Rebel Rousing

Surprisingly we beat Jogo Polo again in our final match of the Royal Pahang National League tournament. Every time we win a match we come off the field shaking our heads and asking each other “How the heck did we do that?”. Our 3rd place finish got us 4 league points. We keep laughing because we didn’t expect to win any league points at all, so four pretty much makes our season.

Playing with Kuo Lee and Mohamed has brought out that sense of fun in polo. We are pretty serious, most of the time, but there is a lot of ribbing and laughing on the field. It’s only going to get better when Asad joins us for the next National League tournament that starts 11 March at RSPC. We’ve been drawn in a group of death with the winners and runners-up of the 1st tournament: Ranhill-Dhanaz and Royal Pahang. So we are back to not expecting too much other than a bit of fun.

Finding our level

After our super start in the Royal Pahang National League tournament, we were brought down to earth with a bit of a crash.  Ranhill-Dhanaz kicked our butts all over the field, beating us 6 1/2 to 1.  That got them into the final against Royal Pahang, and relegated us to the 3rd place match against Jogo Polo.  Even Jogo Polo looks a much better side than the one we beat on the first day, since they replaced Haddi with Pahang 2 goaler Hayudin.

Today we are having a meeting to try and form a South East Asian Polo Confederation.  Representatives from most South East Asian countries have come to Pahang for this meeting.  One of the objectives is to start a South East Asian Polo Championships in the years that polo is not included in the SEA Games.

In some ways Polo is way ahead of the Equestrian sports in this region.

On Top

The Rebels are leading the qualification to make it to the final of the Royal Pahang National League tournament! Amazingly, we have won both games, and face Ranhill-Dhanaz on Thursday for a place in Saturday’s final.

Shaik Reismann was very unlucky, breaking his left collarbone when his pony came down on a slippery patch in the first few minutes of our game against Royal Selangor on Tuesday. Without their best player, Royal Selangor went to pieces and we strolled to a 10-2 win. Shaik will have an operation to stabilise the break, and will be out for about 6 weeks. Hopefully Shaik will be back in time to play the Hookahs and the Royal Selangor International tournaments in May.

Royal Pahang also won both their games, but we are ahead on goal difference. Ranhill-Dhanaz has to beat us by 5 clear goals to get ahead of us on goal difference, presuming Royal Pahang gets a result against Jogo Polo.

We played with a Pahang pro, Razak, on Tuesday as our team-mate Kuo Lee had some squirreling issues to deal with in Singapore. (More about that in the next Jump-Off, maybe.)  He is back for the rest of the tournament.

Winning one game was already a great result for us. Winning two is unbelievable. Regardless if we make the final, we’ve already had great fun and gone further than we had any reason to expect. The polo in Pekan has been good , and the weather kind. The one dark cloud has been the injury to Shaik.

There is life in the old dog yet

The old dogs still have some bite in them. The Rebels beat Jogo Polo 5 to 1 1/2 on Saturday in our first National League game this year. The rather easy win not only made our day, but made our season, as we never expected to win even one match in the National League. We had formed this team on friendship, not expecting to be competitive in what is a very tough league.

We took the lead early and always felt in control of the match. Nattapong had a superb game at back.  He was really solid in defence and moved strongly upfield at times. Mohamed and I both got a couple of goals, and Nat struck a good 60 yard penalty. Kuo Lee took a couple of chukkas to get used to the speed of game, but he played well in the final two chukkas. We defended well as a unit, controlled most of the plays and killed off the game quite early. It’s really not too bad for three aged dogs (and a super young pro) to beat a team that consisted of four young ‘uns, of which two are pros. It goes to show that experience does count for something.

How do you like the logo that Natasha designed for us old dogs?  Kuo Lee used to breed bulldogs.  That’s a Zappala mallet in its mouth.

Once a Rebel…

We reunited the Rebels, the polo team of my youth. Dato’ Mohamed Moiz got Asad Jumabhoy, Yeo Kuo Lee and myself to enter as a team in the RMPA National Polo League this year. It took a bit of coaxing because we know as a team we have absolutely no chance. We used to be a pretty good team when we played together as teenagers, but that was many, many moons ago. I played with Mohamed’s International League team last season, winning the Thai Polo Open, and with Asad in the SEA Games but the four of us have not played a competitive tournament together in about 18 years.

Four amateurs pushing 50 aren’t going to win a thing against the pros or the younger players. We may have experience on our side but experience doesn’t run very fast. I’m sure there will be times when the competitive fire ignites, but we are under no illusions about winning even a game. The National League is a very competitive 6 goal league. Unlike the International League where we usually have two top pros playing with us, we have to do all the work ourselves. Experience is good against youth only if you have time to catch your breath.

Unfortunately or fortunately, Asad is unable to play this first tournament, so we have Thailand’s Nattapong playing in his place at back. Fortunately, because that means we have a young pro on our team. Hopefully he can shoulder the work while we fall about laughing at ourselves. It is about friendship and having a laugh together while we still can.  It’s a wonderful thing.

Hooking into the Hookahs

For the past few weeks I have been working on the organisation of the 4th edition of the Hookahs Polo Tournament. We have a great team of members at the Royal Selangor Polo Club. Because the Hookahs benefits the Riding for the Disabled Association of Malaysia, we work closely with the RDA volunteers like Sandra Cooper and Sue Crawford. Their team of ladies go out and gets fantastic gifts and items that are given as prizes for the Polo & Equestrian Quiz, the Treading-In prizes, and of course for the RDA Raffle and Auction.

Natasha has again done all the visuals and will look after the publishing of the souvenir programme. I loved last year’s logo but I think she has even topped it with this year’s look. I love the batik effect on the logo this year. (In case you are wondering who the player is, it is Ubajarra Alves de Andrade, a Brazilian 7-goaler who has played a few of the International League tournaments in Malaysia.)

Shaik Reismann and Karen Gan look after the polo side of things. We’ve already got players from all over, including Luiz Enriquez who is coming all the way from America just to play this tournament.   We hope to have eight teams.  And the knock-out format always makes it exciting.  The tournament has become a really fun tournament to play in, and we hope it will still be the tournament every player wants to play in. This is one tournament where winning is secondary to having fun and raising money for a very good cause.

This year we’ll be adding croquet to the mix.  It’s a killer game because it looks so gentlemanly and pukka, but is anything but! For those who want to do more than watch the polo or croquet, bring your kids on the weekend for the games, pony rides and hay rides.  If you want to party you’ve got to come to the Hookahs Hawaiian Hula Nite on Saturday 10th May.

Tournaments don’t become fun just because we wish them so. A lot of organisation goes on to make it happen. I’m very lucky to have such a great team.
And it’s really nice when we get recognition from outside. Of course I have promoted it on Equestrian.Com.My, and it is also listed on the RSPC website. I was delighted though when Polo Contacts Worldwide featured it on their main page. This is an international website, rather like a Facebook of polo people. So it is a bit of an honour, really, to be featured there.

I’ll be writing more about the Hookahs, and you can always go the Hookahs website at http://hookahspolo.com/ for the updates there.

Pony Club Polo Intro

I spent this Saturday morning coaching Pony Clubbers who were visiting the Royal Selangor Polo Club. It’s been few years since I attended a Pony Club Rally. The last one I attended was possibly a few decades ago! I had a great time when I was in Pony Club, and even represented the Far East in two Inter Pacific Pony Club rallies in New Zealand and Australia when I was an associate member.

The Pony Club is the largest Youth Organisation, and the largest association of riders in the world. It was established in 1928 in the United Kingdom. Today it is represented in 18 countries and has a membership exceeding 110,000.The Royal Selangor Polo Club was the home of the Pony Club in Malaysia for many years, before the running of the Pony Club was taken over by the Malaysian Equine Council.

Its objectives are:

• to encourage young people to ride and to learn to enjoy all kinds of sport connected with horses and riding
• to give instruction in riding and horsemastership and to educate Members to look after and to take proper care of their animal
• to promote the highest ideals of sportsmanship, citizenship and loyalty to create strength of character and self-discipline

Membership is available to children till they become 21 years old. Associate Membership is available till they are 25 years old.

Today we had the Malaysian Pony Clubbers out walking and hitting with mini mallets, standing on chairs to hit the balls with longer mallets, and hitting off a wooden horse. I loved that my two boys, Zack and Zaine could get involved in the Pony Club. Zack is 5 (going on 25) while Zaine is still 3 years old. They have a head start in the Pony Club that I never had.

It was fun seeing the enthusiasm of all the Pony Clubbers. And it was great to have them “home” again at the Polo Club.

Leather Check

I love the smell of good leather. It has a luxurious, rich smell. I like to take a deep breath and inhale that wonderfully rich smell of European leather. As soon as you walk into a good tack shop, you can smell it. At least it used to be the case. Nowadays in Kuala Lumpur you can’t smell any leather in reputedly “good” tack shops, probably because all they have are synthetic saddles.

That’s not the worst of it. Yesterday I walked into a tack store in an Ampang office complex. As soon as I walked in, it hit me. There, was the ubiquitous stench of Indian leather. It hits you in the stomach and lingers in your nostrils. Fortunately for me, (unfortunately for them) none of the two people working there seemed to want to serve me, and after an uncomfortable 5 minutes in their stink, I walked out, unattended to.

Indian leather tends to be poorly tanned and dyed, leaving the leather ‘dead’ and brittle. Here’s how you can check the leather quality of a saddle or bridle.

• Smell it. If the smell is offensive, the product is.
• Feel it. It should feel supple and should not be dry or brittle.
• Fold it. Take a bit of the leather and fold it. Look at the creases it makes. Good leather will not crease, and if it does, a rub with your hand erases the mark. Brittle leather will start to split.
• Check for bubbles. Poor dying tends to create bubbles or streaks. The best leather is vegetable tanned and aniline dyed, which means that the dye permeates the leather. The worst type is simply painted on.

Good leather is vegetable tanned, a process that takes time. Chrome tanning creates leather that is stretchy. Chrome leather is usually used in some stirrup leathers - the infamous white Argy Buffalohides that stretch a hole a chukka - and in girth straps.

We tend to spend so much money on our sport, especially for ourselves. But what about for our horses? Don’t they too deserve the best quality products? Why spend hundreds of thousands of Euros on a top warmblood if you are going to stick the cheapest possible saddle on its back?  What about safety? Isn’t the quality of the leather in your reins important, even if it is inside the rubber grip.
And remember, you tend to get what you pay for. Cheap and nasty does not last. If you buy quality, it will provide you with pleasure for a lot longer than the cheap products. I still have my first Stuebben jumping saddle. It is now 14 years old and still going strong.

If you are going tack shopping, don’t sell yourself short. There are alternatives if things are not up to scratch.

On a platter

For the last two days I’ve been giving a jumping clinic at the Selangor Turf Club Equestrian Centre to Sukma riders. The Terengganu riders have come all the way from their molly-coddled lives in Kuala Terengganu, while the Kedah girls are actually STCEC based. Then there are a few STCEC riders who have no Sukma connection.

The Terengganu Sukma showjumpers have had everything presented to them: LAS helmet, Aigle boots, nice breeches, and even decent horses. Their lessons are paid for, their hotel in KL as well. All they have to do is show up for their lesson and do what the coach tells them to do.

They listen pretty well in the lessons when they eventually get there but so far it has been Terengganu time every morning. This morning they were 45 minutes late. Okay, it was raining a little, but the two Kedah girls, Amanda Sivaraj and Stacey Victor were out there with me, working their way around a small course. If the Kedah kids who haven’t even been given so much as a pair of gloves could be bothered to work in the rain, I didn’t understand why the Terengganu kids thought they shouldn’t get a little wet.

I believe it is true that you appreciate things a little more when you have worked for it instead of having it given to you. I think back to when I was not much more than a kid, trying to make and save money for university. I was serving National Service in Singapore, earning S$230 a month. I had to be in camp to fall-in by 0720 hrs. I would wake up before 0430 hrs so that I could work two horses before heading off to the rest of the work-day. The money I made off the horses was even more precious because I knew how hard I worked for it.

I’m not against riders who have everything presented to them on a platter. Just those who don’t know how to appreciate it. I know how fickle life is: you never know how long you are going to stay lucky. I just hope my Terengganu turtles wake up and smell the roses.