Three a Side Free Ride
The Paspaley Polo in the City series is a highlight on many a social calendar and an acknowledged successful national promotion of the sport of polo. To many thousands of Australians who may not otherwise ever attend a polo game it is a date not to be missed. It is also not missed by polo players that this is an unique opportunity to showcase their skill as a professional polo player to a glamorous crowd nation-wide of potentially future, polo patrons, supporters and wives. First held in Centennial Park in 2006, Paspaley Polo in the City has grown into a major tour de force now played in five of the seven capital cities.
Paspaley Polo in the City has been vastly effective in refreshing numbers and new audiences around the country. The unusual Paspaley marquee with its port-holed converted shipping container and Paspaley pearl oyster meat canapés has introduced a new level of spectator pampering not seen since the hedonistic days of the decadent 1990s* The Very Important Person Guest treatment together with Paspaley's longstanding principal sponsorship of the event has cradled the series development into Australia's most well known three-a-side polo circuit. For many that is enough. Being able to make the claim more people know about your event than any other polo game in the country must and does deserve respect.
Organisers and players are both happy and enthusiastically ready to turn it on and up, infront of the thronging champagne gargling crowds. After all a great part of this is exactly what polo is all about. The glamour, the girls, the ponies, the rows of breezy cool on a hot day, white tents, the suntanned recently available players, the green lawns and sumptuous luncheons . . . isnt it all what everyone pictures when you mention the word? Yes polo is all of this. So congratulations to the sponsors and organisers for doing what so many should or could have done but failed or never tried. Congratulations not for organising a great tournament but for promoting our sport.
In a time when so many polo clubs are for reasons of their own incapable of attracting new members Paspaley Polo in the City is potentially doing the heavy lifting. Reports from NSW, Queensland and now Victorian Clubs show enquiries about polo lessons and next match calendar dates spike in the fortnight following the Paspaley weekend.
So our new metroequestros may take a little longer to introduce around but listen up country cousins their leopard printed veracious confidence is already becoming de rigueur. Yes the spots are changing damn it, it seems from country pimples, scones and woolley ponies to animal prints, plastic mallets and diamonde studded velcro saddles. Yet amongst all the differences new or old, the edict to enjoy a day outdoors at the polo on or off the field is intimately still unchanged and shared by all.
* Yesteryear saw a time when Vic Polo was synonomous with any excuse for cocktails at the Melbourne Club, while northern neighbours were reporting $80,000 worth of Dom Perignon emptied in a Sydney afternoon stick and ball in the park.