Irish Polocrosse Visit to Arden Tournament UK - July 1999

 Who said a Mercedes Benz couldn't tow a Bedford Truck with 7 horses and kit on board?
 
After careful and meticulous planning by a group of highly professional people one evening in the local pub, hiccup! 7 players from the Horetown House Club in Wexford, Southern Ireland decided to take up a long standing invitation to travel to England with horses and try and behave ourselves over a weekends tournament.
 
Our man on the ground at Arden, Jason Burbidge went walkabout for a few weeks before the tournament, some say he was found sitting in the shade in Africa, drinking a crate of chilled beer. We quickly had to find a woman on the ground, Julia Chapple, came to our rescue. Well, what a woman, she has obviously inherited her mothers good looks and organisational skills and with a lot of support and co-operation from the Lodder family, we tied up all the loose ends involved in bringing a travelling team with horses from another country.
 
The Players comprised of: David Young, Noreen O'Donnell (Mrs), Richie Nolan, Michael Finnegan, Justine Kehoe (Mrs), Ivor Young and magic Aidan McDonagh. David, Michael and Richie all rowed in with some sponsorship towards the expense of the trip and local man Sean Maye was assigned to drive the truck. Newly weds Jeremy and Peta Marriot from Australia were roped in at the last minute to act as our Chef D'equippe and racquet setters for the team. We had a little mishap with a water cooler pipe on the motorway and thanks to Jeremy's aboriginal talents for fixing Bedford's, with the help of a Swiss army knife, a small vice grip and some barbed wire borrowed from a kindly local farmer, he got us back on the road before the breakdown service could get to us. We must apologise to the farmer for not having the time to join him at his house (or the local Police station) for a drink. He was waving his stick and fist so frantically at us from atop the nearest mountain, that we reckoned he must be a serious party animal and we would never have made it to the tournament.
 
The truck decided it didn't went to go any further at one stage and Ivors Mercedes was used to pull start it. The car has now been devalued by Irl£4,000.00, and the truck has gone up in value by £3k as we never really expected it to make the round trip.
 
The tournament was great fun, can't really remember the team names, lots of the players were from Zim, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. Not sure what it takes to play a really true UK team but maybe we will experience this at another tournament, perhaps in Africa or Aussie-land.
 
The weather was seriously hot for us and the horses, so far inland no sea breeze, but we Irish are a tough bunch and kept the liquids into us all day and most of Saturday night!! For some reason or other, none of the players were speaking to me the next morning when I arrived 10 minutes before our first game. Remarks such as "thanks for coming Ivor" were the order of the day. I read a new book on Saturday night called How to Piss your team Off in One Easy Lesson and it worked. All was forgiven when I arrived in the afternoon with a case of the famous Henley in Arden Ice Cream for everyone.
 
Julia Chapple true to her word drew us to play at 12.30pm for our first game, Saturday, thanks Julia it was a big help to players and horses some who had been travelling for over 17 hours. Also a major thank you to the Lodders who had a padlocked field with water for our horses when we arrived. We won our first game, lost the second in the closing 20 seconds by one goal and had the crap beaten out of us on Sunday. (Actually this was the weakest team we played, but we didn't want everyone thinking we were that good!!!)
 
There were great jokes about also about the professional players brought in to boost the English teams. Thankfully due to strong umpiring (and a very well run tournament) there were no injuries to any of our players and horses.
 
Saturday night we learned how to party Arden style. There were dancers on the bar, alcoholics under the bar, great music, terrible music. Some drunken Irish living in the vicinity came in and sang the Wild Rover but had to be prompted Karoke style. There was some mention of me playing the harmonica but I truly have no recollection of this. I'm sure it was made up.
 
We were treated royally at Arden. Pat Chapple and her family, along with the Lodders and all members of the Arden Club made us particularly welcome. The prize giving was a memorable occasion in a memorable setting in the gardens and we were presented with mementoes of our visit. We can't wait to host an English team of (B4/Before players, anyone who was there will know what this means) over here and there is some talk of visiting teams or sections here for our September Nationals in Dublin.
 
Thanks to our team manager and coaches Jeremy and Peta Marriot, (we only paid them for Friday and Saturday as for some reason they were no use to us on Sunday, forget to go to bed or something). Sean Maye who drove the truck and stopped us from squabbling with each other was a great asset to us also. Sean was an accomplished show jumper in his day, his father being the owner of the famous King of Spots Stallion. He says he is too old to learn to play Polocrosse, but I think if he considers some of the ages of our Horetown team he is grossly underestimating himself.
 
Aidan McDonagh excelled himself as our key No. 1 player, he popped in a few very nice goals (approx 50) at high speed, (after his usual settling down period). We are now promoting him to a B4 position as soon as we find out what it means!!!
 
Till we meet again, happy Polocrossing.
 
Ivor Young
Polocrosse Ireland.