Polo Wicklow \ Siobhan Herbst

AFTER weeks of training and evening chukkas, Ireland’s junior players were all set for their end of season tournament hosted by Polo Wicklow last weekend. Playing for the North was Luca Moore, Amelie Moore, Emma Casey and Summer Moore taking on the South of Delfina Valor, Jasmine Robertson, Max Stone and Sienna Moore.

The match was played over two extended chukkas with Luca Moore taking advantage of knowing her siblings game, passing the ball up to younger sister, Summer, to put the first goal of the game in. Delfina Valor wasn’t long rallying up her troops with a super shot to Max Stone who made the pass to Yasmine Roberston to bring the game to a draw.

Sienna Moore wasn’t going to let her older sister, Amelie, away with anything and with a hard ride her off, scored a goal with only one minute left on the clock. The final goal came from Emma Casey who brought the end score to 4-4, leaving everything to play for in the final chukkas on Sunday.

Next up was LHK (Colm Kelleher, Liam Whealen and James Belfast) taking on Keelings (Caroline Keeling, Mark Stone and Luca Moore). Despite the torrential downpour leaving the players soaked through, they still put on a great show of sportsmanship, wiped the rain off their faces and battled it out to the end with a score 8-9 to LKH.

The last game of Saturday saw Wicklow (Dario Aguirre, Sergio Valor and Audrey O’Sullivan) take on Pegus (David Stone, Siobhan Herbst, Blondie Horan). With three generations of Stones playing polo, David Stone was determined to show us that experience beat youth, taking off in the first minute to score the opening goal of the match. A slighter drier game than the previous wash out, the game flowed end to end with a final score of 7-5 for Wicklow.

Sunday’s play

Sunday was a different day altogether – the rain from the day before made Polo Wicklow’s grass field perfect footing for the finals of the Junior Tournament and the end of season Wicklow Cup. The sun shone showing off the stunning sea views and rolling hills that surrounded the polo field. With a bigger field to play, Toby Walsh joined the South team to give them a helping hand.

From the first throw in you could see that South were not going to take any prisoners. Jasmine Robertson stole the ball on Irish Cob Danny Boy and brought the ball the length of the field to score the first goal.

The Moore sisters let their competitive side out and returned the favour with another fantastic goal from Amalie backed up by sisters Summer and Luca. Toby made sure his presence was known too by hooking the mallet of Emma resulting in saving what would have been the winning goal. The final score of the game was 2-2.

Once again the older players took centre stage with three teams making up a round robin (or American tournament). First out were Keelings (Caroline Keeling, Tom Small, Luca Moore and Blondie Horan) who took on LHK (Colm Kelleher, David Stone, Sergio Valor and Audrey O’Sullivan), with a tight game Keelings took the win 2-1 meaning that LHK remain on the field to face Wicklow (Siobhan Herbst, Dario Aguirre, Jennifer Doyle and Liam Whealan). Liam Whealan’s hurling background came apparent as he took off down the field, scoring the opening goal. Goal of the game going to David Stone after an incredibly directed neckshot, helped by the slope fired through the posts to give LHK the win 2-3. Now Keelings returned to the field to take on Wicklow. With a nice open game the final score was 2-3 to Keelings.

During all games, there was a great display of racehorses that had been retrained to play polo, some had raced and some hadn’t got further than training.

Polo lends itself to a perfect gateway for racehorses to have a second career chance. Just last year an Irish- bred thoroughbred broke all the records that Argentine polo bred horses couldn’t do – winning Best Playing Polo in both the Hurlingham and Palermo Argentine Open (highest level of polo in the world) with Polito Pieres, one of the world’s top players. It’s a very exciting and proud moment when you see the Irish thoroughbred not only taking over the world on the racetrack but on the polo field too.