During the last season, the club aimed
to enter as many tournaments as
possible in order to gain much needed
competition mileage and tournament
experience. At the beginning of the
year, the club travelled southward to
play against London in the arena, with
the beginner team making a real
impact. A friendly tournament with the
University of Kent Polo Club soon
followed, topped off with a charity ball
in Leeds Castle, Canterbury.
The first foray onto the grass for the
club was in the St Andrews Charity Polo
Tournament, which proved a brilliant
warm up for the grass season ahead. By
the time the summer season was in full
swing, the club had expanded
exponentially, so much so that seven
teams were entered for Summer
Nationals. This year the club aims to top
this number, enter more tournaments,
and have a larger number of players
sporting Palatinate colours. Perhaps
most importantly of all, the club aims to
bring as many wins as possible home to
the North.
In order to integrate as many students as possible into the club and into polo fun,
the club offers both a playing and a social membership with an active and diverse
social calendar on offer for all members, from film evenings to fancy dress bar crawls
and even a ‘fox hunting’ social-with freshers taking on the role of the fox. In a scene
that perhaps wouldn’t look out of place in a Jilly Cooper novel, after the London
University
Tournament last November, several club members even found themselves in the
VIP area at Raffles, on ‘champagne night’, a perfect, if unexpected after match party.
An additional highlight of the year and social calendar must have been the club
‘tour’ to St Moritz, Switzerland for the Snow Polo World Cup. With legendary players
battling it out for glory on the frozen lake St Moritz with a beautiful mountain vista as
a backdrop, it is little surprise that plans for a return to the event with a much larger
group are currently underway. Durham University’s Polo Club may still be in its
infancy in the grand scheme of things, but with rapid growth coupled with
enthusiasm, tenacity and a huge desire to succeed, we should definitely watch this
space as players from Durham look to be on track for great things in the polo world.