Why haven’t I been playing polo recently?

A few people have been asking me why I haven’t been at polo recently.  There are a few reasons, which I will summarise briefly:

Courts

Let’s face facts: the sport has been going down-hill since we stopped using Brick Lane. The young & ill-informed might point to the steep camber on the court, to the large gaps in the fence, the inconveniently placed goals or even to the very frequent discoveries of human faeces as good reasons to stop using the court.

To these persons, I say, huh! The large gaps in the fence facilitated that game moment now largely lost to London Polo,  namely, the Beer Break.  The ball would go under the fence, shoot off down Shacklewell Street towards Cambridge Heath, and we’d all stop for a refreshing & reviving draught of beer. By the time Yorgo had returned with the ball (yes, Yorgo was our ball boy), we would be ready to play like gods once more.

The goals were only inconvenient if you left your contact lenses at home, or forgot to look where you were going like Emily Emilia Emilie Object did (ouchy!)  Those goals were also nice and big so we used to score a lot more sweet goals back then. And scoring sweet goals is what polo is all about isn’t it? Not all this blocking & endoing and other show-boating such as you see the likes of Emmett & Ryan doing these days.

 

As for the camber, well, it’s not my fault that I always made sure I was playing down it, is it?

And that leaves the matter of the poo. All I have to say about this is that if anyone had bothered to ask me, I would have immediately moved to exclude the south London element from polo. You can take a monkey across a bridge, but you can’t take the bridge out of the monkey.

Refs

Who died and left that speccy-eyed twat in charge of the whistle? How can you respect a man who wears slippers outdoors? Wait a minute, I’m getting confused here… what was your name again?

Mallets

You can now buy ready-made mallets. This is being presented as ‘progress’, but this a lie and a trick. So-called ‘innovations’ like this will lead to the infantilisation of London polo players. Soon you’ll be wanting to be accompanied to the toilet and you will only be able to remove your mouths from the teat of ‘big polo’ with surgical assistance.

I still make all my own mallets out of broom handles, nailed to great big lumps of wood, and my mallets never failed to make an impression on the opposition, I can tell you.

Water

Two things wrong here:

First, water is bad for you, and beer helps you score sweet goals; these are scientifically proven FACTS.

Second, how am I going to steal your beer if you’re all drinking water or ribena or whatever muck it is you have in those bottles?

 

Rules

What’s that? Turnover? No, I don’t fancy any baked goods, thank you very much, I’m trying to score some sweet goals in between putting these clowns into the fence.  And what the hell happened to “321 Polo”? How am I supposed to jump the charge and score a sweet goal if I don’t know when the whistle is coming?

 

The French

The French also bear a big responsibility. After all, they introduced dolphin slaps, blocks & other nefarious moves to London polo, and what has happened to Marc’s hair? Like everything else in polo, it used to be a lot better 4 years ago.