polocrosse, as recreational fun. Fun, fast and takes a fair bit of skill to get a horse to chase after a ball the size of a tennis ball. It was a darned sight cheaper than the other equestrian disciplines I did.
Never saw any class distinction, as most people turned up in gumboots and jeans anyway with their old trucks. The worst offenders for being sucked into town and country fashions were the spectators who would come out from the city to watch and of course the odd girl who wanted to get a guy from the country (yep I have seen them - they are scary and single-mindedly aggressive).

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Greg B
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 06:04 PM

"the odd girl who wanted to get a guy from the country (yep I have seen them - they are scary and single-mindedly aggressive)."

ObFolk:

Oh I wish they'd do it now, oh I wish they'd do it now
I've got itches in me britches and I wish they'd do it now!

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 06:48 PM

I'm a Horse Whisperer. A horse named Cheyenne bit my right arm and held on, his eyes looking at me like "What ya gonna do now, sucker?" I gently reached up, grabbed his right ear, and whispered, "Let go right now or I'll twist your f****n' ear off, you ^%#@*#*&$^!!!."

And he did let go.

You just have to know how to talk to them.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Greg B
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 07:18 PM

I can't imagine dealing with a biter, day in and day out. I want
the ones I can trust to park their nose on my 5 o'clock shadow
and enjoy the scratchiness, or to stick their nostril on my
lips and exchange breaths and thoughts for a couple of minutes.

(That's what 'horse whispering' actually is; horses are telepaths
and communicate with each other this way. If you don't believe me,
watch two horses put their nostrils together and breathe back
and forth just before they gang up on you with a brilliant plan
to get the better of you and make you spill a bucket of grain.
There's nothing unusual or fantastic about it.)

This afternoon, while the two horses were in a stall having finished
their grain and were munching on some hay, it still being 85 degrees
out, I was filling the water troughs out in the field. The stall door
was open to the field. I called the name of the 5-year-old Rocky
Mountain Horse who's just starting his training, but who seems to
like me for some silly reason.

He stopped eating, trotted outside in the heat and flies, came up to me and seemed to say 'So, whaddya need me to do, boss?'

Made my day.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Jul 07 - 09:44 PM

Well, in Cheyenne's defense he'd been moved to Maine from Montana and he wasn't my horse; I was just bein' friendly. I just kinda talked to him in the language I figgered he'd have heard in Montana. Bite left bruises for two weeks, though.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 06:32 AM

I think that most dislike of sports such as polo comes from the English socialist middle classes who think they ought to be working class, wouldn't be seen dead owning a house, and simply resent anybody who has money sufficient to fund polo.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: TheSnail
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 07:05 AM

simply resent anybody who has money sufficient to fund polo.

Fitzgerald: The rich are different from us.
Hemingway: Yes. They've got more money.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 07:39 AM

Ah, is it envy of the money, is it envy that people own their houses, is that what it is?

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 01:46 PM

look we don't demonstrate against it - we're simply not interested. why can't you live with our complete indifference?

Its for cavalry officers - most our Dads were in the PBI in the war.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 02:04 PM

Hell, I was PBI during the Vietnam time. I know guys who are PBI now.

None of the PBI I knew and know gave much of a damn about polo.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 06:13 PM

"Its for cavalry officers - most our Dads were in the PBI in the war"

Inverted snobbery again, absolute rubbish - gente no como uno!

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 06:31 PM

I love those horse whispering stories! Great stuff. I bet they are telepaths.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 06:44 PM

gente no como uno!

its easy for you to say that....

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 06:45 PM

Here in San Diego, just by UCSD, we have a whole plaze and research institute erected to the memory of Jonas Salk, who fought so hard to eradicate polo.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 06:45 PM

I'll have the garlic bread

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: TheSnail
Date: 27 Jul 07 - 08:13 PM

Fairly non-descript little car. Don't know what all the fuss is about.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 03:37 AM

Traditionally in England, wealthy men, known as "patrons", fund polo teams. In a sport where players are ranked on a handicap system from -2 to 10, most patrons don't get much beyond 1, so they pay top dollar to play alongside the best – up to £250,000 per player for a three-month English season. It is like Roman Abramovich turning out for Chelsea. Like Abramovich, they want the best – and the best polo players, and their mounts, come from Argentina. There are ten 10-goalers in world polo and 16 playing off nine, all of them Argentinians. Of that 26, 24 are in England this summer playing "high-goal" polo, where the aggregate handicaps of the four players in the team have to add up to between 17 and 22 goals. In the case of Apes Hill, Luke and Mark are both rated 7 goals while Morley is one of the best 5-goal players in Europe. Those in the know say that Hitchman is under-handicapped at 3.

No all-English team has won the Gold Cup since the Duke of Edinburgh's Windsor Park amateurs in 1969, although the Tomlinson boys do know what it is like to win polo's top trophy. In 2003, they triumphed with an unfancied Anglo-South African team.

"That team was not as well-backed and mounted as this one," Luke says intensely. "We have to have a chance, but top players can be nothing unless they have top horses, which can cost around £70,000 each," he explains.

Each player in a top team needs perhaps ten horses to play a match of six seven-minute periods, known as chukkas. Players may change mounts twice or more per chukka. Some patrons supply all the horses; the Apes Hill boys buy and breed their own.

"Next to playing it's the most fun. Though you need to be really organised to be successful at this game," says Morley, who has to earn enough from playing fees and breeding to fund a back-up team of five. "Off the field, you spend your year organising and training your horses and going round the world to find mounts to improve your string." The quartet also spend a lot of time brushing up their patron contacts: "If you've had a good season, they come looking for you," says Hitchman, who plays winters in Australia and Barbados. "If not, you have to go hunting around a bit," he adds with English understatement.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,ibo
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 05:22 AM

a horse once whispered to me, GET THIS FAT RICH ARSEHOLE OFF MY BACK AND LET ME EAT SOME GRASS

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 05:26 AM

Oh Amos!

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 05:51 AM

Some grass under Beckam's boots once whispered to me - GET THIS FAT RICH ARSEHOLE OFF MY BACK,TEACH HIM TO SPEAK PROPERLY AND LET ME BREATH!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 07:07 AM

As that guy said in Amadeus, I can see you are passionate, but you don't convince......

I live in Nottingham, where is my nearest Polo Match?

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,ibo
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 08:31 AM

what,nottingham doesnt have a polo team,golly gosh how damn awful.I will be contacting the Windsors immediately old chap.Come to Middlesbrough,its common place around here.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 08:38 AM

Bonzo3legs - Did you just whip that bit of polo-journalism off the top of your head, or did you copy it without giving any credit where credit's due?

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:25 AM

they must be playing polo somewhere round here - otherwise they wouldn't have brought Prince charles to the Queens medical Centre.

Its not in Whats On in Nottingham guide - I can tell you that much. I would have noticed.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:29 AM

"or did you copy it without giving any credit where credit's due?"

Register and I'll find out!

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 10:04 AM

I would assume you already know ... don't you?

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 12:40 PM

What do you mean "I would assume you already know ... don't you? "

Sounds a little aggressive to me. Tone it down lad.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 01:01 PM

Aggressive? Maybe something's getting lost in the cross-pond translation - son.

What I mean is: surely you know whether the piece of writing in question is original or not, without having to 'find out'. But my point is, really, that you appear to have copied & pasted a piece of writing, and it would be good form to indicate where it came from. That's all.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 02:40 PM

Is it really, I had no idea. Here is the link

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/article2083698.ece?token=null&offset=12

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 02:41 PM

Hooray it works!

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 03:55 PM

Okay - now we're all happy.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 04:14 PM

But once on the internet is public domain, this side of the pond, and that's what counts here.

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 04:18 PM

Oh - we're not all happy!

Subject: RE: BS: What is wrong with polo?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 04:38 PM

Of course I'm happy - even happier when BBC6 music puts up the Fairport session from last night.