Guards Polo Club Official Yearbook 2017 Official Yearbook 2017 | Page 28

business of polo
BUSINESS AS USUAL
Despite the drama surrounding the new Home Office regulations, Guards Polo Club’s
CEO Neil Hobday is in a positive mood about the upcoming season; looking forward
to welcoming a new high-goal patron to Flemish Farm, an old friend as sponsor of the
Archie David Cup and the fabulous Mosimann team to the Clubhouse kitchens
HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh with members of the Guards Polo Club Board of Directors. Back row from left: Brian Stein, Alan Morello, Hissam
Ali Hyder, Alan Fall, Freddie Huxtable, Vivek Rawal, Konstantin Graf von Schweinitz, James Neighbour, Will Emerson, Mo Sheikh, Simon Holland, Major Jamie
Hayward. Front row from left: Joachim Gottschalk, Lt Col Sean O’Dwyer, Neil Hobday, Jock Green-Armytage, Urs Schwarzenbach and Col Stuart Cowen
I
t would be unrealistic to think that
a major sporting venue like Guards
Polo Club will not be affected by
the Home Office changes to the
visa rules. These new Home Office
regulations are clearly going to have a
detrimental effect on the finances of the
polo industry across the board – from
livery yards to vets; from farriers to feed
companies; to all the people who would
have ordinarily worked as professionals
or grooms and are now unable to get
that work.
Guards Polo Club is a major stakeholder
in this sport though and so must make
sure that we do what we can to reduce
the impact here. It is important we
remain a strong Club and work hard to
reduce the impact of these Home Office
regulations. Of course, we are also a high-
goal club and so tournaments such as the
Cartier Queen’s Cup and Indian Empire
Shield continue as before, as does the
medium-goal, including such prestigious
tournaments as the Bentley Motors Royal
Windsor Cup.
28
Fortunately, a lot of our members have
UK or European passports and so we
are not seeing a significant drop in our
playing members and their professionals.
In fact, our teams’ pages seem to have
more names listed than ever before. Many
of our patrons organised themselves at the
end of last year – while the visa furore was
still ongoing – taking measures to ensure
that their teams and their yards were
fully staffed. Some of the busier English
professionals, who are members here,
also dealt with the situation straight away
and didn’t sit on the fence. We are even
looking forward to welcoming a new high-
goal patron and his string to Flemish Farm
for this season.
So, the impact for your Club will be
a slightly thinner season, but that is not
cause for despair. The Polo Office is
expecting to play around 450 matches
this season, which in anyone’s book is still
a heck of a lot of polo! This means that
all our fields will be in use and rotated,
allowing us to always provide a first-class
playing surface for the matches.
guards polo club official yearbook 2017