JEDDAH: In the second major international outing for the fledgling sport of polo in Saudi Arabia, Prince Rashid bin El Hassan hosted two teams — Jeddah and Riyadh — at the Royal Jordanian Polo Club in Aman recently. Jeddah Polo was playing its first match for their new sponsors — ART (Arab Radio & Television).
The Amman challenge followed a tournament in Cairo hosted by the Egyptian Polo Federation, earlier this year and acted as a shakedown for the matches that took place in Riyadh recently.
Zaighum Azzam, Consul General of Pakistan, who organized the tournament with Prince Rashid and the Royal Jordanian Polo Club, was well satisfied with Jeddah’s performance.
“Once again we were delighted with the result. We played well as a team against a very experienced opposition.” Bruce Cowley noted that the experience had been especially rewarding as the team was mounted on ponies new to them — always a “a bit of a challenge.”
Prince Rashid said during the event that he was very interested in joining hands to develop a regional league, which will give amateur players the opportunity to play more in the region and encourage polo ties between neighbors.
Day one of the two-day event saw the guests select their mounts from the Amman host’s string of ponies. The teams, mixed Jordanian and Saudi representatives — played in friendly tournament warm up games to allow the visitors to become accustomed to their mounts.
The winners of the mixed teams event was Black team led by Major Hasib of Jordan with Carlito of Jordan, Hashem Al-Alawi of Riyadh and Bruce Cowley of Jeddah Polo.
Day two saw the serious competition under way. Jeddah had the best of the play for the majority of the match in which neither side gave any quarter. The score mounted goal for goal and stood at 5 goals all in the final chukka. However, Jeddah conceded a penalty shot which Prince Rashid hammered clinically between the posts and Jordan’s No. 2 sealed Jeddah’s fate with a quickly taken opportunistic goal just before the final whistle.
The Riyadh team fared better in goals but the extremely fast and physical match was terminated and given a draw after Riyadh’s Josh Morris-Lowe broke his leg in a fall. He was treated in Jordan, under the personal supervision of Prince Rashid, and is recovering.
Reflecting on the event, Cowley thought that the success of the visit lay not so much in the final scores, but in the generation of interest in the game.
Teams:
Riyadh: Hashem Al-Alawi, Moder Al Zoubi, Josh and Tim Morris-Lowe.
ART Jeddah Polo: H.E. Zaighum Azzam (Consul General Pakistan — Jeddah), Ali Kashef, Ayman Nackvi and Bruce Cowley.
